My life on the road
I grow old ... I grow old ... My head and tyres have both gone bald.
Cars are doomed.
Let’s be honest. They are becoming consumer durables like any other and we are moving inexorably to the point where they finally rank alongside microwaves as a device providing a functional service and not much more. The newest generation of drivers are apparently no longer in love with their cars and I kind of understand why, with the strangulated driving experience these days.
The affair still burns brightly though for we boomers and millennials. Like many veterans of the 60’s and 70’s I have many car-related tales of derring-do. One of my earliest ever memories is sitting on my Dad’s lap while he attempted to get his Sunbeam Rapier over 100 mph.
I’ll stop there though. I do know that everyone has their tales of car-related madness from the olden days.
But, since the age of 17 I’ve always had a car and thinking back, they give a kind of running commentary to my life that is about as insightful as almost anything I can think of. Three in particular have tales to tell.
Firstly then, let me take you back to the Summer of 1975 when I was given my very first car, before I had even passed my test…..
Mum and Dad had made the decision to move to Bahrain for Dad’s flying work, while my sister and I would remain in education here, Lynne at University and me at Boarding School. The problem was that we needed to get to Heathrow under our own steam for the holidays. So, Dad bought us both a car. We both got used Austin/Morris 1100s. Given the (then unique) nature of my circumstances, school granted me permission to keep the car there and one of the masters let me park it in his garage.
The car rusted rapidly and was horrendously unreliable. I became adept at pushing it out of the garage and onto the road where there was a gentle slope. I’d heave away, then as it gathered momentum, jump in and bump start it when it had reached adequate speed.
It was a dog. But it was my dog. I’d trundle home and then on to Heathrow, where it would sit in the Excelsior Hotel car park while I was away. The arrangement at the Excelsior was redolent of a time long past. Basically, the parking attendants were running an extremely profitable ‘sideline’ providing an unofficial long-term parking service for aircrew based overseas. All of my Dad’s fellow pilots and he had their UK cars there, sliding a few tenners over (or under) the counter, whenever they came back to the UK.
The Morris was also the only car (so far of course) that I’ve properly crashed. I chose a somewhat unusual location to mark the occasion. Almost exactly in the middle of the old Severn Bridge.
I blame Steely Dan.
As with every teenager in possession of their first car I had made some additions, including a cassette player, mounted very low down under the dash. It was a windy night in November 1978 when I was returning from home to university. They always closed the outer carriageways for safety reasons. I was listening to ‘Countdown to Ecstasy’ by the ‘Dan and for reasons that remain a mystery, the traffic was stationary. As it began to move and we gathered speed ‘King of the World’ faded away and I looked down to flip the cassette over to ‘Pretzel Logic’.....
I looked back up just in time to register that the traffic was stationary again.
I significantly rearranged the back of a doctor’s Vauxhall Ventora. He was apoplectic when he got out and surveyed the damage, but happily his wife was a nurse who spotted that I was somewhat shaken up and called him off. The Morris was a write off, but we bought it back from the insurance company, patched it up and it lived to rust another day.
Fast forward 8 years or so and we are into the world of work and I am living in Kingston upon Thames and working for an Insurance company. My boss wore braces and drove a 2.8i Capri. I had aspirations to yuppiedom too, but not the funds. However, I’d bought a flat (deposit raised by selling my car of course) and had been thrilled by the inevitable property valuation rises, mainly because it meant I could buy a new car with my unearned wealth! Guy Salmon Honda had in its showroom a delightful little red Honda CRX which I would go down and lust after for weeks, to the point where I became good friends with the middle-aged lady receptionist. Eventually I threw caution and currency to the winds and bought it, the only time I’ve ever bought a new car. The receptionist was almost more thrilled than I was on the day when I went to pick it up.
The Honda was a wonderful, chuckable, thing and it gave me my best driving experience ever. One Sunday morning I had to drive from Kingston to the Welsh Borders for a family ‘do’. I set off deliberately very early and left the motorway at Oxford in order to drive ‘over the top’ of the Cotswolds as my Dad and I called it, from Burford to Tewkesbury. I had done the trip multiple times a year to go to school and knew the route well. That Sunday the roads were empty, the weather sunny and the Honda in fine fettle. I remember the thrill of throwing the little car into corners, listening to the chirrup from the tyres, then flooring the accelerator out of the bends.
Anyway… family life intervened. A two-seater won't cut it then of course, so the Honda disappeared and for the next decade or so car ownership took a back seat. Things like large Saabs and Accords came and went. Job success and income fluctuated as they are wont to do. My family had probably a dozen Hondas, but the next really noteworthy car came from Germany in the noughties, in the shape of an S-class Mercedes.
Owned by the Finance Director next-door neighbour of my sister, it had already racked up an impressive 125,000 miles in two years ferrying him (chauffeur driven) to and fro from Birmingham to London every day. My brother-in-law bought it and a year or two later we agreed terms for the battleship to change hands again. By this time I was self-employed. My first contract was at Heathrow and I had decided I would stay in a hotel during the week. (I stayed at the very same Excelsior, now a Radisson Blu. Sadly, the parking ‘arrangement’ was but a fond memory).
The stay overnight idea lasted only 3 nights. I hated it so much I decided I’d rather drive home every day than stay in a hotel, eat hotel burgers and stare at a wall. So, for the next 7 or so years the Mercedes continued its motorway mile-munching . It was a paragon of reliability. I happily took any contracts that I could drive to in two hours, knowing there would be no pain accruing from time spent in the old barge. The car never once hiccuped as I took the mileage from 130,000 up to 290,000.
Then one summer’s evening as I was driving home from Cambridge, the unthinkable happened. The engine tone of the car changed, the dashboard lit up with warning lights, some of which I never even knew existed. I pulled immediately onto the hard shoulder, becoming aware as I did so of smells - burning rubber, oily steam and the unwelcome sound of metal clattering against metal. The old lady then had to suffer the indignity of a transporter ride back to my local Mercedes specialist at home.
The next day I went to see the patient, by this time sitting in the workshop, its bonnet in the high ‘service’ position.
The mechanic had the look of a doctor about to give a relative some upsetting news….
“It’s the alternator. It’s just reached the end of its life and broken up. That’s snapped the timing belt and the water pump has gone too.”
“Right. But you can sort all that though”
“Oh yes, but look, you might want to think about moving it on. These components all have a standard working life and I reckon you are about to hit the end of most of them. I may be wrong but I’m pretty sure the reliability will start to deteriorate from here.”
This guy had 30 years Merc experience and would have stood to make a fortune from me as the old lady deteriorated. He had nothing to gain with the advice. So, regretfully, I took it. When I bought the car it looked like new and it left me in the same condition..... I still miss it.
Since then, I have had many cars. After my first, and it subsequently transpired, greatest, experience of the brand, Mercedes’ have come and gone, including one, a GLE Hybrid which, while a technological marvel, was the worst car I’ve ever owned from any brand, by country mile. It would break down practically every time I drove it, always with something related to the underdeveloped hybrid system.
Audis, Teslas, Range Rovers.. BMWs, MGs, Citroens. All have reversed up the drive in the last 30 years. But not a single one of the dozens has come close to providing the memories given to me by these three.
Proust had his madelaines, Eliot his coffee spoons. Me, I measure out my life with second-hand cars.
Generation Z will never know what they missed.