Joe Macari’s business card says “purveyor of horseless carriages to the gentry”.

He sells luxury cars such as Ferraris and Maseratis from a showroom in Wandsworth to City types for whom – as he cheerfully puts it – a £200,000 car might be “an impulse buy”. But Mr Macari has seen business ease off as a result of the market turmoil of recent weeks. “Luxuries are now, for lack of a better word, luxuries,” he says. “They [my clients] had time to play and now playtime is over.”