Note: The exact publication history - including its title - of this essay is slightly unclear. It appears in an ebook edition of Crash that has a claimed publication date of April 2009; however external evidence suggests that it may have first appeared in a 2014 print publication of that novel. A Google Books copy of the 2017 Picador edition says "with a new introduction by Zadie Smith" on the cover, and the copyright page explicitly copyrights the novel 1973 to Ballard and the introduction 2014, 2017 to Smith. An Amazon Look Inside of a 2015-09-23 version of the 4th Estate ebook (ISBN 9780007324309, source ISBN 9780007287024) has "Introduction by Zadie Smith" on the cover, and the copyright page explicitly copyrights the novel 1973 to Ballard and the introduction 2014 to Smith. The Guardian published this essay in July 2014 entitled Sex and wheels: Zadie Smith on JG Ballard's Crash. The footer of that article states "Crash by JG Ballard is reissued this week by 4th Estate for £8.99.", but does not explicitly confirm that the essay appeared in that publication as the introduction. It appears that this essay also appeared in a "Feel Free", a 2019 collection of Zadie Smith's essays, with the title "Crash, by J. G. Ballard". The acknowledgements section of that collection is visible via Amazon's "Look Inside" preview, and states "(first published as an introduction to the reissue of Crash, 4th Estate, 2014)". The essay itself is not visible via that preview however, so there is an assumption that it is the same one as documented here.