Starting in the early 1950's, the Jowett Jupiter was a horizontally opposed four cylinder powered open tourer/sports car made in Bradford. It was an attractive little car with engineering novelty, designed in part by AutoUnion engineer Eberan Von Eberhorst. That had the obvious answer for 3 people in a 2-seater, a bench seat. The equally obvious disadvantage was that there wasn't much side support in cornering, but maybe that was okay at the time.

An equally early candidate was the Series One Land Rover. Not a car, I hear you say, but as I've seen pictures of one racing in a car race at Silverstone in the 50's, I stay my ground. That had the simplest solution you can imagine – stick 3 seat cushions side by side, so a variant on the bench seat but separate cushions and a saving on seat foam. The prototype, built in 1947, was unique among Land Rovers in having a centre- mounted steering wheel. The attraction was that it needed no left-and right-hand drive variants, but it proved a bit too radical and a conventional layout was adopted.

Staying with 3 side-by-side seating, the 1973 Matra Simca Bagheera and the later less pretty Talbot Matra Murena introduced 3 bucket seats in a row. The driver's moved, the passengers' didn't and whilst the picture with a model makes it look a big car, I suspect she's one of these car-specialist models who is perfectly in proportion and about 4foot 9inches tall. My guess is that whilst the Bagheera was lovely to look at and was a wide car for the time (1735mm compared with the competing MGB at 1524mm, but 1740mm for my Mk4 Golf) it didn't have enough space to be truly comfortable either for 2 passengers or one travelling in the narrow seats. In the time since the Murena ceased production, cars have got safer, needing thicker, stronger doors and, to be blunt, the average set of hips has got wider, so we've probably seen the last of 3-in-a-row.

Incidentally, 3 Bagheeras were built with U8 (not V8) engines.

However, that centre steering wheel in the Land Rover reappears a bit later. No, not the McLaren yet, but the Kieft Bristol. Cyril Kieft's racing cars were produced in my home town of Wolverhampton, and I knew Cyril towards the end of his life. His designer Gordon Bedson penned a Bristol powered formula 2 car, like the contemporary Cooper, but it wasn't made. The designs were converted into a 3 seat sports racer by hanging outriggers on either side with two small seats. Whilst balance was then ideal, the driver had a prop shaft running through his legs and the pedals also had to circumvent the prop shaft. Whether any passengers were carried is anybody's guess, but it satisfied the rules and is another variation.

Staying with cars designed for the track, the 3-seater appeared a few times in the 1990's and early 2000's when there was a fad for “F1 experience” cars. The trouble was that McLaren did it properly with a close coupled two seater driven by Brundle, probably the most intelligent F1 driver who could thrill in safety. Few drivers could do that, the cars weren't as inherently safe as the McLaren and they died out. Arrows tried it with lesser drivers than Brundle and I suspect their insurers told them to stop. After all, passengers paying several thousand pounds can probably afford good lawyers, and probably don't appreciate being the deformable structure. For what it's worth, pictures of a Ferrari F1 3-seater appeared on the internet. Whether it was genuine, I leave to your judgement.

However, no matter how genuine or not the F1 3-seater is, by jumping back to the 1960's we can see that an arrow-3 format was adopted by Ferrari for the rather gorgeous 365P Guida Centrale. Based on some of the parts of the 365P2 sports racer, just two were built for Gianni Agnelli (the FIAT boss) and Luigi Chinetti, the original North American Ferrari agent. The car had a V12 4.4 litre engine and the styling was like a scaled up but flattened Dino, albeit about 4 years earlier. The clever part was that the designer realised that hips and shoulders are the wide parts of the body, so if you stagger the seats a bit the legs can tuck in alongside the body of the driver. The result was a luxurious but manageable nearly side by side 3 seater. The downside was that it was a little wide, and Mrs Chinetti supposedly didn't fancy it because of that. It was, in fact, 1890mm wide compared with 1920mm for the 360 of 1999-2005, and more prosaically, 1886mm for the current Mondeo, but as I've said before, times change. Mind you, although I find the 365P rather lovely who can blame Mrs C if she preferred the 275GTB4 NART Spyder her husband commissioned around the same time.

Gordon Murray obviously likes the arrow 3 format because that has been applied in his composite and tube chassis'd, 3 cylinder powered, much discussed and hyped “revolutionary” T25 town car, of which not much has been heard recently. Even its mum wouldn't like its looks, but it's supposed to be superbly engineered and, thanks to the seating, surprisingly roomy. I hope I'm wrong but my guess is it will be a very expensive car for what it is, and that it will be sold on “total life costs”. I wish it well, and it's a 3 seater, so is GM the only designer to have done 2 wholly different 3 seaters?

Similarly expensive is the £20+k Mia electric. The Mia is neat and practical, but costing the same as a diesel Audi? Perhaps not.