A life of wheels

gI was 16, it was 1976, so I had to have a sixteener special... I washed up all summer in a hotel to pay it off.  A 1974 Honda SS50 previously owned by one of my brother's friends, two years old and already a little the worse for wear.  I paid £120 for it, and the price included a re-bore and new piston, because its previous owner had not been kind to it.  To be honest, neither was I.  By the time I turned 17, I sold it for £15 to a friend who had just turned 16.  It was advertised as being capable of doing 50mph.  I don't think I ever got it above 40mph, and the only way of doing that was to saw off half the length of the throttle side in the carburettor - which apparently increased the horsepower from the standard 2.5 up to 4.5(ish...).  And when I turned 17, I bought...

1966 Honda CB160

...a Honda CB160 from another friend, for £140 this time.  This friend was training to be a bike mechanic, and he'd looked after it.  I didn't look after it too much, and one day the big end seized up on the way home.  I stripped it down on the kitchen table (much to the delight of my mum) and somehow managed to tip half a can of sump oil over the Rayburn and the dog in the process... In the end I got it back together again and it actually started.  But then I turned 18 and my parents bought me some car lessons for my birthday and that was that.  I passed my test within two months of my birthday, after five lessons, and I saved up my pennies until I could buy my first car.  In the end, it was this...

Vauxhall Viva HA

...my first ever car - a 1965 Vauxhall Viva HA 1100cc.  £120 to buy from some bloke in Ilton, and £85 for the first year's insurance. It suffered a bit in my hands too.  A bottle of milk judiciously spilt on the carpet one day meant that it always had a certain aroma about it.  One day on the M5 motorway, coming back from London and caning it at about 75mph, the head gasket blew.  A lovely green emulsion of oil and water greeted me when I lifted the bonnet.  After several days of it sitting outside the house with the bonnet up, my brother and I succeeded in getting it to run again, but it made some interesting noises when it did, and so I thought something else might be more reliable, so I bought...

1970 Vauxhall Victor 2000

...a 1970 Vauxhall Victor 2000 estate.  £350 when I bought it in 1979.  And it looked pretty good the evening I went to look it over in a housing estate in Taunton.  Unfortunately, one week later and the rust started to show through the cheap filler that the previous owner had used to hide its sins.  Within six months there were holes in both front wings, and a dent in the rear wing where I caught it on a no-waiting sign as I hastily exited a non-parking space.  The engine was willing enough though, and apart from a new prop-shaft CV joint, which went "BANG" at 80mph coming home one night, it behaved itself relatively well for a couple of years.  Still, it finished up on the scrap heap in 1981, and with the proceeds I bought two bath towels.  Having had enough of cars for the moment, and feeling the pinch a bit, I decided to buy myself a bike again, and for some unknown reason, probably just because it was there, I plumped for one like this...

1975 Honda CB250

 A 1975 Honda CB250.  It went pretty well, which was good, because four nights a week I had to do a 70-mile round trip to Romford and back from my home near Hertford to meet up with the band I was playing in at the time.  One night, a fuse blew half-way home, so I took a bit of the silver foil from a cigarette packet and replaced it with that. Clever I thought.

A few nights later, as I paddled the bike down the narrow path from the back of the house to the road, I turned the key and flames started coming out from under the petrol tank - which I don't need to explain further was situated between my legs.  I turned the ignition off, but that didn't help because by then the wiring had fused together, and the fuse didn't - well, I now know that silver foil does not make effective fuses.  I have never paddled a bike so fast in my life.  I got it out to the street, ran across to the other side with it and dumped it in the verge, where the fire promptly went out.  After several weeks of messing around with new cables and connectors and the like, I finally got it going again, but I didn't last too long as a biker after that.  I witnessed the most horrendous car accident happen just in front of me on a dual carriageway at 2am one morning, and feeling rather exposed on two wheels, I decided that I was probably safer in a car.  And so I splashed out again...

1975 Ford Consul 2.0L

 on a 1974-ish Ford Consul 2.0L, which drank petrol like there was no tomorrow and cost me £300 from another friend.  I rather liked that car, took it to London and then to Scotland with me - it was big and bouncy but comfortable, and I felt a lot more like me in it.  Unfortunately after about seven months its MOT was due, which it failed with flying colours, the sills and half of the chassis were rotted with rust, so it had to say hello to the crusher.  So I needed another car, and fast, and my Mum and Dad helped me out.  I found one of these...

1965 Humber Sceptre

 ...1965 Humber Sceptre sitting in the back of a car dealer's showroom in Minehead.  It was built like a tank - no danger of rust with this baby, it had overdrive to reduce the petrol bills and a leather sports interior.  We paid £400 for it - it was already 17 years old, but as it turned out it was quite an investment.  Except, it seemed to have an affinity for punctures.  I had six punctures in as many months in Edinburgh, and it also seemed to act as a magnet for traffic wardens - I had ten parking tickets before I knew it and I decided that it had to go.  I told my Mum I thought I'd better sell it, and she said why didn't I swap it for her Vauxhall Viva?  Well, seeing as they had bought the Humber for me in the first place, I thought "why not?" and promptly did the trade...

1973 Vauxhall Viva HC

Well, that worked out well for my Mum, because a little while later, someone paid her £1000 for the Humber.  But the little Viva... well.  It wouldn't start without an awful lot of cajoling, the electrics were clearly shot, and it leaked like a paper tent in a monsoon.  I had to drive it to the scrapyard before long, but I needed a car to get to my work and my gigs.  I found ...

1972 Austin 1800 Automatic

...an Austin 1800 somewhere in Edinburgh.  I should have left it there.  What a revolting car.  Most things worked on it, in fact almost everything, except the alternator.  And being an automatic, you couldn't bump-start it.  The battery went flat about once every couple of days.  I carried jump-leads with me so that I could beg a bit of juice from any sympathetic passing motorist, but in the end I gave up.  It was time for a new car, and this time, it was just that, a New Car.

1984 Fiat Uno 55 Comfort

Having worked in a Fiat garage for a few months before I found my first job in investment for an Edinburgh stockbroker, I went down to see them, and drove away in a brand-new 1984 Fiat Uno.  It had an engine like a knitting machine, but it still cost £4,300 retail.  My old friends at the garage took pity on me and let me have it for £3,800.  Suddenly, I was living in a different world, it started first time every time, It did exactly what you told it to do.  One night it went 110mph (downhill with a tail-wind), or the speedo said it did anyway.  It was my first Italian car, but even the electrics worked.  But after a year (end of warranty!) it developed an annoying leak, and started to smell rather musty inside.  And one sunny day, when it wasn't smelling too bad, I happened to see a car on a forecourt of a garage in Musselborough, just next to Edinburgh, and I fell in love...

1983 Alfa Romeo 1.5 Green Cloverleaf Sprint

It was my second Italian car, but this time it was really Italian. An Alfa-Sud 1.5 Green Cloverleaf Sprint.  With its growling little boxer engine and it's bright green carpets, not to mention its stunning good looks (for 1985) I was hooked.  It was 18 months old, and the price was £4,450, down from £8,500 new.  The garage offered me £3,300 for the Uno on a trade-in - I was even more impressed.  I absolutely loved driving it, even though the handbrake was a bit iffy to say the least, and I would have kept it for ever, if I hadn't somehow managed to do a one-and-a-half pirouette in it on a wet road in October 1987, just before the hurricane, and united the passenger door handle with the gear-stick when a car came round the corner I was approaching and hit it firmly in the midriff.  My one and only write-off. I was heartbroken until the insurance company paid me £3,500 and I managed to pay off the loan.  Still, despite a rather nasty whiplash, I had decided that Alfas were for me, so I bought another one, a few years older, for £300 with the change from the finance company.

1979 Alfa Romeo Giulietta 2.0

Bad move.  A 2-litre Giulietta.  It was quick, quicker than the Alfa-Sud, and it handled pretty well, but it had the "rust-bucket" tendancies of the older Alfas, and the electrics were pretty woeful.  It made me miss the ferry to the Isle of Man when I moved there.  The bottom radiator hose decided to perish on the M6 and I think I gave it about ten gallons of water during the last 50 miles to Heysham.  When I got there, the ferry had closed its doors and was about to leave without me.  A brief 36-hour sojourn in the Lake District until the next boat.  It couldn't last long.

1980 Nissan Datsun 280ZX

It didn't.  Having developed a penchant for discovering things at the back of car showrooms with the Humber, I found another classic gem.  This time a Datsun 280ZX for which I paid £4,400 - on credit of course.  With its removeable glass roof panels and T-bar, and its low profile Denovo tyres, its three acres of bonnet and the passing pedestrian comments of "Daddy, is that a Porsche?" I rather enjoyed this one.  It drank petrol very fast - 22mpg if I as lucky, but it was great fun to drive, including over the mountain stretch of the TT course at 110mph on one Mad Sunday.  I had a lot of fun in it, until the day came when I qualified for my first company car, and I went back to nearly-new motors again.

1990 Vauxhall Astra 2.0 GTE Cabriolet

The first was an Astra 2.0 GTE cabriolet, complete with electric roof. It enjoyed itself in a little tour of France and Switerland one summer, with a tent in the boot.  And then I followed it with another Vauxhall...

1992 Vauxhall Cavalier GSi 16v 4X4

...a Cavalier GSi 16v 4x4.  I had wanted to buy a Sierra Cosworth, but the insurance company wouldn't have it, so I bought the next best thing.  It clung to the road like a limpet, even when there was snow all over the mountain,  But it had its troubles too.  The clutch failed in Lynmouth - a picturesque Devon village with one-in-four hills on either side.  And then one day, for no reason, it decided not to start.  I turned the key a few times, just to make sure, and thought "what's that strange noise...?" It was the sixteen valves being bent by the pistons - the timing belt had gone, and after only 30,000 miles.  A lengthy repair which cost my employer £2,800. And then the three years were up and it was time to change.  I bought...

1992 Jaguar XJ40 3.2 Sport

...a monster.  An XJ40 3.2 Sport.  I think I paid £17,000 for it, but then it wasn't my money so I'm not sure.  Apart from its appetite for petrol, and two tyres, it didn't cost a penny more than an annual service for the next three years, and it went like a rocket ship for such a heavy car.  My mum, when she came to stay, was a bit embarrassed going to the shops in it, she thought it felt rather too grand.  But after a couple of years, I got promoted, and I got to change it, and as I was turning 40, I bought a mid-life crisis car - another Alfa Romeo.

Alfa Romeo GTV 2.0 Twin-Spark

This time a GTV 2.0 Twin Spark.  This one was everything the other Alfas nearly were. It went like a dream, it sounded incredibly tuneful, it stuck to the road like a go-kart and the electrics were faultless.  Even the handbrake worked.  One or two passengers objected to the "sporty" (read extremely hard) ride - one smacked his head on the roof after a particularly vicious bump in the road.  But with no speed limits on much of the Isle of Man at the time, I could legally do a ton on the way home from work. Fun, fun, fun. Until... another cam-belt disaster.  Another £2,500 bill for my employer.  And then for some reason company cars disappeared.

1999 Mercedes V Class 2.8

From the sublime to the ridiculous.  A £16,000 second-hand silver shed on wheels, a Mercedes V280.  Heavy, slowish, and very, very thirsty.  Lots of space though, when my daughter was little there was even room for a porta-loo behind the third row of seats.  It was good for picnics, and for towing a caravan, possibly for watching TV if you were a passenger, but not a lot else.  After moving to France two years later, I brought it back to the UK and sold it to a guy who wanted to convert it to cope with his electric wheelchair. He gave me £5,500 for it. 

2001 Fiat Bravo 1.9 JTD

And then, I bought a little Fiat Bravo 1.9 JTD something like this that was later christened Titine.  It was quick, very economical and pretty reliable.  I paid €5,400 for it to a garage in Cognac.  It was an ex-hire car, and it was in really good condition, albeit with 100,000km on the clock.  I bought it in 2004, and in 2012 when we left France, we gave it away with 230,000km under its belt - it was still going strong, although the lights had a habit of switching off at unexpected moments until you fiddled with the ignition key, and the horn never worked.  But it would do 185kph on an abandoned (hopefully) autoroute and still give you 45mpg.

2007 Audi A4 Avant 1.9 TDI

And then we moved to England, and I went looking on the internet for an Audi A3 to replace Titine, and in the end i couldn't find the one I wanted, and I persuaded myself that a little more space in the back would be a good idea, and I bought an Audi A4 1.9TDi from an Irish lady in Purley.  She told me she had only owned it for six months, as she was in the UK temporarily, and she'd bought it from the first owner, who was another lady, but one who sold things for a living, and she'd clocked up 114,000 miles in five years.  So the price was based on the mileage, rather than the condition - £5,400.  I bought it with my fingers crossed, and could then firmly uncross them when the Audi garage in Taunton told me there was nothing wrong with it, everything was in really good order.  And now, just 20,000 miles on and after three years, and some new rear suspension - probably due to my habit of using it as a pick-up truck for the building work we've been doing, it's rolling fine, and clocking 54mpg.  And this time, given that it's my look-out, I've had the cambelt changed before it could wreak havoc on the valves.

Cars are not what they used to be, thank God.  I think this one will probably do another ten years or so, if I look after it...