Vehicle Embarrassment

I forgot to mention..it's red and a diesel...

Don't drive it in London then or you'll get flagged down at bus stops.

true - it is very bus-like...although perhaps if I drive in the bus lane I won't get fined I'm actually moving to Dorset as I am teaching ecology and biology and marine studies in a field centre for the next academic year, before donning the habit! The sea air will probably rust it into a shit heap.

Oh, revel in the eccentric nature of it, Jude. A year ago I had to part with a much loved old Volvo 240 estate, lovely condition and bodywork, all that chrome!!! I took comfort from the fact that Inspector Frost drove one in a lot of the Frost episodes, and it was also the vehicle of choice for Caroline Quentin and whatsit in 'Johnathan Creek'. x

I like eccentric and rubbish cars. The only people who slag off a bad car are the people I wouldn't want to spend time with anyway... My dad had a red seat van which he used for work. On the day of my end of school dance he dropped me and 3 other girls off - all dolled up - sitting in the back with his saws and sawdust and putty and too many opened but not finished containers of paint and sealent. We were laughing so much, whereas all the same-os who'd booked limos had not a smile on their face. My first car was a K reg diesel ford fiesta that had 180,000 miles on the clock already when I bought it. It also had a dented side door and the kind of excelleration that made me say out loud when going up even the most gentle of inclines, 'Come on Krrt, you can do it! Come on!" (we called it Krrt because that was the first part of its numberplate). It was funny. I used to have to lean forward just to get it to go. I had to have it scrapped after 270,000 miles on the clock, but I will always miss it. Life is surely worth more than a classy car?? The only people I know with good cars haven't actually got anything interesting to say. ENJOY! (I like the sound of your car Em)

p.s. Em - it's Jude's 'pink and twinkly' sisters!

I loved my 2CV, although I was known to sometimes tell it otherwise on cold damp mornings.

my dad had a really cool girlfriend with a 2cv and he dumped her for someone with an xr2i convertible. I was gutted. The girlfriend with the 2cv used to take me orienteering and send me presents through the post from 'father christmas'. The girlfriend with the xr2i convertible used to tell me off for taking my PE kit to school in a carrier bag because it was common.

thank you all of you...kind words and advice My cousin had a car called "smurfette" because it was a small blue heap of shit! I suppose the only way is to embrace it. It certainly isn't total shit...it's not too old, has about 80k on the clock and as I said Pat's brother, being a mechanic has maintained it perfectly - I've decided to tun the boot into a mobile library and get a crash test dummy to sit in the passenger seat to go for the total loon look!

I too love old and knackered cars. My old yellow escort estate was a gem but the best was my mate Rupert's Anglia. We lived in Devon (he still does) and after about 18 months of running he decided to wash it. Now anyone who's been to Devon in winter will know that all the roads are caked in red mud from the Old Devonian Sandstone in the soil. His car was 18 months worth of caked - and we lived down a long unmade lane. He got out the hose and started spraying. First of all the wing mirrors fell off, then the exhaust, then the entire floor. The car was dead. And the moral of the story is... never, never wash an old car.

It's only for a year...and I need it big ...which is why I'm not bothering with anything nice! I've just found out a male hybrid III crash test dummy costs a hell of a lot more than the car....will have to get a blow up sheep instead.

The 2CV was called Henry (named by my brother, when it was his). I once hit a pheasant with it on the A428, Henry got a huge dent in the wing, the pheasant flew away apparently undamaged. We finally got rid of it when it we needed to buy a tool to fix it, we thought long and hard and decided it wasn't worth the price of the tool. It went to a man who was collecting several in order to make one good one.

Well, I grew up with a string of eccentric vehicles...2CV whose number plate I still remember, two lots of orange minis and a renault 4(?). My first car was a black mini called 'Darth Vader' (sp?) Fergal - I've got contact lenses now, so getting less sensible looking by the minute, but pink is still too far off for me to even contemplate... I feel very twinkly at the moment though, it's a fact. ;-)

ooh - that reminds me. In order to get me off a variety of massive and ridiculously dangerous motorcycles my mother offered to buy me a car. I accepted the deal as I was fed up of getting very cold going up North and back to watch football on a Wednesday night on a motorbike. I was packed off back to school (yes - I was a posh boy and went to boarding school) and came back to discover she'd bought me a Fiat 600. What a horrible thing. It was like a lawnmower in a small dull red humpy box. If a lorry went past you on the motorway it made it swing out of lane. It was a death trap. I kept it for three months and traded it in for a clapped out, souped up purple Mini. That was more like it. That Mini kept going for three years - constantly going from London to Exeter and back - but I knew most of the AA men on the route by their first names.

It has to have a name. Past vehicle names blue vauxhall cavalier: Angelica Gold Ford Orion: Gluggy-glug Black Rover 216: Blackjack Blue Alpha romeo 156 : Cosmos I was thinking Dee Dee (d.d.) short for double decker following Neil's comments!

ive got an old banger ford blue it goes kepluk chit chit cchit burrg kerplunk all the time

When Patrick leant over to give me my first proper kiss, we were in his Ford Orion. It was raining very heavily outside, he leant towards me and said the most romantic words I have ever heard, "By the way, the sunroof leaks."

brooooooooom chit chit kerplunk burrrrrrrrrrrrrrg

I started of with a Vauxhall viva... my friends never cease to remind me of the number of times thay had to push start it around London. I then had the engine replaced with a souped up version (from a scrapped car).... you can just imagine the faces by traffic lights when I rattled of at top speed, leaving more likely looking cars, standing. I was gutted when someone chucked a brick in through the window one night, especially as the BMW parked just ahead of me was unscathed. I mean what kind of statement is that? It was in the eighties though and I suppose speaks for the times. My favourite car was the classically shapped, Saab 900, in silver. What a beautiful beast that was... like maneuvering a big boat around the roads. It lay in the garage for 3 years as I was so loathe to part with it... a little bit of me died when I finally sent it to the scrappers.

I remember the clutch going once whilst on the way to work... made it to the carpark justabout. On recommendation from a colleague, I contacted a mechanic, who turned up in a beatup white van whose internals looked like an old shed, old bits of rusty metal everywhere. Left the old guy to it, he dived under the car with his craggy bag of tools and I returned back to the office. About leaving time, I returned to the car to see him packing away, all done. Anyway off he went. I jumped in the car, switched the engine on and jumped on the clutch... and it went all the way down.... and to my itter dismay, stayed there. Next minute I was frantically chasing down the road, and managed to catch the mechanic just at the gates. I explained what had happened... 'Aha, I was wondering where this thing fitted in' he said, whilst rummaging through his filthy pocket. He pulled out a washer of about the size of a 2p piece. 30 minutes later, he smiled as he came up again, saying all done. I made him wait this time as I drove the car a few times around the car park.... You can imagine how much confidence with which I drove that car out of the gates that evening... It only cost something like £20.00 quid though, washer included.

My parents never cared about cars. They saw them as a necessary and expensive evil. When I was very small we had a 1949 Nash Rambler, stick shift. It looked like a snail and moved at a similar pace. White and powder blue, as I recall. The car, not the snail after which it was modeled. Then in about 1958 they sold it for $25 to a scrap metal dealer and bought a green Rambler American, which looked like the tin in which fruit cake arrives. Sold that one in 1962 and bought TWO American Motors cars--one stick shift and one with push-button automatic shift. They kept those until the late 70s or early 80s when my dad finally splurged on a Ford LTD. vroom vroom Sold that in about 1997 when my mom could no longer drive safely. My first car was a 1969 Plymouth Fury III. What a boat. I bought it for a couple hundred dollars from my uncle in about 1976 and kept it until 1980 when I bought a new Volvo 240, which was my last car. I sold that for $400 on January 2, 1995, the day I left the US, and have not owned a car since. Hopefully, I never will. I also had a old junker in the 80s for a while just to haul stuff around so the Volvo wouldn't get messed up, but I got rid of that as well. I have never been even slightly embarrassed by any of this. I like driving; I even like watching Top Gear; but car ownership is something best left to people better able to handle it than I. I'll live in city center and walk, thank you very much.

Ah - all the best people have Volvo 240s at some point eh, Justin?

When I were a kid we had a VW camper van, the clutch on which decided to die in the lion enclosure at Whipsnade zoo. My father, judging the timing of the gates perfectly, went straight though to the Giraffe enclosure in third gear before stopping and getting help. My last car was a Peugot 205 which ran and ran happily for years until one night somebody caved in the pasenger side door while it was parked on the street. I bought a spare door from a scrap heap and had not had the car back on the road for a week before a woman in a volvo mistook it for a gap in the traffic and ran straight into the side of it. Her insurance company decided it was a right off and gave me £300 quid for it. I delayed scrapping it to drive down to Portsmouth that weekend, where somebody smashed the windscreen as it, again, sat parked on the street. I decided to scrap it then, it was just too dangerous to be near it. I spent the insurance money on an especially nice bicycle, which I love to bits.

Jude if you've owned a Rover 216, then a Peugot estate shouldnt even come near your previous embarrassment levels...

ummmmmmmmmm chittt chit kerplunk brooooooooom