Look, real motoring writers like our own Phil King get to test Ferraris, Aston Martins, Lamborghinis and McLarens in exotic locations like the south of France and on legendary racetracks.
This week I paid my own fare, flew Aeroflot and tested a 1963 Trabant on the wintry streets of East Berlin. For the small number of you who are not East German car fans, the Trabant was the most popular automotive brand in the German Democratic Republic from 1957 until 1990.
They were so popular, that from the day you placed your order till the day you took delivery averaged 12 years. Some enthusiasts had to wait 16 years. But that didn't matter, because apart from an increase in engine size and a cut in the number of features nothing much changed in the Trabi over 30 years. No wonder they sold 3 million of them.
So, what are the lessons here for Ford and Holden?
Well the Trabant was the only car you could buy in the GDR for 30 years. The body was made from Duroplast, a light, strong, recycled material whose only downside was that animals liked to eat it. If you were on the land you needed a separate pen for your car and the pigs.
On the not so green side the two-stroke engine requires a mixture of petrol and two-stroke oil pushing out nine time the hydrocarbons and five times the CO2 emissions of a regular car.