Remember Del Boy Trotter’s Reliant Regal van? That hideous yellow plastic tricycle was the anti-hero of the BBC’s Only Fools and Horses show, endlessly belching black smoke onto the main streets of Hackney. And yet the Trotter’s Independent Traders van wasn’t just a three-wheeled punchline – it was a painfully accurate reflection of what small businesses across Thatcher’s Britain had to do to keep mobile… not to mention a painfully accurate reflection on the quality of business itself.

The Reliant Regal was never a popular workhorse, but plenty of people struggled through the Eighties in clapped-out Morris vans or Mark 2 Transits with their doors tied shut using string.…