Remember when estates had rear-facing jump seats in the boot?

When I was a child I didn’t have an iPad or iPhone to keep me amused on long car journeys, like the kids of today (other phones and tablets are available...). I had to pester my mum until she handed over her Nokia 3210 so I could play Snake, or more often just sit there and stare out the window at interesting cars that passed us by.

And I was fine with that, but I always coveted those rear-facing jump seats you used to get in big Mercedes and Volvo estates. You know the ones – they used to flip up from the boot floor and were in most cases designed especially for young-ish children.

I’d see cars with them occasionally – the kids who occupied them always gurning or swearing at every other motorist they could see. While I wasn’t a gurning or swearing kind of child, travelling in those little, uncomfortable-looking seats seemed like heaps of fun. And I desperately wanted a go.

Alas, I never got the opportunity to experience them. And kids today won’t either, because I can’t think of a single car in Britain you can currently buy that offers them as an option. The Tesla Model S and Mercedes E-Class Estate both did until relatively recently (within the last few years), but nowadays the trend is very much for forward-facing third row seats. Where all you can see is the back of someone else’s head.

Boring? Yes. But I can’t imagine a rear-facing third row seat is the safest place for a small child to sit, so that they aren’t available anymore is probably a very good thing (however much fun they were for said kids).

Any fond memories, people of the Internet?