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Moments later I saw a Kanagawa-registered Nissan Figaro and then a well-preserved first-generation Mitsubishi FTO. So where was I? Downtown Tokyo? Highway 19 to Nagano?

No, of course not – I was in deepest Norfolk. Which is, I have to report, a far better place to see vintage Japanese machinery than Japan itself.

You know the sort of thing: the imminent arrival of the £6 gallon has brought us a rash of unwanted advice as to how to keep petrol costs in check. This usually involves supergluing windows shut, driving largely naked to save weight and – with wince-inducing obviousness – not accelerating quite so hard.

Where’s the fun in that? Which is why, inspired by the seminal 1970s advertisement that told us to save water by sharing a bath with a friend, I’ve come up with my own guide to getting more miles from your tank.

So it comes as no surprise that a more practical, plug-in Stella Concept, is to debut at the coming G8 Summit up in Hokkaido.

But the truth is that Subaru’s electric future is likely to be shaped by Toyota’s ever-growing interests in the brand. For instance, next year Subaru will give up on its own 660cc minicar business and will sell OEM Daihatsus instead; a product of the Toyota empire.

But this isn’t all bad. As a small company, without the cash and resources to go head to head with the big guns, Subaru has had to pick and choose where to spend its eco money. Look how long it took to bring its excellent new Boxer diesel to market.

The quick, funky, oversteer-happy four-cylinder coupe was a reasonable sales hit back in the ‘nineties, and has since won notoriety as the weapon of choice for the world’s professional drift stars.

What car makers and car drivers need is a stable fuel price that does not distort the market with artificially cheap domestic electricity and gas… or artificially expensive petrol and diesel.

Most people are too busy complaining about turning timber waste into biofuel to see the wood for the trees.

If CO2 is the issue, and it’s certainly the political one, then it’s ridiculous that plug-in hybrids are suddenly viable simply because the oil price is high - it has dropped by nearly 10% over the last fortnight, incidentally.

If we all start recharging our electric vehicles at home, then the tax on and cost of electricity will rise enormously and we’ll end up buying incredibly cheap, second-hand V8 saloons.

Prius and Lexus hybrids, OK, you can understand. But converting the Crown, Japan's long serving, conservative and rather stodgy executive saloon to earth-friendly hybrid power, is that really a plan?