The horror with which those of us with cars of, shall we say, "a certain age", met news of the arrival of a mandatory car test is summed up by some of the anecdotes that have arisen since the test was introduced two years ago.
One woman from the west was so afraid her pre-1992 car would fail that she sold it to her neighbour for what was then £50. Wily man that he was, the neighbour, with an eye for a bargain and a penchant for taking a gamble when the wind blew in the right direction, submitted the car to the NCT test himself. As he no doubt expected, his new acquisition passed.
So, for the princely sum of £85 - the test cost £35 - he got himself a safe, and roadworthy, set of wheels. How his relationship with his neighbour fared is another story.
Since then, the test has continued to elicit some strange behaviour from the driving public.
Famous among NCT testers is the woman who arrived at her test centre replete with registration certificate, letter of confirmation and car keys, but no car.
Then there was the man from the border area - further identification would lead to stereotyping - who demanded that the vehicle inspector reimburse him for the petrol used by the testers driving his car from one end of the centre to the other.
The inspector, impassively, gave him 20 cent.
Then there was the man who arrived 30 minutes late for his NCT appointment. His excuse was that he couldn't find the centre. Reasonable enough, you might think, except that he was in fact returning for a retest.
The lot of the vehicle inspector is not always a happy one. Just last week, according to Samantha Breen, an elderly couple arrived into a test centre with a car in a very poor state of repair.
Having conducted the test the inspector patiently went through the results with them.
Among other items, he explained that the emissions would need to be sorted out. He then proceeded through a long list of items on his report sheet that needed to be rectified. These included new tyres, adjustment to the lights and repair to rusted bodywork.
After spending some 20 minutes going through the report, he finally came to the end of his litany. "But have we passed the test?" they asked impatiently.
There are also those who believe a little divine intervention might help them pass. "We had a customer in Cavan who suggested we build a church beside the NCT centre so that customers could go in and say a prayer for their carwhile they waited," says Samantha Breen.
So far, the oldest car to go through the NCT was a taxi limousine first registered in 1929, and still in use in Kerry. NCTS has a specific procedure for testing vintage cars, she explains.
This involves, for example, using a different brake test for vehicles with braking systems that are not suitable for the NCT rolling brake tester. Ironically, if the thought of having to undergo the NCT still fills you with horror, the way around it is to actively search for a car "of a certain age". Private vehicles - as long as they are not used for taxi services - of over 30 years of age are classed as vintage cars and are therefore exempt from the NCT.