“In the exhibition halls, the car on show is explored with an intense, amorous studiousness: it is the great tactile phase of discovery, the moment when visual wonder is about to receive the reasoned assault of touch (for touch is the most demystifying of all senses, unlike sight, which is the most magical).”

—Roland Barthes, The New Citroen, from Mythologies, 1957, translated from the French by Jonathan Cape, 1972.