Cars

 

I have never been what you call a 'Petrol Head', but I do feel attached to the cars we have had.

Our present car is a 2015 Honda Jazz, a sensible and economic car we purchased as a two year old demonstrator from Rowes Honda Garage back in 2017.  Granted, it gave us a few worries as we took it on our tour around Italy last year with the brake callipers, however, as of today it is still running and costs us £25 a year in road tax and up to £50 to fill up giving us nearly 400 miles driving.  Having said all this we are looking for a new car sometime in the near future, but what to choose?  I, as usual take a back seat in this area as Martin loves doing the research, he will spend weeks, months even, on finding the right car.  Luckily for our budget we are not into swanky cars with a lot of gadgets,  "Just more things to go wrong," Martin says. He even hates electric windows.  At the moment the car of choice is another Honda, probably a Jazz hybrid if they can fix a few problems that the first models seemed to have acquired.  

But, have you seen the price of cars lately?  Even second-hand newish ones. You need a small mortgage to buy one even at the budget end of the scale.  I wonder sometimes how anyone can afford them.  

Our first car we bought together was a Hillman Imp. We bought it in Bristol in 1983 for £100.  It was a lovely little car.  When we first had it, it made funny rattling noises, and shortly after purchase, when we were driving to Martin's parents house in Hertfordshire it broke down half way.  Well, back then, everyone knew a little about car engines, and on closer inspection under the bonnet, Martin found there was a loose screw in the carburetor, a quick tightening of this screw and the car shot off and gave us a few years of easy cheap driving.  I remember Martin removing a rubber doughnut from the suspension springs when replacing them.  We didn't have the right tool and found that a bread-knife would cut through the tough rubber just as well. (The bread knife was never the same again though.)

1983 Our Hillman Imp and my L plates
(forgive the hairstyle it was awful)

Eventually the Imp took in more oil than petrol and it had to go to the big junkyard in the sky.  My car-crazy brother found us our next car, a Cortina Mark II 1600E, one careful previous owner.  I took my test in this car and the examiner passed me first time and thanked me for a pleasant ride.  They are worth quite a bit now I believe. (I don't have a photo of our car so I will post one from the internet.

nice wooden dash

ours was white all over

We moved down to Truro in Cornwall with this car after we got married in 1984 and it lasted us for quite a few years.  In spite of me denting the passenger side front wing on Martin's 25th birthday, this car behaved itself. A dent, I may add, that remained in the wing for the rest of its' life.  Oops, just remembered it did need a new engine at one point.

When I was pregnant with David in 1986, Martin was working all hours in the hospital and the Cortina needed a new brake master cylinder to pass it's MOT.  Trouble was Martin was not free to do it.  We found a second-hand brake master cylinder in a scrapyard in Falmouth and I dutifully went down to get it.  My friend Jenny was staying with us at the time and I was around 7 months pregnant, so she drove me down.  When we got to the scrapyard the overweight man in the site office said that we had to remove it from the scrap car ourselves.  He must have wanted a laugh.  So, I said, "fine", he pointed us in the general direction. We made our way down to the dead car via a  track besides various scrap iron and forlorn junk cars and so armed with a spanner, I found the right place in the car and removed the part.  Luckily the Haynes manuals were so good at the time, easy to understand and I wasn't afraid of getting dirty.  I did wish I hadn't worn my sheepskin coat though.  Eureka, I held the part aloft to Jenny who had thought I had gone mad.  I squeezed the part closed in triumph and it squirted black oil all over me.  It hadn't said it would do that in the manual!  We took it to the amazed man in the shed, paid and left.  Exit two smug independent women.

Since the Cortina we have had a series of 'sensible' cars and could now afford garage prices to get them repaired.  One such garage was Mason's Garage in Rilla Mill, near where we used to live.  A lovely family garage who would come out and help you at the drop of a hat if you broke down.  Our car was due a MOT and service and so after dropping the kids off to school I took our car straight down.  They usually lent out a courtesy car, often an old banger,  I quickly jumped into the car offered to me and motored off to Tragos.  I wanted to get to Tragos early as it can get very busy, especially on pensioner discount days. (Tragos, for those not familiar, is a huge Cornish superstore where many bargains can be bought, but never, NEVER, go expecting to get a certain thing or measurement, you will never find it.)  Anyway, I got to Tragos in good time and had a leisurely time buying lots of fripperies, and things I never knew I needed.  Time came to return to the car.  I knew roughly where I had parked. (It's a big car park) but for the life of me I couldn't remember what the car looked like or even what make or colour it was.  I wandered around with my purchases looking in various car windows for clues.  I must have looked a bit suspect.  I looked at the keys I had been given but no clues there.  Tragos is not well known (or wasn't at that time) for good phone signals.  Luckily I got one bar signal.  I plucked up the courage and rang Masons.  You can imagine the howls of laughter I received when I explained my predicament.  Exit a 'not so smug now' woman. 

🚗