Music giant David Bowie certainly left his mark on modern pop culture. With a back catalogue to rival the very best songwriters, his legend was fuelled by a chameleon like ability to interchange between several different personas; each as iconic as the last.

From Ziggy Stardust to Halloween Jack, Bowie’s eternal evolution garnered a cult following, one that continues long after his death in 2016. This loyalty was best demonstrated at last month’s Festival Automobile International event in Paris where, to the delight of fans, a new Bowie concept car was unveiled. As tributes go this is quite something.

With the world population currently in excess of 7.5 Billion and still predicted to increase, there has never been so many cars on the road in all of human history. Coupled with the fact that these cars are ballooning in size; car parking space has become a precious commodity and a serious problem. Indeed for many a universal equivalent of Tesla's Smart Summon, which automatically finds a space for you, cannot come quock enough.

Camshafts are another of the many critical components required to enable a combustion engine to work, but what exactly is a camshaft and why is its role so important?

Traditionally the dashboard in the standard road car has been made up of buttons, switches and dials; uniformly identifiable in all makes of cars and only slightly modified by manufacturers.

This useful consistency is somewhat counterbalanced by most vehicles having subtly different layouts which tend to only become apparent at inopportune moments when driving an unfamiliar vehicle - such as when trying to locate the central locking button with all your passengers waiting impatiently in the cold.

Aside from these inconveniences, and maybe not knowing what some of the warning lights on a dashboard mean, the system works – but technological advances have been at a minimum.

Despite what is undoubtably very clever and complex engineering, the Double (or Dual) Clutch Transmission (DCT), has a mixed reputation with drivers and has not achieved the level of ubiquity many thought it would.

Sitting in the middle ground between an automatic and a manual transmission, the simplest way of describing their operation, is that they’re an automatically operated manual transmission – achieved by using two clutches.

In television and film there are rare occurrences of cars transcending their human character counterparts and becoming the defining image of said film or tv show. The 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 from Bullitt, the 1969 Dodge Charger from the Dukes of Hazards, Cameron’s Dads Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder from Ferris Buellers Day off and even the 1981 De Lorean DMC – 12 from Back to the Future.

These cars have become iconic pop culture images and the appetite for classic cars is still strong, with over half a million classic or historic vehicles in the UK - in fact the UK government estimates the classic car industry to be worth of up to £5.5bn. However, is the classic car in danger of becoming extinct on our roads?