On the way to a friend’s birthday the car broke down rather dramatically ( clutch into gear box, yes indeed ouch and expensive ) but luckily we managed to limp to  very nearby lay-by and called the AA to rescue us.

All very well organised and we were given a timeframe and rather surprisingly the number plate of the AA van heading in our direction.

I did wonder why that was necessary considering I didn’t expect many fake AA vans to be pulling up into random lay-by.

But it wasn’t an AA van – none of the yellow and black distinctive markings. It was the right size and shape but was metallic grey with ‘customer service’ on the side.

Once the nice man had diagnosed the problem, opened the back of his anonymous looking van, pulled out the piece of kit to hitch our car to it, and we had all set off for home, we found out more.

Apparently, he was one of about 30 AA people across the country who were specially trained to deal with problems with very expensive make cars – McLaren, Tesla, Lamborghini, posh Porsches etc.

These select few get taken to the production lines and factories and get to know all about the ins and outs of these cars.

Apparently, if you drive a McLaren, there is some piece of kit in it which will inform the factory of a problem, assess how significant it is, whether you an safely get home in it, or to where you are going if you had put that address into the GPS.

Once the factory has that information, they call the unaware driver with advice – and then our AA man is dispatched to sort things out.

And these posh makes don’t want any hoi polloi knowing that whatever car they could never afford sometimes breaks down. 

So, our AA man and his van are in disguise – not so much of an issue when you have a 12 year old Citroen Picasso….

So, when he is not dealing with posh cars and their owners, he makes time to rescue us.

I said I presumed that very posh cars don’t often breakdown and he just smiled, rather enigmatically, I thought.

Made for an interesting rescue ride home though.