For a long time my favourite car was the Jaguar Mark 2.

It's a strange object of infatuation, given the wealth of heartstopping, bedroom poster-material cars that came after. I mean, it was the fastest four-door saloon in the world in 1959, but why should eight-year-old me have cared about that more than four decades later?

Well, I have always thought the Mark 2 was immensely pretty. I remember seeing restored examples at car shows and thinking how purposeful they looked, how beautifully crafted the engine was and how smooth they sounded.

One year, on the way back from a family camping holiday in the Dordogne, we stopped off to see some old family friends in Le Havre. As a child, I was expecting this to be a boring affair; staying the night with two septuagenarians was hardly my idea of fun.

Our hosts Jacques and Mathilde put us up in a beautiful townhouse overlooking the city. They were very accommodating, although Jacques couldn't speak English and Mathilde spoke with a thick German accent, so that ruled me out of a lot of conversation.

At one point, after my parents had communicated how much I liked cars, I was asked by Mathilde on behalf of Jacques: "Quelle est ta voiture préferée?"

Normally when I told adults that my favourite car was "umm, probably a Jaguar Mark 2", they would look at me as if I had just said my favourite TV show was Songs of Praise. Surely it should be a Lamborghini or a Ferrari. What had my parents done to make me so boring? Jacques, however, smiled and left the room.

A minute later Mathilde grinned and invited me over to the window, and there it was: a gorgeous Mark 2 parked right outside. I can't remember if it was red or green, a 3.4 or a 3.8, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that the upholstery was beige and it had the obligatory walnut dashboard, steering wheel and gearknob. I can still smell it.

Jacques had recently had a hip operation and wasn't meant to drive, but he could see that I was smitten and wasn't about to deprive me of this potentially character-defining experience. The Jag's creamy six-pot roared into life and we set off in dramatic fashion, the rear wheels spinning and leaving a light trail of rubber as we wound down the hill into the town.

Jacques floored it down the quiet city boulevards and the noise ricocheted from the buildings around us. I was intoxicated, bouncing around gleefully - and unbelted - on the Mk2's sprung passenger seat. At every turn Jacques would brake sharply before flicking the wheel to induce a perfectly controlled powerslide. We careened through the city centre, thundering over tramways, screeching around roundabouts and dodging the dumbstruck evening motorists with abandon - but always with the sense that I was in safe hands. Jacques and Jaguar were in total harmony.

Ten youth-defining minutes later and it was all over: we pulled up back at the house, nosed the beast back into the garage and shuffled sheepishly back into the kitchen, Jacques probably muttering some fib about having just pootled up and down the driveway.

It would be many years before I held the keys to my very own Jaguar - and, it being a lethargic, £400 X-Type, it was almost entirely incomparable with the 1960s stunner that lit my passion for the brand. But I have never forgotten a second of that glorious Normandy night, and neither has my affection for Jaguar's seminal saloon been dulled even slightly.