I have a pretty checkered car history. Car ownership is probably not my thing.
Fiat 127 – £80, Windscreen blowout (properly exploded) from a huge stone thrown up by an HGV.
Polo 1.o – £1,000, had three gears + overdrive instead of fourth gear. Actually exploded in a fireball shortly after my stepdad leapt out of the car due to smoke coming through the dash. Faulty fuel line after engine replacement.
Metro 950cc – £400. Very, very yellow – yellow wheel trims, yellow body, yellow bumpers. It got broken into so often I didn’t bother locking it. Someone tried to steal it one night, but probably didn’t realise the new starter motor waiting to be fitted was lying on the floor in the passenger footwell. One night someone stole the HT leads, to get the MG metro they actually stole going whose owner used to remove her HT leads as a precaution. Got rid after the gearbox fell out on the M1 doing 70 ish.
Had a break from car ownership for a while, then…
Pug 306 D-Turbo £4,400, first car I owned with my (soon to be) wife. The first time I took her friends out in it, the indicator stalk started smoking and small flames popped out. Then the isolater went and wouldn’t stop the engine when the ignition was turned off, so had to select fifth and dump the clutch. Despite this, the 306 was my favourite car, it felt a lot faster than it actually was and the seats were amazing, plush enough to feel like luxury, firm enough to hold you in whilst tearing around B roads.
Celica GT 190, £13,500 – the salesman who sold me the regular Celica refused to let me have it, as it turned out to be a grey import, so offered me this instead, at a steep discount, which turned out to be a huge bargain as it had a full warranty backed TRD upgrade (big brakes, revised engine limiter, revved to almost 9,000 rpm, shocks etc) and had a £6,000 aftermarket 5KW sound system! 11 speakers! We got this instead of something more sensible because we’d just seen a fertility doctor who said we had about a 1 in 4,000,000 chance of natural conception – the Minx fell pregnant (naturally, and naturally) within a month of getting the car. Sigh…. so, 6 months later….
Volvo S40 2.0D Sport – absolutely fantastic, never failed an MOT. I put 160,000 miles on it on top of the 10,000 it already had. Virtually every extra specified. Got punted of a dual carriageway and into the central reservation by an overenthusiastic Shogun driver towing a caravan, who later claimed the accident had never happened (don’t know how he explained the gash that extended stem-to-stern on his ‘van, then), but damage to the S40 was minimal. We only traded it in for our first Motability vehicle once the flywheel and clutch started to go.
Qashqai+2 Tekna, 20dci 4wd auto, our first Motability car, which I loved but my didn’t. It was a damage-magnet, someone was always hitting it in car parks, almost as if it was too small to see…
Volvo V40 R-Design D4, very fast, very comfy, brilliant handling but after getting used to an auto was a bit of a chore to drive on long journeys or commutes.
Ford Kuga 2.0D 4wd ST line X, current vehicle, only had it three months but like the Qashqai, seems to be a damage magnet, it’s been scratched twice already (whilst in disabled bays!) by other drivers who’ve failed to leave details. I’ll have to get a neon painted car next, so it stands out….