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...

Let's try not to get caught out...

Back in the early days of this blog, I posted about a particularly memorable occasion, when Blight-of-my-life and I were stranded by snow, on the edge of Dartmoor. As the weather forecast is threatening us with the first snowfall of this winter, it's time to check that my Emergency Kit is all packed and ready for any journeys in bad weather.

Now I don't want to give the impression that I'm some kind of survivalist or apocalypse-watcher, but just taking the trouble to carry a few extra things in your vehicle can make a major impact on your comfort and wellbeing if you are unlucky enough to get caught out by freak weather or some other transport disfunction.

The occasions when I have been least well prepared for being stranded have always been when it was cold, so here's what I try to ensure that I've got with me when I'm driving during the winter.

Extra Clothing: The Land Rover heater is notoriously feeble, so I tend to wrap up warm for normal driving, let alone when conditions are at their worst. To supplement this, I carry a spare long-sleeved thermal vest and thermal "long-johns", woolly hat, gloves, spare fleece and a water-proof cagoul. Another wonderful bit of cold weather clothing are salopettes. I wouldn't normally have bought these, as I don't ski, but I picked up a pair of these quilted over-trousers from a charity shop for a couple of quid.

Footwear: The sort of shoes that are comfortable or practical for driving may not be awfully good for trudging about in snow, so I keep my walking boots in the vehicle. If you can find space for a decent pair of wellington boots, they 're also handy if your journey is disrupted by flood water.

Nesting Material: A lot of drivers keep a car-rug or blanket in their vehicle, but I prefer to carry a sleeping bag. If you can't get home and have to sleep in the car or camped on some good samaritan's floor, a decent sleeping bag can make life much more bearable.

Food & Drink: Although it is recommended that you should keep a few energy snacks in your vehicle; dried fruit, nuts or similar, I usually don't carry these. The thing that will really cheer you up if you're stranded in the cold and/or darkness, is a hot drink. Just the act of brewing up will raise your morale, so I carry a small camping stove, methylated spirit fuel and matches. I keep a few tea-bags in a zip-loc bag, a sachet of instant hot-chocolate drink and I also try to pack a tin of soup.
Whatever you choose to drink, don't forget to take something to drink out of and keep a plastic bottle of fresh water in the car; (It's difficult to make tea without water)

Warning: It's a very bad idea to use a camping stove inside a vehicle. They are intended for outdoor use only. If the possibility of accidentally setting fire to your car isn't enough to discourage you, bear in mind that your stove will produce carbon monoxide and this can kill you.

Other Stuff: Rules for what you must carry in your vehicle vary from country to country, but even if it isn't compulsory for you to carry a First Aid Kit, a decent flashlight, a tow rope and a high visibility jacket, all of these are worth considering.

And finally...
Don't forget to keep some toilet paper in your vehicle, sealed in a polythene bag to keep it dry. If you ever need this and you haven't got any, you are heading for misery.
I'll not elaborate, just trust me on this.

 

That Jack Kerouac has a lot to answer for

The demise of Blight-of-my-life's Vauxhall Corsa has thrust us into looking for a replacement car.

For many people, the prospect of going shopping for a car will be a source of joy and excitement. We are less enthusiastic. It's just like most other shopping; time consuming and irritating, but with the added bitterness of being expensive.
Furthermore, it all seems to be a much more long-winded exercise nowadays too. All the trawling through magazines, brochures and websites, then traipsing round various dealerships asking the same set of questions and getting the same sorts of answers from the weary looking sales people.
Perhaps things used to be simpler back in the 1970s.  I can remember when...

...my first car had finally gone for scrap.
I was working as a self employed steel-fixer and living back with my parents. Money was pretty tight. I was earning a reasonable wage, but I had no savings whatsoever, so my search for a replacement car was severely constrained by my budget. In those days, the concept of readily available credit was unheard of. Unless you were prepared to tie yourself down to a 3 year "Hire Purchase" agreement, you didn't buy something unless you could pay for it there and then.

I went through the local newspaper and optimistically circled a few adverts, then walked to the nearest 'phone box to see if any of them sounded like they'd be worth seeing. The short list got a bit shorter and I arranged to see the likeliest candidates.
After a couple of false starts, including a decrepit Volkswagen covered in chicken droppings in a farmer's barn, I ended up, on a sunny Saturday morning, at a small garage where there were two cars that I could afford. I dismissed one as too shabby even for my limited resources and had a test drive in the other. It was OK. I paid the man £125, he gave me a receipt, the log book and the keys and I drove it away. I was the proud owner of a 1964 Austin A40.

On the way home, I called in at a local broker and a got an insurance cover-note. Then I went around to see my friend Ian and show off the new wheels.

Ian had been one of my best mates since we'd been at school. We had both underachieved companionably for several years. He had been one of the first of my friends to pass his driving test and thanks to his Dad, who somewhat rashly allowed Ian to borrow his Riley Elf, our horizons had expanded. Visits to friends or concerts in Birmingham had become that bit easier.

Ian was suitably impressed.

"Let's go and see Julie", he suggested.
"Yeah. Great idea...", I had a sudden thought, "Hang on, she's not at her folks anymore. Where's she living now?"
"Liverpool."
"Blimey, that's more than a hundred miles away."
"You could treat it as a proving run... You can see if everything works properly."
I was still a bit dubious.
Then he said, "She's having a party tonight..."
That did it.
We bundled Ian's travelling bag into the back, nipped back to my house for my stuff and we were off.
It was the first of many trips up the M6 in that car and it set the standard. We were barely at Birmingham before a hole opened up in the exhaust system that threatened to gas us, as the fumes found their way through the not entirely complete floor. We bought an exhaust bandage, mended the leak and continued. Another thirty miles and the exhaust was beginning to sound a bit throaty again. We bought some Gun-Gum and plugged up a fresh hole that had appeared in the silencer. We carried on until the first repair gave up the ghost somewhere near Manchester. More exhaust bandage was wound around the exhaust pipe, but this time we reinforced the repair by wrapping a butchered Coca-Cola tin around it too.

That got us to Liverpool.

The return trip on the following day was mostly uneventful until, thirty miles from home, with a tortured graunching sound, the horribly abused exhaust pipe broke in half and sagged feebly onto the tarmac. It was probably the extra weight of all that exhaust bandage, repair putty and soft drink cans that did it.
As I surveyed the damage from my, by now increasingly familiar position under the car, it was clear that the exhaust was wrecked, but if we removed the broken section completely, the noise would attract the interest of every police officer in the West Midlands. A final heroic repair was accomplished by removing the metal rod that normally supports the bonnet when you need to check the engine, and using it as a splint for the fractured pipe.

When I got home, my Dad came outside to cast a parental eye over the Austin.
"How was the trip?", he asked.
"Not too bad. Why?"
"I just thought the exhaust sounds a bit rough..."

Things break...

We seem to be going through one of those periods when stuff starts breaking down or falling to bits. The latest addition to the remorselessly lengthening list of casualties is Blight-of-my-life's car.

As she removed the oil-filler cap to give the engine a top-up earlier today, she discovered that there was a rather unpleasant custardy sludge around the filler.

I was called out of the house to look under the little, blue Vauxhall's bonnet.
"That's not very good, is it", she said
My heart didn't actually sink, but it was certainly holed below the water-line.
I've seen this puss-like glop before. It's the sort of emulsion you get when oil and water are vigourously mixed by an engine that generally indicates that cooling water is finding a way into the engine's oil system. It usually means that the cylinder head gasket has failed.
"Err, no. That's not very good at all..."
"Should I stop driving it then?"
"I dunno," I said, wondering just how long it had been since the oil was last checked, "You're having it MOT'd soon. Have a word with the garage blokes and see what they say."

One 'phone call later...
"They said don't drive it and take it down for them to look at on Friday."
I was unable to stop myself from pointing out the inconsistency of this advice, but once our uncontrollable mirth had subsided, we started trying to decide how much we would be prepared to fork out for a repair before it would be more sensible to start thinking about a replacement car.
With a bit of luck, the chaps at the garage will come up with a bearable quotation. They have earned our respect over the years and kept several of our vehicles soldiering on well beyond the point that I'd have given up hope of any possibility of economic repair. So even though our finances are bound to take a hit, we have some cause for optimism.

One cheering aspect of this situation is that Blight is having to use the Land Rover.
Now, I'll be able to blame the Mystery Smell on something horse related that will inevitably get transferred from the farm into the driver's footwell.

A cunning plan indeed. 

Send for The Nostalgia Police, now!!

Last Sunday's "Top Gear" included a challenge featuring the delights of buying and owning your first car.

Mssrs. Clarkson, Hammond & May were each given a budget of £2500 to buy and insure a car, as if they were seventeen year-olds.

I'd have thought that they needed no additional encouragement to behave like teenagers...

It did set me thinking though. It took me back to the first car that I owned...

I think it must have been 1973.

I had been working on a building site in Stratford upon Avon and living in nearby Alcester. A crisis had loomed, when the landlord of the place I was sharing discovered how many of us were living in his "single person's flat"; three of us were asked to move out.

Luckily, my parents were happy, or at least prepared, to let me move back to their place, but this meant that I would be living much further from work. At that time I hadn't learned to drive, so as there were no suitable trains or buses, my only practical option was cycling the thirty mile round trip each day.

A better solution had to be found.

Keef, one of the guys that I worked with, came up with the answer. He'd also been evicted from the flat in Alcester, and was now living at his Gran's house, three miles away from my parents.

"Look," he said, "I can drive, but I can't afford a car. You can't drive, but you can afford a car. You buy a car, learn to drive and while you're learning you get loads of practice driving us to and from work."

So I got a provisional driving license and bought a car.

It was a black, 1959 Austin A35 and I bought it from a little old lady in Stratford upon Avon for forty pounds. I have no photographs of the actual vehicle, but the wonderfully preserved example of the marque in the picture will give you the general idea.

"The Black Pig", as it became known was somewhat less well preserved.

Keef must have had nerves of steel, because he sat stoicly in the passenger seat every day that we trundled to work and back, with only an occasional sharp intake of breath or an understated, "You might want to give the next cyclist a bit more space...".

I'd like to take the opportunity to thank him here, for his encouragement and self-control.
He also managed not to look shocked or surprised when I subsequently passed my driving test.

Stuff I Learned With My First Car.
How to:-

• clean a carburetter
• cope with Birmingham rush-hour traffic on the M5.
• decoke a cylinder head and grind valve seats.
• replace a clutch.
• smoke cigarettes.
• use a starting handle without breaking my thumb.
• work out which cylinder is misfiring by short-circuiting each spark-plug with a screwdriver.
• install a set of windscreen washers. (They weren't fitted as standard in 1959)
• replace a flat tyre in pitch darkness.
• replace rusted bodywork with aluminium sheet and timber. (Don't try this at home kids)
• negotiate with traffic police.

There was one more thing that I learned from my first car.

I never actually had any accidents in "The Black Pig", but during the time that I owned it, the bodywork became more and more decrepit. With one door-sill made of wood, the front wings held together by pop-rivetted plates of aluminium and the headlight mountings so rusted that if I stopped suddenly they were in danger of falling out like joke-shop eye-balls, it was never going to get through an MOT test.
At that time, no breakers yard would pay to take a vehicle that was in such poor shape, so I would have ended up paying them to take it. This seemed even more ridiculous, when my mate Brian told me that, if I were to take the equivalent weight of scrap metal to a breakers yard, they'd happily pay cash for it.

"Right-ho" I said, "Let's do that then."

I bought a 6lb felling-axe from an agricultural supplies store, and we set off to some nearby waste ground to dismantle the car. We simply hacked it apart with the axe. You'd be amazed at how easy it is to sever something as sturdy as a door pillar with a well placed axe blow. Door hinges, engine mountings, engine bulkhead, prop-shaft; you can cut all of them apart with very little difficulty.

In the course of an afternoon we chopped the car into bite-sized pieces, loaded them into Brian's van and then drove them to the scrap yard where they were weighed in as "light ferrous metal".

We didn't get a lot of cash for it, but we did make a (tiny) profit.

It was also good, brutal fun.

So what did it teach me?

Cars are very easy to break. A useful warning to any twenty year-old, I think you'll agree.