The best car I ever owned

After more than six months of self-imposed exile from the land of "Back-in-the-1970s", I think it's probably safe for me to do another nostalgia post and tell you how I came to buy a luxury saloon car at a far from luxury price and why it changed my life.

By the time my Austin A40 finally became too unroadworthy to struggle through an MOT, I'd been working as a self-employed steelfixer for several months.
Steelfixing is one of the lesser known occupations in the building industry and it involves the assembly and placement of all the steel reinforcing bars that are subsequently covered in concrete, creating the extraordinarily versatile and strong composite material, reinforced concrete.

Most of the building contracts that I was working on were in Stratford upon Avon, some fifteen miles from home, so the demise of my car was a bit of a problem. Getting to work entailed cycling ten miles to my workmate Brian's flat, changing into my working clothes, then travelling to the job in his pickup truck. We'd spend all day grafting away on site and then I'd return home via his flat.
I don't recall how long I managed to keep up this ridiculously energetic regime, but I do know what convinced me that I needed to rethink my travelling arrangements. One morning, the front light on my bicycle unsportingly fell into the front wheel half way to Brian's place. The wheel imploded in a welter of shredded spokes and as the front forks plunged into the tarmac stopping the bike in its tracks, I inevitably continued for a short time until I too plunged into the tarmac.
I went off the idea of cycling to work.
I needed another car.

As often happens, help came from an unexpected quarter.
Brian and I were at work one morning, assembling the column reinforcement for part of what was to become a covered shopping precinct in the centre of Stratford, when we were hailed.
"Oi! Steelfixers! D'you want to buy a car?"
It was one of the labourers. He was a young bloke who had only recently started work at the site, having moved into the area from somewhere in London. As far as I knew, the only car that he owned was an enormous old Rover that he used every day.
"What?... You're not flogging that old Rover are you?"
"Yeah... can't afford to run it. You can have it for fifty quid."
Brian and I both burst out laughing. This was clearly a joke, or possibly some sort of scam. The vehicle he claimed to be selling was about fifteen years old, but when it was brand new it was a top quality luxury saloon. This was the sort of car that the Prime Minister could be seen getting into in Downing Street.
"Fifty quid?" I said, "I don't think so... I'll give you a fiver for it."
He found my offer, shall we say, derisory. I can't remember his exact response, but I know that the second word was "off".
He left us and set off across the site to continue trying to find a buyer.

Brian said, "Y'know, fifty quid's probably a good deal, assuming that it's got an MOT."
"Yeah, but it's a bloody monster. Christ, it's got a three litre engine, it weighs a ton and it must drink petrol like it's going out of fashion. And what's the insurance gonna be for something like that?"
"A nice motor though....", he pondered "Well, it used to be a nice motor."
"For fifty quid there's gotta be something wrong with it. It's probably stolen or something. He's only been here a for week and he's hardly the sort of bloke you'd expect to have a Rover 3 litre."
"Yeah. I s'pose so... Come on, let's finish this and get over to the caff."

We didn't think any more about it. After all, if somebody really did want to risk buying what was bound to be a heap of trouble, they'd be sure to offer more than five pounds. So it was a bit of a surprise when, shortly after lunch, the guy came back and said, "Err, how about six quid?"
"Are you serious?"

He was serious. Which is how I ended up paying six pounds for a two-tone green Rover P5 3 litre

Same make, same model, same colour, but not my Rover, alas.

I gave him the cash. He gave me a receipt, the car keys and all the vehicle documents.
I hadn't even had a proper look at the car, let alone driven it, so the first time I got into the driving seat I was surprised to find that it was an automatic. I'd never driven anything without a manual gearbox before, so my journey home from work that day was something of an education. Just getting to grips with a vehicle that was far larger, heavier and more powerful than anything I'd driven before would have been alarming enough, but the added complication of trying to unlearn all those reflex actions that are a part of driving with a manual gearbox made me wonder whether I'd really made the right decision.
By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck.

Given this inauspicious introduction to my new vehicle, you may wonder why it became the best car I ever owned.

It was certainly the cheapest car I've ever bought. It was also the most luxurious; well it would have been if it hadn't been fifteen years old and steadily disintegrating. For such a large and apparently unwieldy car, it was beautifully well mannered and even when I made the sort of poor decisions that only a man in his early twenties can think are sensible, it never punished me for my stupidity, steadfastly allowing me to keep control; the stabilty and trustworthiness of its handling saved me from myself several times over. It was the only car that I've ever been able to put into a four-wheel drift without any fear of it going badly wrong. (Yes, that's just the sort of decision I meant)

 I went on some memorable trips in that car with various friends, hurtling up and down the gloriously uncongested motorway network to gigs, to parties, or for weekends away camping. But none of these things are really what made Aunty Rover so important in my life. It's more about the people who I met through owning that particular vehicle.

If I hadn't had such an unfeasibly large car, it's unlikely that I would have been asked by some old school friends to help them collect some musical equipment from London. If I hadn't taken that particular road-trip I doubt whether I would have got to know those friends quite so well and it's even less likely that they would have invited me to share a house with them and join them in their musical enterprise as road manager.
When it was time to move on again, friends I'd made through the band, who lived near Bristol offered me a place to live, sharing their house while I worked as a van driver for a mail order catalogue company.
Six months later, when the company opened a new depot in Devon, I transferred and lived in another shared house, near Newton Abbott. When we had a party, one weekend, various far-flung friends turned up, including a girl who had been to college with one of my housemates.

And that's how I met Blight-of-my-life...