Cars
As of 2 June 2004, and until further notice, I am no longer a car owner.
I have a love-hate relationship with cars. I love cars
and I love driving (and always have), but I know in my heart that they
are instruments of evil, both because they destroy the environment (I
am a member of Greenpeace,
for what it's worth) and because they bring out the worst and most selfish
side of people, including myself.
This, then, is my hall of shame -- the engines of destruction
that I have personally owned.
1969 Ford Mustang Grandé
My most recent car, and without doubt the coolest car I have
ever owned. People never used to come up to me and say "nice Golf;
what is it, a 1600?" before! It even has it's very own dedicated
web page.
It was also amazingly cheap, and although I had to
spend a lot of money maintaining it, it ferried me the 40 miles back & forth between San Francisco
and Mountain View on a daily basis pretty reliably for about three years,
and more recently got me from one side of the United States to the other
without serious incident.
I sold it on eBay Motors for almost double what I paid for it in June 2004.
Make: Ford
Model: Mustang Grandé
Year: 1969
Engine: 302 ci V-8 (approx. 5.0 litres)
Purchase: July 1999, $3,350
Disposed: June 2004, $6,400
Volkswagen Golf Driver
My first (and so far only) proper "grown-up"
car, I bought this Golf because I needed to drive 80 miles up and down
the A3 each day to commute between my house in Putney, London and my
job in Farnham, Surrey.
I had quite a few problems with it at first, and spent
many frustrating hours dealing with an unhelpful dealer (TFL Putney
Ford, boo hiss) and a hugely expensive finance company (Ford Credit
UK, boo hiss again).
Although under-powered, the Driver was a lot of fun to
drive; basically it's a poor-man's GTI, so it handled pretty well but
because the engine was less powerful, it was considerably cheaper to
insure (and less likely to be stolen).
Make: Volkswagen
Model: Golf Driver
Year: 1991
Engine: 1,597cc four cylinder
Purchase: February 1996, £5,295
Disposed: July 1999, £2,800
Volkswagen Golf C
My first Volkswagen, which I bought from Stuart Allen,
an old friend from High Storrs School in Sheffield.
Although a fairly basic model, this was the first car
I owned that cost more than £1,000 and wasn't a total junker;
I bought it to commute between Islington in London and Cambridge when
I got my first proper job with the mda
(in fact I needed a loan from the mda in order to buy it), but in the
end I had to move to Cambridge anyway because I couldn't afford the
petrol costs.
I also did a lot of miles as part of my job, often driving
around the UK doing training sessions at museums around the country
with a full-size desktop computer in the boot -- mda didn't have enough
money to get me a laptop.
Make: Volkswagen
Model: Golf C
Year: 1986
Engine: 1,297cc four cylinder
Purchase: May 1994, £1,450
Disposed: February 1996, £600 p/ex
Audi 80 LS
Probably the worst car I've ever owned (and I've had some
pretty bad cars!), and to make matters worse I bought this dog from
my father. I blew the engine before I'd had it a week, and things went
downhill from there on.
Make: Audi
Model: 80 LS
Year: 1986
Engine: ~1,600cc four cylinder
Purchase: 1994, £400
Disposed: May 1995, £175
Triumph Dolomite 1500 HL
I bought this car just after graduating, in the hope that
it would become a semi-classic shortly afterwards. It didn't, but I
did have a lot of fun rebuilding the engine with my father after blowing
it on the M1, and subsequently driving it across Europe to Southern
Italy for my MA placement. Sadly the return trip proved to be too arduous
for it, and it travelled from Florence to the UK on the back of a Green
Flag National Breakdown recovery truck.
Make: Triumph
Model: Dolomite 1500 HL
Year: 1979
Engine: ~1,500cc four cylinder
Purchase: 1990, £550
Disposed: 1994, £110
Fiat 131 Supermirafiori
I got this car as soon as my insurance premiums allowed
me to graduate from the feeble 1300cc Citroen (see below), and had a
lot of fun razzing around London in it. Of course I blew the engine
on the M1 (a recurrent theme, and a special skill), necessitating the
purchase of another identical car to act as an engine donor (I also
nearly died of hypothermia, sleeping in a dead vehicle in Leicester
Forest East waiting for a garage to open).
Unfortunately, it seems my relationship with this vehicle
was doomed from the start -- I also had two collisions, the first of
which resulted in a pointless court case (I was immediately acquitted)
and the second of which resulted in the loss of the car.
Make: Fiat
Model: 131 Supermirafiori
Year: 1981
Engine: 1,600cc four cylinder twin cam
Purchase: 1988
Disposed: 1989 (written off)
Citroen GSA Club
My first ever (real) car! A quirky vehicle with hydropneumatic
suspension that enabled the car to be raised and lowered, tyres not
much wider than a mountain bike, bizarre but wonderfully effective brakes
and an unnecessarily-complicated horizontally-opposed four cylinder
engine -- I think air-cooled (like VW Beetles and Porsche 911's),
but I could be mistaken.
I was the victim of a sting operation when I sold this
car -- my house in Kentish Town was mysteriously robbed the day after
I sold the car for cash, and the money (which was hidden) was stolen.
Make: Citroen
Model: GSA Club
Year: 1981
Engine: ~1,300cc four cylinder
Purchase: 1987
Disposed: 1988
My First Car
OK I know this is cheesy, but the fact that my father
bought me racing car toys and drove cool cars like Mark II Jaguars when
I was a kid may explain why I appreciate cars.
This shot of me behind the wheel at the age of 2 was taken
in November of 1970 in Letchworth:
The picture below was taken in June 1972 in the driveway
of our house at 59a Willian Way in Letchworth, Hertfordshire.
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