Classic Cars Blog

Importing British Rust

2011-07-31T22:38:00.005Z

That's what my colleague rather unkindly referred to my car buying habits as. And here we are again, barely 6 months after buying a Jaguar XJ-SC, yours truly is the proud owner of a 1999 Mini.

That's right, THE Mini. Not the (admittedly very nice, albeit the spoils of a treacherous asset-stripping operation) BMW imitation Mini, no sir - the real deal. It's an end-of-the-line standard Mini with the 1275cc block. It's an MPi engine, which means fuel injected, and internally it has all mod cons like driver air-bag and seatbelt pre-tensioners (as if that'll save you if you hit anything of any moment in a Mini!) a radio/cassette with actually quite decent factory speakers in the parcel shelf, alarm and engine immobiliser, a rather attractive walnut dash, "pepper pot" alloy wheels, even a rev counter!

I must confess, this was a bit of a gamble. I've never driven a Mini before, though I remember mates having them when I was at school. I even remember once being forced to sit in the back of one (thanks Pat) and surviving to tell the tale (just). Which meant it was quite cute when I took it round to Pat's house, whose wife also used to have a Mini, and now have photos of their little daughter leaping all over the inside of mine...

Anyway, I digress, never driven a Mini, knew little about them, just had a sense they'd be fun, soulful little cars and of some value for their cute looks and head-turning abilities alone. And this is a late one with about as big an engine as a Mini can have, so I figured it'll start first time in the morning, behave itself reasonably well on the motorway and be a genuinely viable second car.

So I bought the Mini. In Liverpool. (That's right, 1,000 miles from home.) And flew over to fetch it. And drove it back to the south of France. This was approximately my route.

I have rarely had so much fun. The Mini is a *fabulous* car. I am still grinning from ear to ear. It's noisy, it's bouncy, it leaks oil all over the driveway, but all is forgiven when you hear that exhaust note. Driving it through the Peak District National Park, in Derbyshire at dusk, was just amazing fun. This car is every bit as much fun as my Lotus used to be, and I sincerely mean that! That's right, the Mini has the soul of the Lotus Elan! Wonderful handling, glued to the road, gutsy 1275cc engine, just bags and bags of fun.

I'm so happy I've got this car. I've a feeling it will be a pain in the ass to maintain, but who cares?! I am loving driving it, and that's what really counts.

Another win for the old British car in my book - yeh, it might rust, but I can live with that.

I Have That Jaguar

2011-02-07T21:52:00.004Z

Ok, so I've talked about this for a while. And it's happened. Sitting in my garage is a beautiful, flame red and black leather, 1990 Jaguar XJSC.

It's awesome! Of course, it's a crazy car. I can't afford to run it, but I'm proud to own it. Why did I buy this petrol-guzzling luxury monster? It was, quite frankly, a steal! I think I am going to sell it again soon, but right now I am enjoying the hell out of having it.

This car represents the end of an era. I don't think anyone will make a production V12 engine again, ever. It just doesn't make sense, but as a genuine collectors piece and as an amazing statement of luxury from a time only recently passed, I love it.

If you live in Europe (France, Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.) and you want it, email me. Otherwise, I'm going to have a bit of fun and decide when I'll eventually put it up for sale. For now I'm grinning ear to ear as I drop my toe and get pressed in to the seats while listening to my favourite CD with the electric hood down!

(PS - not a great photo, but will post more when I've taken them.)

Why Keep A Fiat?

2010-09-15T23:41:00.002Z

So, it's been almost a year since I posted! Sorry. Life, work, etc. All got in the way.

A few weeks ago we listed our Fiat 500 for sale. We decided it was 'do or die' time. Either we restore the Fiat (a year outside under a tarp in a yard in the south of France has not been kind to it) or we sell. With that in mind, we placed an ad for the car, as it is, rust, dent in the roof, squeaky brakes and all, at 4,500€ on a French website.

In all honesty we didn't expect it to go. And we actually needed an offer to decide whether we really wanted to sell it or not.

And today that offer came. And we couldn't. Bottom line is, this car is special to us. We thought if we got 4,500€ for it we could get something else. Maybe a Mk 1 Golf Convertible, maybe a Jaguar XJ-S 3.6 Cabriolet, something we could at least ride the motorways with and use to go on holiday.

But when push came to shove, we realised we would rather spend a few thousand Euros getting the Fiat perfect again than have something else. This car is truly an icon. Though the would-be buyer is a sincere fan of the marque and model, we felt we wanted to keep this car in the stable and ensure its future personally.

So our Fiat 500 is not for sale. We will restore it in the spring and look forward to many happy years (and blog posts) to come. Ok, we'll never do 2,000km road trips with it, but it's fine for ducking around the region, and as practical classics go it's near-impossible to beat. It costs us nearly nothing to run and the joy we get every time we take it out is hard to surpass.

Here's to another 20 happy years of Fiat 500 ownership!

And I might buy that Golf separately, but that will be another story.

Broadcast From Foreign Soil

2009-10-20T14:58:00.006Z

It's been over a year with no post. Wow! Life has run away with me. I guess I've lost subscribers by the boat load as well.

Well, lots has happened. Firstly, the Lotus is sold. To a Frenchman living near Cambridge, a lovely guy who is perfect for that sort of vehicle - loves to do his own servicing, etc. He has just relocated from the south of France to Cambridgeshire for work.

Secondly (and here's the big one) I finally did it! I used the money to relocate, ironically given who bought the Lotus, to the south of France. So here I am, on the outskirts of Uzes, on the border between Provence and Languedoc-Roussillon, writing my first blog post in flippin' ages!

And what of the Fiat?

It had another marathon haul across Europe. The result of which was a knackered wheel bearing, but never mind. It was an epic performance from the little car and it got me there without issue. I went from Dover, England to Uzes, France in 15 hours. That's not bad in a modern car, never mind in a 1971 Fiat with 15bhp (if you're lucky). My tactic was to slipstream trucks the entire way and it worked well. 0600 start in Dover and rolled up the drive in Uzes at 2300.

And I sang loudly most of the way to alleviate the boredom. Stereo? What stereo?

Of course, we now have the hassle of getting the Fiat on to French plates (just declared it as exported to the UK authorities yesterday) so the little car from Milan will, having spent the first 30 years of its life pottering about Italian city streets, have been driven from Italy to London, all over the UK and now back down to the Mediterranean once more.

One of the things the French want, before you can register *any* car in France, is proof of EU type approval. This is ludicrous for cars that were bought in and have never left the EU - what's the point in a common market then? - but there's no telling the French authorities that. Fortunately, wife being Italian and all, we were able to procure a faxed copy of an original Fiat 500 F type approval document from the 1960s, courtesy of one of the Italian Fiat clubs. We read some people have spent hundreds of Euro buying such a document, so count ourselves rather fortunate.

Now all we need to do now (besides a lot of form filling and queueing) is organise a CT (or Controle Technique - the French equivalent of the MoT, the British safety check). After that we'll be all set to get some French plates on this baby, and add the British ones to the mantelpiece, beside the Italian ones that came off it in England.

After we buy a new battery that is. The old one packed up the other day, stranding my wife in town. Fortunately, we are now seasoned classic car owners with tow ropes, jump leads, tools handy and a large-engined Volvo estate for towing things home!

Going Continental

2008-09-29T23:03:00.004Z

I may not have mentioned my intention to move to France. Some may have guessed, after I mentioned "driving a lot in Europe" while considering my next purchase, that I may not be long for the UK. Well I can now inform you my specific intended destination is the south of France, somewhere between Nîmes and Perpignan. I'm not sure where yet.

And at this rate, the Lotus and the Fiat will be going with me. Actually, I never really intended to get rid of the Fiat, though transporting it to the south of France could be, um, time consuming. The Lotus, however, is not selling. It seems a global banking crisis is not the best time to try and sell a luxury item. Who'd have thunk it??

Ironically, I think I'll have a better chance of selling it in the Côtes d'Azur than I do in the UK. This is a millionaire's playground, where £10,000 is an evening's bar bill and Jaguar XJ-S convertibles go for £25,000, even though they struggle to reach a third of that value back in Blighty.

I was contemplating this when it dawned upon the French are probably as big in the classic cars scene as the British. It is they, after all, who host the most prestigious classics race in the world, the Le Mans Classic. And when the classic sportscars tour came to Silverstone this month (I got complimentary tickets from a nice chap called Guillaume, who is a classic sportscars organiser from Paris) the pitlane was awash with French accents. Far more French folk than British, even here in Silverstone. In fact, since my car has been for sale, two thirds of the serious approaches have been from French people.

If I were going to move anywhere in Europe, I can't think of a better fit for the classics enthusiast than France.

The Italians love cars, but can't be bothered with old ones (with a few notable exceptions). The Germans love efficiency, so that's that really. The Spanish are indifferent. The Swiss government positively hates cars, and while the Swiss themselves drive around in some of the most expensive cars in the world, the only Swiss person I know who is fortunate (and rich and half English) enough to have a stable of vintage sportscars only bothers to drive them when he's going to France for a few days. The Dutch are up there and enjoy their motorsport, but the French beat all comers hands down when it comes to passion and enthusiasm for classic cars.

I actually look forward to driving the Lotus on French roads for a few months. We're aiming to move in spring 2009 so, savings permitting, I may well be flinging the Lotus around some French country lanes in the spring sunshine.

That would be nice.

The End Of The Roundabout

2008-08-31T12:01:00.002Z

I note with some sadness that the highway powers that be are removing the last of the roundabouts from the A1, a secondary (though still major) dual-carriageway running the length of the country, from London to Edinburgh. Most motorists will rejoice at this, but not the Elan pilot.

The only fun bit of driving from London to Newark on the A1 is the roundabouts. Without breaking any road traffic regulation, it is possible to enter a roundabout on such a road, drop in to second, fling the car through the effective chicane and boot the throttle.

This is great fun! You get to use all of the cornering and acceleration of these fantastic little sportscars and roar away up to 70mph then just knock it over from 3rd in to 5th gear and continue on your way, with a broad grin on your face.

Sadly, this era is coming to an end. My drives from London to my parents, in north Nottinghamshire, are about to become an even more tedious experience. Ho hum.

On a more positive note, a nice French chap, who took an active interest in the Lotus, turned out to be the organiser of several well known classic car racing events, including the prestigious Le Mans Classic. Even though he hasn't even met me yet, he has sorted me out with two VIP, all access, guest tickets to the 1,000km of Silverstone (AKA the 6 hours of Silverstone).

What a thoroughly decent fellow. Clearly a gentleman and a scholar. I'll take the Lotus up for him to have a play with, naturally. Looking forward to it.

Youth Crime: The Bane Of Modern Britain

2008-08-03T11:38:00.005Z

I'm going way off topic today, but I need to get something off my chest. Liberals, stop reading now and come back next week when my mood has lightened.

I am deeply saddened to report that some idiots of questionable parentage kicked in every panel of the off side of the Fiat and caved in the right-front headlamp, before battering the guttering with rocks and pushing it against a wall. About £2,000-worth of damage, all told, in the name of "fun".

Essex Police have lifted fingerprints, but here lies the biggest problem: even if they catch someone for it, the aforementioned individual will certainly get little more than a tap on the wrists from a magistrate and a firm instruction not to do it again. Which he or she will dutifully ignore, next time they're out of their tiny minds on cheap cider and looking for something to smash to compensate for their total lack of prospects of becoming anything other than another drain on the British tax payer.

If it were up to me, the magistrate would be able to present the repair bill to the parents or guardians of the perpetrators and tell them to pay up or go to prison. Then they might actually take some responsibility for what junior is doing at 3am on a Saturday morning. (Coincidentally, this is already how they handle truancy, so I'm hoping someone in government will apply the same logical approach to youth crime, and soon!)

The point is when people under the age of 18 years old suffer no consequences for violent and anti-social behaviour, either in the home or in the courts, and have nothing better to do except spend their unemployment benefit on White Lightning and get blind drunk, what possible incentive is there for the disillusioned youth to behave? British law is unable to decide where responsibility for the actions of teenage criminals lies, and as a result it does not know how to deal with them.

With the system mired in apathy, the teenage criminal receives no punishment, nor do his or her parents, and they get the impression they can do what they like. Which, sadly, is the correct impression. Until they turn 18 and get sent to a proper prison, and then it's too late. By the time they come out of Pentonville Road, two years later, they'll be fully fledged adult criminals and those vital formative years during which their lives could've been turned around have been thrown away.

British society as a whole shrugs it's shoulders. Irresponsible parents are free to ignore the behaviour of their offspring. Education professionals are exasperated and powerless. Police are fed up with not getting convictions or, when they do, seeing sentences so light they are an insult to the victims and the police men and women who spent so much time bringing the perpetrators to justice. Judges and magistrates have no choice but to sentence according to British law, which is decided by... The Government.

The one group of people who seem to be saying it's not their fault either and they appear utterly impotent in the face of it - totally devoid of policies and ideas. Every week, in every newspaper, nationwide, the letters section is alive with commentary on this major social issue of modern Britain, but the present government are doing precisely nothing visible about it whatsoever. May I quote a line from a letter sent to The Metro, a free London paper, last week which nicely sums it up:

"Young people in this country have rights but no responsibilities."

So how do you make them responsible, if their parents won't do it and they no longer have to go to school? Well I think I know what the answer is. It's not a new idea, by any stretch of the imagination, but since we are getting a teenage stabbing in a British city almost every night of the week now, it's time someone took some drastic action:

Bring back National Service.

It's simple enough. If you are not in bona fide full-time education or gainfully employed between the ages of 16 and 21, you are joining the services whether you like it or not, be it military, or medical/charity alternatives for the conscientious. All of these organisations are down on recruits, you are unemployed, there many potential career paths for both men and women, front-line or back office, where they will have responsibilities, fair pay, role models and education.

I'd rather my tax paying pound is spent on supporting a teenager's career in the military or public services, than it being spent paying for a teenager's dole cheque, the police time required to investigate my vandalised property and the near-inevitable stay at Her Majesty's pleasure for the poor, stupid fool who is abandoned and shunned by our nation's society.

If the person who kicked seven bells out of my car the other weekend had been RAF ground-crew based up in Lincolnshire, he or she would've been safely tucked up in barracks by 11pm, having a well-earned sleep after a long, hard day of paid work. Not drinking cider in the streets and looking for something to break.

Mad French Cars

2008-07-29T22:36:00.005Z

This car is all my friend Tom has bubbled on about since we got back from Le Mans earlier in the month. Before I took Tom to this year's Le Mans Classic, he wasn't much of a car fan. He was just coming along for the ride, doing something a bit different, enjoying a break. When we left the Le Mans Classic, he had a new love in his life. (His previous love was beer, by all accounts, so this probably isn't a bad swap.)

The Panhard CD. Tom is now, officially, a petrol-head.

True to form, he had to pick a real odd one. This crazy, 850cc, two-stroke French saloon was actually entered in the Le Mans GT class, back in the '60s. It never had a prayer, of course, much as it looked rather silly in the glorious re-enactment, but nevertheless, it's a pretty special piece of engineering. It had all manor of technical innovations, unique at the time and not seen again for another decade, before becoming common-place in modern racing.

Sadly, so few CDs were made that the few remaining in good condition are worth a king's ransome. Since Tom is not a king, he'll be left gazing wistfully from a distance at the object of his desire. There is, however, some good news for Tom. Panhard also made a model called the Panhard 24, which is positively cheap in comparison. You can pick up a lovely 24 for just a few thousand quid, which is an absolute bargain for a truly unique car, especially here in the UK.

I love French engineering of that period. In fact, it was Clarkson who once bemoaned the way French car companies have ceased to make "big, mad cars", mostly in reference to the myriad of big Citroens launched in the '60s, '70s and '80s (some of which are still favourites of mine). It's nice to see Citroen weren't acting alone. Panhard were also doing plenty in the "big, mad" stakes.

If you're interested, here is the UK club (there may be others):

http://www.panhardclub.co.uk/

Ps - we stayed in this bed and breakfast, about a 45 minute drive from Le Mans, and it was simply stunning - highly recommended: http://www.manoirdesforges.fr/

A Different Angle On eBay Sales

2008-06-30T06:17:00.006Z

I have been Following Greg's efforts to sell his car on eBay, and wonder how one venue like eBay, can produce such different results, to a wild degree of ridiculousness.
One the one hand there is Gregs Lotus - a well loved, quite well kept usable car that one would think would sell reasonably well for various reasons - and on the other hand - there are cars like this car, Then and Now,
The 1954 Mercury XM800

This was a concept car

This 1954 Mercury Monterey XM800 was first unveiled at the 1954 Detroit Auto Show. The car was built for Ford by Creative Industries of Detroit, Michigan and was designed by the Mercury pre-production studio with John Najjar serving as the studio manager. Elwood Engle worked on the project as well, serving as a consultant assigned by George Walker's design firm.

The XM800 traveled the auto show circuit through 1954 it made a brief appearance in the 1954 20th Century Parade of Progress before fading from the spotlight.

Benson Ford promoted the idea of creating the car as a second Mercuy car line which would compete with Buick, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile.

Although the car was never put into production, it did take part in a Fox twentieth Century Film, and was made famous buy having its model put into Grape Post Nuts Cereal boxes.

The engine is supposed to be in excellent condition, and has only ever driven for 5 miles.
43 bids after it was posted on eBay, the bidding closed with the amazing amount of $125,350!!

So, my conclusion is that in order to make good sales on eBay, you need a lot of patients or a little stardust!

This is a guest post by Leslie, who's own blog is at Antique Cars Club

Introductions

2008-06-26T10:21:00.005Z

We have a new author on the Classic Cars Blog (AKA The Money Pit). Leslie is a blogger from the USA with a keen passion for classic and vintage cars and she has very kindly offered to write a few posts for this blog too. I look forward to reading her posts, as I'm sure you do as well!

Leslie's own blog can be found here: Antique Cars Club.

Hard Sell

2008-06-25T09:53:00.004Z

I have to tell you, I hate trading cars privately. It is a necessary evil, since forecourt dealerships are such a rip-off in this country, but it's not a pleasant business. It is a world full of sharks.

Everyone thinks it is acceptable to haggle the price of a car and you end up in a Catch 22 situation. You put your car up for several hundred pounds more that you actually want, to account for the inevitable, and no one comes to look. So you put it on at a fair price for the car and everyone still tries to knock £1,000 off of the asking price, even though they know it is fair.

Even eBay seems to be mostly populated by time-wasters and tyre kickers. I shan't try to sell a car of any value on eBay again. I think the problem is the classics market isn't really there. Your car ends up "watched" by four dozen dreaming teenagers and a couple of bargain hunters, none of whom can actually afford/are prepared to pay the reserve price of the car. At one point I was fielding daily offers of £6,000 cash for the Lotus. Eventually I stopped replying to these jokers.

Now, I'm no fool and I have done my research. I have valued my car fairly and I know my valuation is based on my own, extensive market research prior to deciding to list my car. When forecourt dealers are asking over £10,000 for a decent car, my £8,500 (or near offer) price is perfectly reasonable. That said, this sort of haggling nonsense continually undermines your confidence in your asking price and makes one of even the strongest resolve start to question if he or she is asking for too much money.

Fortunately I have sat tight and I finally got an email from a lovely chap called Dave the other day, which I will quote:

[Re: Your Car and Classic Ad: Lotus Elan +2S 130/5]
Greg, we have looked at some total dogs this last week.
There was one that looked like the interior had been done by the Scouts adventure group and the paintwork was put on with a lot of cans. We found another JPS that some Philistine had painted gold very amateurishly, and the interior was a bag of rags.
We are looking for a car that we can get in and drive, that will start, won't misfire that has the servo on the brakes still and that doesn't look as if it was last used at a storage for a big dog . From what I have seen, and have found your car on a number of sites, it is in good order and used and that is what we are after.
So do keep in touch, don't sell it for less than you have it up for and as soon as I get the chance we will drive down and see it for ourselves.

Isn't that nice? Just when my confidence was waivering Dave reminded me what I already knew but had almost forgotten. All the Plus 2 cars out there for £5-7,000 are dog rough. All these jokers offering me £6,000 for mine haven't a prayer of finding a car half as clean for the same money - they are simply taking a chance and hoping I'm desperate.

I guess the moral is if you've done your homework and you know your price is fair, hang tight. Selling luxury items is hard. They are expensive and exclusive so by definition the market is small and extremely sensitive to economic conditions. It also often takes a long time to shift luxury goods. Our local classics garage has not rotated any stock for months now. So, confidence restored, I am still hanging in for on and around my asking price and to hell with anyone who offers me a grossly reduced cash settlement.

For reference, the best avenues I have found are a couple of specialist classic car sales sites (this one and this one) who offer free advertisements and a free London-based noticeboard called Gumtree. In combination these websites are now spawning a couple of enquiries a week and finally I have a couple of "viewings" when I get back from Italy.

At The Auction

2008-06-17T13:41:00.002Z

Well, in spite of my pessimistic post about the British summer (which isn't exactly stunning, but not as bad as it could be) I have actually spent most of the last week driving the Lotus to work. This is an absolute pleasure, which makes it even more painful to see the poor girl listed on eBay.

I have really mixed feelings. In a funny sort of a way, even though I've been trying to sell her for ages, I don't really want to see her go. On the other hand, I know I won't find the time to use her and it will be the usual story come winter of sitting too long, seizing up and expensive repair bill in May.

I wonder if anyone will actually bid?? Last time I put a car on eBay I got nothing but a bunch of time-wasters. We shall see.

Wasn't Summer Nice?

2008-06-08T08:21:00.004Z

That's all folks. Here in England we had two weeks of beautiful sunshine in May. That was summer. And you know what? The Lotus was out of action throughout, on the ramp in Barry Ely's workshop. *sigh*

I just got her back with another punishing bill for leaving her standing for half of the winter. When will I learn? The story goes like this:

Some time in late January (I think) was the last time the Lotus actually started unassisted. The starter motor was sluggish but just when I was about to give up she fired and ran. We went for a spin and all was well, so I put her away again. When I next came to the garage, probably about two weeks later, the starter motor was so reluctant it was never going to turn the engine over quick enough to start a cold Lotus.

Clearly (or at least partly) a bad earth, but it being winter, me being in a cold garage, miles from the house with no tools and no power all stacked up to mean I wasn't going to fix it there! So I went away and about six weeks later I tried to get the car going with my father. However, by this stage the bad earth was even worse and to compound it, the battery was half dead too, refusing to hold any sensible charge. Even hooked up to a Volvo 940 via some hefty jump leads there was no starting her.

And so there she stayed, again. Until May came around, another six weeks or so later, and I decided to call Barry and have him come and fetch the car on a trailer. The result?

Clutch seized so solid he thought he might have to take the engine out to get at it. Seized brake calipers. Blocked accelerator jets in the carbs. Twelve hours of labour at £45/hour, simply because I'd let her stand too long. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The moral of the story is if something breaks, especially something which prevents you from starting the car, don't leave it until spring! Repair it as soon as it happens. The longer a car like this sits unused, the bigger the bill will be when someone eventually comes to sort it out.

I know this, but a mix of laziness and fear of what might be wrong caused me to ignore it and hope it would go away. It did not.

On the plus side, I have the car back, so in the unlikely event the British summer gets a second wind, I'll have a lot of fun.

Wash Out

2008-05-01T11:33:00.002Z

April has been remarkably April-like, in spite of dire warnings of climate change, locust plagues, desertification, &c. It has "showered" regularly and constantly all month here in Blighty. So the fact Barry can't come out and fix the Lotus until 17th May is no big drama. I think I'll get the Fiat out later though. It could do with a run and there appears to be a short gap in the ever-present cloud cover!

Onwards. For those who don't know, my daughter was born on 13th April - as a result I have had little time for classic motoring, per se. Rather, with the Lotus out of action, a screaming baby at home and the weather resembling an Indian monsoon (causing a small leak in our bedroom window, via some blocked guttering) I have been reduced to planning my next purchase.

Now, I know I said last time I was definitely, 100%, beyond all doubt getting an MG-F. However my better half pointed out there are no rear seats. "And?" I enquired. It wasn't dignified with a response.

Prior to that you may remember I was set on a mid-1980s Porsche 911, preferably a Targa. That was until I met a chap who told me they are more expensive to run than a high-class "escort" (not the car). "I've got a 1985 911," he wept. "Front wings alone cost more than a new engine in your Lotus." And while he was standing there bemoaning his lot, a thick cloud of oil smoke engulfed us. This is the 911 way of declaring a serious coolant leak requiring a phone call to the AA and another £3,000 repair bill. So that was the end of that idea.

Lotus Sevens? Very tempting. I even toyed with TVR for a little while, until my partner pointed out there are no rear seats in those either. Rats.

Then I came to Jaguars. Now, having a father who's a Jag nut does rather put one off. Not because I have any sort of animosity or teenage angst remaining towards my father. Just simply that it conjures an image of, well, his generation, not mine. He has a rather nice V12 Convertible XJ-S, as regular readers will know, so I started looking around for any Jag other than an XJ-S, naturally.

Since my girlfriend has already vetoed any Jag prior to 1970 (too grandad-like, apparently) my choices were limited, so I was very interested to discover the Jaguar XK-8 is now in my price range for an early model. Here we have a good looking, 4-seater (nearly), comfortable, fast, sports tourer. For £8,000. Bargain! And, to cap it all off, it was love at first sight for herself.

Then I started reading up and discovered the reason: luxury cars always bottom out in the price department after 10 years or so, as worries about electricals and catalysers and the like creep in, but the early XK-8 particularly because it had rather serious engine issues caused by the sulphur content in British petrol at the time. You can buy a 1996 XK-8 for £8,000, but here's the kicker. You have no way of really knowing it you still have an £8,000 engine replacement bill ahead of you. It's Russian Roulette with your wallet.

*sigh*

Back to square one. It was about this time when my father piped up "you should look at a late XJ-S..." Well he would say that. But he had some compelling arguments:

It's every bit the fast, comfortable, sports tourer the XK-8 is - in fact, it's widely recognised as a better handler than the XK-8 coupé, courtesy of the saloon body shape. The late "facelift" models are very well resolved cars, with Jaguar having had nearly 25 years to iron out all the issues. They can go on a classic policy, even though the last ones are only 12 years old. And because they have always been the poor cousin to the E-Type and the later XK-8, they're cheap as chips.

Because I am likely to be doing a lot of driving in Europe, I'm sorely tempted to get a "left hooker", as they say - a left hand drive model. More problems. Search the European market for an XJ-S and they're rarer than hen's teeth. A 20-year-old standard V12 coupé in decent condition will cost you £10,000, which is just madness. About five times over the odds by British right hand drive prices, and it doesn't get any better with Cabrios and Convertibles. So someone like me, looking for a LHD Convertible in Europe, had better have deep pockets. I don't.

On the verge of giving up, I remembered another neat thing about the XJ-S. They sold it by the bucket-load in America. Our friends across the pond loved it. Comfortable, smooth, quick, stylish and not so cumbersome in American "parking lots", which are better designed for a car of those dimensions. (Try parking an XJ-S in a British multi-storey car park - if you get it right first time, I'll cut you a cheque for £1,000 on the spot - that's how confident I am you won't!)

Right now the American economy is in the dumpster. Granted, ours isn't exactly rosey, but with $2 to every £1 and luxury goods off nearly every American's shopping list, I can purchase a nice 4.0, 6-cylinder, LHD, Convertible XJ-S off a dealer's forecourt in the US for about £6,000. I can ship it to Europe for about £2,000 and bingo! I have a nice, 4.0 "facelift" Convertible, LHD XJ-S for £8,000. And the best part is, if I want to sell it I can ask for £25,000 and some rich collector in Monte Carlo won't even blink.

I'll let you know how I get on, but as of the last couple of weeks it seems I may yet end up with the same car as my father. Oh the shame! But I can live with it. They are nice.

Non-Starter

2008-03-30T13:32:00.003Z

So, with some assistance from my father, I went down to the garage on Monday to try and start the Lotus, to give it a spring airing. Would it start? Would it hell is like. It sat there like a belligerant teenager, daring me to relocate my tools from the garden shed to a council garage 2 miles away, knowing full well I wouldn't. It won.

And this is why the Lotus has to go. I'm not an unrealistic person, and the problem is simple: old sportscars break. Note I say sportscars, not any old classic cars. The Fiat, for example, is also 40 years old and it never breaks. Why? It's about as complex as a 2-year-old's jigsaw puzzle. There's practically nothing to go wrong! (Ignoring corrosion, of course.)

My Lotus, in fairness, is very reliable - for a Lotus. The previous owner described it as "the most reliable Plus 2 I ever had", but that doesn't make it reliable. It makes it as reliable as a 40-year-old Lotus can be. I knew this when I bought it and at the time I had the youth, enthusiasm and time to deal with it. Now I have a baby on the way (it is due on Wednesday!), a garage on the other side of town and nowhere to keep my tools. It just isn't working out.

When I've sold up I already know what I'll get. I'm going to buy an early MG-F. A very clean one, with leather seats and the turbo charger so I can really scare myself. Before you all scoff, these are great little cars. I already know this, because my mother runs the naturally aspirated 1800 version and I borrowed it to go to France in last summer. It's the cheapest genuine, mid-engined sportscar on the market, and it just works.

Sure, it is still a sportscar, therefore it will still cost me a fortune to service and things will still go wrong. But if I leave it in a garage on the other side of town, when I go to take it out it will start. If it doesn't, I'm safe in the knowledge there's nothing I can do about it anyway, as it's probably a sensor or a software glitch, so I'm not left with the guilty feeling I should be fixing it myself. It's perfect. Quick, fun, open-topped and reliable. A much better match for the 2008 version of me.

So is this the end for me and classic sportscars? Absolutely not! My next house will have a double garage. It is essential. I am as adament on this as my partner is about a family kitchen. (It may take us a while to find something we both like...) And when I have this house, I will once again being scouring the newspapers and websites for something for the weekend. Something old, that leaks oil, smells like a petrol station and refuses to start in winter. And I'll love it. But most importantly of all, I'll have the time and the space to work on it.

Supercar With A Difference?

2008-03-21T11:21:00.015Z

For those of you who don't know, I work in software. I build things in bits and bytes - things people need to make their computers do useful things. Not hugely useful, I grant you, but that doesn't really matter. The point is, I spend most of my time working with software products and platforms which are dubbed "open source".

For the uninitiated, the term open source refers to the licensing of a software product. Open source software is free to download and yours to edit, unlike software from, say, Microsoft, which must be purchased (usually for approximately the cost of one arm and one leg... or your grandmother) and you cannot edit or change in any way beyond the means prescribed to you by Microsoft.

The grander scheme is open source software evolves and is developed by the people and businesses which use it on a day-to-day basis. They don't like something? They take it out. Enough people don't like it, it ceases to be an option. Want it to do something it doesn't? Then add it in. If enough people think it's a good addition, it will become standard.

But who decides? Usually a panel, company or individual, known as the "project maintainer", whose role it is to listen to the case from the community at large and decide what the next version of the product will do, in it's default form, when it is released. What will be kept, what will be dropped, what will be changed, all falls on the shoulders of the maintainer. And of course, if your idea is dropped, well, that doesn't really matter. You can still add it to your version.

It's all very idyllic sounding, but you know what the best bit is? It actually works. Not for nothing does the majority of the Internet run on open source-based software. A coincidence, it is not, that half the governments in South America are moving exclusively to open source software. (Though Mr Bush's old friend Chavez has a finger in that pie, I'm sure. Persuading most of an entire continent to ditch one of America's biggest companies is surely one in the eye for Uncle Sam.)

And now the Dutch are following suit. Which means the rest of Europe is probably only about 10 years away, and interestingly my father (who works in local government, of sorts, here in the UK) is already receiving newsletters from on high about the benefits of open source software within industry and government. Remarkably sharp for the British government, who tend to react to change with the grace and poise of a fully laden super-tanker.

But what on Earth has this all got to do with motoring, classic or otherwise? Not a lot... until this morning. My eyebrows touched the ceiling when I opened an email from a small, US-based sportscar company called Iconic Motors, for two reasons:

Firstly, I (little old me) have been invited to the New York Auto Show at 7pm tomorrow, all expenses paid (except flight and hotel - the expensive bits), as their guest. (Someone should point out it wouldn't hurt to give small-time, London-based motoring bloggers a little more than 24 hours notice for a motor show in New York. Clarkson, I am not.) I can only think they are assuming no one is going to come, so they're inviting every amateur motoring journalist in the world to turn up in the hopes a handful do.

Secondly, Iconic make the grand claim of producing the world's first "open source" car:

Iconic’s not just a little company making 100 very special supercars. We’re making supercars a new way: Open Source design, based on Joy's Law:
The best person for your biggest challenge doesn't work for your company.
I've been a computer guy all my life, with Digital Equipment and as an Oracle VAR, etc. Whether you’re a fan of cars or the internet, you'll love this collaboration.
The Iconic Motors Collaborative Design Initiative (CDI) will be a continuing conversation about the best way to conceive, equip and produce cars right here in America, using the very best suppliers: little companies that normally serve the space and aeronautical industry and the people who custom-build race cars.
And we'd love for you to contribute your own ideas! Using DIGG-like polling, we'll float the best ideas to the top - you will, not me. If one of your ideas wins, you'll be rewarded monetarily and recognized publicly.

So there you have it. This must be my perfect car, as I'm a fan of both cars and the Internet. I should be in seventh heaven as Iconic present themselves as the "maintainers" of an open source supercar, to which anyone can contribute and contributions are welcomed. The trouble is, I'm not.

Here's the thing. An open source project is only as good as the quality of the community contributing. Some open source projects attract super-genii by the bucket load and shoot off in to the stratosphere, surpassing anything even the biggest production budget can conjure up. Look at the Apache web server for a case in point - unbeknownst to the gazzillions of Internet users, this piece of software is open source, free and practically runs the Internet. Others attract a bunch of ill-informed and over-opinionated college kids, exist for as long as afforementioned kids have nothing better to do and then fall down like a sack of spuds.

The Iconic looks more like the latter. For a kick off, it looks like the bastard result of a sordid affair between an AC Cobra and a riced-up Vauxhall Corsa, which leads me to the obvious conclusion the project is yet to attract a designer of any calibre, which is pretty serious when you're trying to sell a six-figure "supercar". It doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the rest of the car either. What else have they borrowed and subsequently mangled to produce this strange looking contraption?

There are a fistful of interesting performance statistics and design notes at the foot of each page, including "Formula One-Derived Racing Suspension" (I sincerely bloody hope not, or anyone who buys one of these things will have no teeth left by the time they get to the end of the block) but all this means nothing. All I'm looking at is an ugly and expensive Cobra replica. I can think of no reason why I would select this over a more faithful copy of the original AC/Shelby collaboration.

Not a great start, if first impressions last, but where Iconic really fall down is in their entire ethos. They attempt to claim this is somehow a community effort and enthuse people to get involved, but let's think about that for a second. To quote Wikipedia:

Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software, the most important of which is that the source code is openly available.

Oops. That pretty much makes the Iconic Motors Collaborative Design Initiative dead in the water then.

You see, it's easy for me to sit here and pick holes in a few pictures and facts on a marketing website, but if this were a truly open source project, I'd have an Iconic sitting outside my house. I'd trundle outside, right now, with a tub of filler and an angle grinder and get rid of that stupid skirt they've put on it. Then I'd probably plug my laptop in to the engine management system (because, surely, they've provided me with the appropriate callibration software - for free) and start fiddling with the tick-over rate so my girlfriend doesn't stall it every time the lights turn green. I might even fit an ejector seat. That would be fun!

But I can't. They only plan to make 100 pieces and I am extremely unlikely to ever be able to afford one, and since it was apparently designed by a fifteen-year-old boy, I don't want one anyway. And I bet Joe Boffin in Idaho who contributed to the brake design isn't going to get a brand new Iconic for his troubles either. And there's the problem. In fact, Joe Boffin in Idaho probably knew this, so he didn't even bother to even take part. He made his own aeroplane out of a washing machine and a surf board instead, just for the hell of it.

To call this an "open source" car is a total misrepresentation of what open source is about. This is no more open source than Microsoft Windows, because the contributors will never, ever be able to try out their ideas, say "hey, this works guys!" and give it back. They'll be reduced to firing suggestions at a website in the hopes one of them sticks, just like Microsoft customers.

And who'll do that? A bunch of bored teenagers in computer class, that's who. Everyone else knows that firing ideas at the likes of Microsoft is a waste of energy. The only person who will actually be listened to in the R&D process is the guy with the cheque book.

Then there's the other fundamental problem. Open source is all about the people who use something informing it's development. If you're building an expensive supercar, it is utterly flawed to ask a bunch of people who will, in all likelihood, never even sit in a supercar, never mind own one, to help design one. And it would be commercial suicide to actually listen to them. It's a bit like asking a Maasai warrior to design some hiking boots.

So all this rather begs the question, is it really possible to have an open source car? Not in the truest sense, no, but there are other cars which come much closer to the true spirit of open source than the Iconic. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Lotus Seven.

Produced since 1957 and still going strong under the watchful eye of likes of Westfield and Caterham, the Seven is about as open source as you can get. It has always been a kit and you can do as much or as little as you want with it. You can buy a basic, ready-to-roll Seven from Caterham for a shade over £10,000 ($20,000), which is akin to buying Linux from Redhat - you could make it yourself, but you really can't be bothered.

Or you can buy a chassis and some rudimentary bits from Westfield for £2,000 ($4,000) and do the rest yourself, sourcing your own engine and running gear from an old Ford, pulling seats from the back of your mother's sedan and making your own body out of chicken-wire and PVA.

A strong community exists in the form of a number of rabidly enthusiastic owner's clubs who are forever sharing their personal experiences and modifications with great pride. And sometimes, just occassionally, the "maintainers" will use someone's modifications in their own models. And if they don't use your chicken-wire-crafted inspirations? Who cares! You love your Seven just the way it is.

While you'll never get a car for free, the Seven is very affordable, fun, fast, has a real community and allows you to truly build your own car, to your own specifications from a set of core components provided by the product maintainers, the chassis manufacturers and kit builders. If it's open source cars you want, forget the Iconic. Look no further than another Chapman classic.

Well, I'll probably never, ever be invited anywhere again by a small motor company. Damn. If only I'd headed straight for New York, met the CEO and written a glowing review, like Clarkson said I should. I could've been a motoring journalist by this time next week.

Motorway Madness

2008-02-07T17:17:00.000Z

It occurs to me that few people actually appreciate driving any more. It has become something of a modern chore. We are no longer impressed by the technology of the combustion engine. It's old hat. No one utters an "oooo" or an "ahhh" if you roll up in a new sports car any more. They just think you're a flash git with more money than sense. Few people still admire the car and a growing minority even go so far as to demonise it.

As if to hammer home my point, I'm sitting in a coffee shop opposite an exhibition stand with a brand new Ferrari parked on it. Now, I'm fairly sure that had this been 1963 there would have been a small, clamouring crowd, all trying to get a look at the Italian racing car with the prancing horse on the bonnet. Not today. There are some glances from casually interested business-folk and that's your lot. The car is spurned, passed over for a frothy bastardisation of a "coffee" and a cheap life-style magazine.

It comes down to one single and, in fairness, obvious observation: there are too many of them! Sports cars, family cars, big cars, mad cars, all cars. Just Too Many.

Excluding those of you who live in Nebraska, when was the last time you actually enjoyed driving somewhere? Just getting about has become such a hassle these days, no one actually considers motoring as a pass-time any more. It's simply a means to an end. A necessary evil.

Every morning for the last two weeks I have hopped in my car at around 0900 GMT and headed for the M25, London's ring road and Europe's most notorious car park. Every morning, without fail, I endure a terrifying battle of nose-to-tail duelling for the fast lane, which is a joke, because the "fast" lane is travelling at 50mph if you're lucky, just like every other lane. It also stops abruptly every few minutes or so for no apparent reason.

I'm writing this piece to kill some time in the airport. I'm at London Stansted and, all being well, in about three hours I'll be in Milan. Well actually I'll be in Bergamo, which any Italian will tell you is nowhere near Milan, but Ryanair aren't too hot on geography, so I will have to pile out of the airport, in to a car, and straight in to the customary thirty-mile traffic jam in to Milan proper.

And neither of these two European examples of a global pandemic can hold a candle to the Washington Beltway at 1800 EST on a Friday evening. People set out to get from New Jersey to Maryland with a month's-worth of tinned supplies, just in case. My cousin's husband set out with a hunting rifle once, which landed him in a lot of trouble, but that's a whole other story, and no, he didn't shoot anybody.

In most of England there is no such thing as leisure driving any more. I take the Lotus out on a weekend for a tour of the country lanes and within two corners I have come across someone who believes their Nissan Micra is hard limited to 35mph. There endeth the fun. There is an endless stream of traffic coming the other way and I am now stuck behind said individual all the way to wherever I'm going. And even if I manage to pass them, two corners later I'm behind another one.

I could rant about the standard of driving in this country (it is a fact that you will fail your UK driving test if you pootle along at 35mph on an open, unrestricted A-road, and there seem to be a crazy number of folk who do this and the old bill seem to merrily ignore them) but I don't think people today are any worse at driving than they were forty years ago. I don't think there are any more bad drivers as a percentage either. We just notice them more because when the roads are as jam-packed as they are, these people cause even more chaos.

Which is why I think I will take to driving at night. My motorway journey to the airport at 0430 this morning was positively pleasant. For the first time in I can't remember when, the motorway was busy, but in a good way. There were plenty of people about but I could cruise at 80mph in the outside lane, effortless pull out to glide by the spattering of 18-wheelers on their way to various ports and depots, not once did I have to brake or even alter my speed because, as was the intension when 3-lane roads were invented, there is always a spare lane.

This is how motorways are supposed to be. It's a far cry from an average journey up the M1, which typically goes something like this: you're just free of the horrific mess that is the M25 when you slam in to the two hour queue to get through Bedfordshire. Then you have about thirty miles of being stuck behind a diesel saloon hogging the fast lane before you're queuing again to get through Leicestershire. Nottinghamshire is no better and your joy at being free of Derby will be almost immediately tempered by a seventeen-mile tail-back caused by an over-turned caravan. At this point you decide to stop for the night, because you clearly aren't going to make the Scottish border this side of midnight.

So what has this got to do with classic motoring? As I drove along the motorway this morning, it occurred to me I was getting a real sense of what the brave new world of motorways must have felt like to the middle-class populous who could afford the cars to use them. Cruising from London to Edinburgh at 90mph in a Jaguar E-Type must've been an absolute joy, and there were no speed limits. (Allegedly, the existence of the AC/Shelby Cobra and the numerous attempts to set land-speed records somewhere between Luton and Leicester in the late-1960s is at least partially to blame for the 70mph limit we have nowadays. Plod was not amused.)

I can't help but feel I was born in the wrong era and I've missed all the fun.

There was a window of perhaps twenty-five years when motorways were a quick and efficient way of getting from A to B, but alas that time now seems to be well and irretrievably behind us. Cars are too cheap and it's a shameful report on our public transport network that in spite of the state of our motorway network, the masses still prefer it to our woefully poor and grossly over-priced railways.

One final musing: in this modern world, why is it the privileged few who still seem to be willing and able to splash a decent amount of cash on their motor seem largely to purchase ludicrous 4x4 "sports utility vehicles", as the American's call them? Range Rovers with silly alloy wheels, unusably low-profile tyres and lowered suspension, rendering them utterly useless for any sort of off-road activity.

And though you sit lording it over the masses, I had to laugh when I read a Clarkson article the other day, where he admitted to rather enjoying the driving position of the Range Rover, but offered the following cautionary advice: "all other motorists will hate you on a cellular level".

I'm sorry, Mr or Mrs SUV Driver, but this is true and if you don't believe me you are simply in denial. Ask anyone who does not own an SUV what they think of SUV drivers and I would be hard-pushed to publish the expletives they produce. And no, it's not envy. It's frustrated irritation. You are looked upon as the pond-scum of the road, for a dozen reasons not even remotely relating to the environment which I can't be bothered to reel off again.

Lift Off

2008-01-31T20:35:00.000Z

I have finally launched my latest effort, Classic Car Source. It's taken an age to get off the ground, but I'm sure you can appreciate how much work I've put in to it.

I actually need a favour from any readers who might like to get involved. I need any classic car enthusiasts who are willing/able to help populate my content library. I'm slowly trawling through it, but it's a lot of research and I will be months just entering the manufacturers and models myself. Sadly my budget is zero/zilch/zippo/nowt, as this is an entirely personal project, but if you do enjoy researching and writing about classics, I'd love to hear from you. Vintage bikers too!

If anyone's interested, you can register and then let me know you're there - then I can give you permission to work on the library.

I really think this could be the classic car resource to end all resources, if I can only get the public interested. I might look in to the possibility of attending some events this year and perhaps making up some business cards or something. Could be worth it.

Speaking of events, I'm just about to book my tickets for the Le Mans Classic this summer. Fantastic. I can't wait. Good company, fine wines, beautiful countryside and lots of really, really nice classic cars. If I still have it, the Lotus is definitely coming with me this time!

Ta da for now.

Merry Christmas

2007-12-27T16:08:00.000Z

Late, I know, but Season's Greetings and all that jazz.

I was fortunate enough to receive (at long last) a shiny new multimeter from Santa Claus et al this Christmas. I'm in Southwell, Nottinghamshire and the Lotus is tucked up in Epping, but I now cannot wait to return home and begin measuring anything and everything electrical. I have already measured the resistance of my girlfriend, which is, for the record, very, very high.

This handy little electronic device has arrived just in the nick of time too, as the damned Lotus seems to be leaking charge from the battery. Either that or it's not charging properly when running. Either way, my multimeter will effortlessly equip me with the knowledge I require. I hope.

If it's the latter, then Barry Ely has two jobs in the spring (assuming I still own the Lotus, which is still for sale, by the way). New clutch slave cylinder and a new alternator. Fortunately, neither job is particularly expensive and, as I've noted many times before, repairs come with the territory.

(For the record, my father also got a multimeter, as his Jaguar XJ-S Convertible is happily dumping it's entire battery in less than a day. He had the ignominious experience of being jump-started in the office car park by a Fiat Panda, called "Custard" apparently, and you know what I think about naming cars. He too has some investigation to do, so it's not just the Lotus which causes headaches. And you should see the price of his tyres!)

I'm just hoping the weather holds, as I have no plans for Monday, so if it's a nice day I will jump-start the old girl and take her for a good, long run in the sun. I'll probably take the Fiat out too, as she's been neglected recently. The British weather has been so shocking for the last few months, we've barely had a decent day on a weekend. Even Christmas Day was a wash-out. Humbug!

One more thing - it remains a New Year's Resolution of mine to sell the Lotus and buy myself a nice, early 1980s, Porsche 911. This was further exacerbated yesterday evening when, while driving the Rover 600 back from a family dinner in Lincoln, it too feeling as though it had just eaten two pounds of turkey and full accompaniments, one blasted past me on the A46 around Newark. I was left blinking and murmuring...

*poop* *poop*

Have a great New Year. More to come in 2008.

Broken Brakes

2007-11-19T17:49:00.001Z

My brake light switch stopped working the other day. I tried to purchase a new one from Halfords, whose catalogue assured me they had a brake light switch for a 1974 Lotus Elan, so I ordered it in for collection two days later. Was it correct? Was it hell is like! It was the brake light switch for a modern Elan. Utterly useless to me.

Figures, I suppose. I half expected it to be incorrect, but my well represented lazy gene convinced me to order it anyway, since it beat a trip to Bishops Stortford... and it might be right.

The worst part is, no one at Halfords seems to actually bother to correct the catalogue. They just shrug and send the part back marked as "no longer required". NO! It's not "no longer required"... it's plain "wrong"! There is an option for "wrong" on the computer, but they all ignore it and send it back as "no longer required", so the catalogue managers have no inkling they're sending out the wrong bit. I'm sure it's a part they carry, as it is common to several cars from the 1970s/1980s/probably even early 1990s.

Anyway, I was about to trundle up the road to Bishops Stortford to a motorfactor and get the part there, when someone on LotusElan.net told me they were easy enough to fix. Apparently they get corroded and dirty inside, but if you clip them apart and polish up the contacts they're good as new.

So I popped down to the garage, looked at where the switch was mounted on the back of the pedal box, disconnected the spades and the plastic switch screws straight out. Fantastic. You don't even need tools. I ran a wire between the spades with the ignition on, just to be sure the switch was the faulty part, and the brake lights lit. I took the switch home, dismantled it, could see immediately it needed a clean, so I set to work with some glass paper and ten minutes later it was back together again (as shown in the photo).

Now, those of you familiar with this particular type of switch are probably already saying "Ohhhh!" - yup, it didn't work. Had I actually thought about the mechanism, rather than half-guessing how the switch came apart (I couldn't actually see it properly, on account of the spring sending its various parts in five different directions across the living room floor) then I would've realised I was doing it wrong. But I didn't.

I should note this is also where you need a multimeter, something I am now asking for at Christmas! If I had a multimeter, I could've simply measured resistance across the terminals of the switch and realised what I only discovered when I got down to the garage and fitted the part, without leaving the fireside - namely, the way I had put the switch together meant it was permanently "on". The way I assembled it (as shown) just makes the spring press the contact plate permanently against the contacts, rendering the switch no more useful than a length of wire. Obvious, with the benefit of hindsight.

I walked the ten minute walk, up the hill back to the house, cursing the rain, my stupidity at not taking my precision screwdriver set with me and not actually considering carefully enough how the mechanism needs to work. When I got back to the house and took the switch to pieces again, looking with a more analytical eye everything became clear:

There is a little square peg on the internal end of the push-button of the switch, which is clearly supposed to marry to the little square hole in the brass contact plate of exactly the same size. The correct configuration is with the contact plate the other way around to the way it is in the photo, inside the casing of the switch, and on the other end of the spring with the spring going up between the contacts to rest against the clip-on plastic "top".

The tricky part is when you clip the whole unit back together again. The contact plate needs to pass the contacts, so that when the switch is sealed, the spring pushes the plate back on to the contacts, but not past them - this is a push-to-break switch, not a push-to-make. When you push the button in, the contact plate is forced up towards the clip-off end of the switch, away from the contacts it sits between, breaking the circuit.

When in position, it is permanently "pushed" by the end of the brake pedal lever. The act of pushing brake pedal removes the lever from the end of the switch, allowing it to extend and make the circuit, illuminating the brake lights.

It took me four attempts to put the switch back together so that it functioned correctly. I can't think of any easy way to do it. It's just a case of trying until you suceed through dumb luck! But it does go, eventually, with the correct blend of brute force and ignorance. And my brake lights work once more. Happy days!

Under The Hammer

2007-08-21T18:06:00.000Z

I have decided to sell the Lotus.

*Stunned silence*

Seriously, life is too short and there are too many cars I want to experience. The Lotus is for sale and I am sourcing a Porsche 911 S. I'm really looking forward to sampling something completely different. I believe, ultimately, I will return to the Lotus stable and get myself a nice Elan Sprint, but first I want to play the field a little.

Wish me luck!

And it goes without saying, drop me a message if you're interested in buying the Lotus.

Citroen's Future Car Comes Of Age

2007-07-26T16:45:00.000Z

For some time now I've been fascinated by the Citroen DS. Clarkson once remarked what a shame it is Citroen no longer make their trademark "crazy big cars" and I'm inclined to agree.

My boss in my first full time job after uni, an architect called Mark, was a DS nut. He didn't have one any more, preferring his new Alfa 166, but he had been through a string of them in his 20s and 30s and loved every second of it.

As family saloons go, they were pretty damned luxurious. They looked stunning too. They look even more stunning these days, now that all cars look the same. They remind me of a 1950s luxury jet on wheels - a look that continues right through the car, from the chrome ridge running up the centre of the bonnet to the enormous leather armchair with wrap-around headrest, which almost literally absorbs the driver.

I don't know what they're like to drive, but the air suspension is always good for a laugh and they had a wealth of fantastic little touches, such as headlamps that turn to point the way you are directing the car. (Great for the DS driver but a pretty ropey idea if you're the poor sod coming the other way on a right-hand bend!)

So, suffice it to say I'd rather like a Citroen DS. Annoyingly, just five years ago I could've picked one up for peanuts in any French town you'd care to mention. Not so any more. They are scarce enough and interesting enough to fetch the best part of €10,000 these days, for a decent later model. Still feasible, but no longer in the "cheap" stakes.

Which is why I got rather excited when I saw an immaculate red DS convertible (or Decapotable, as the French call it) in Rapallo at the weekend.

These days the Decapotable version is a very expensive car, as it seems Citroen only made about three of them. To give you an idea, the only one I could find for sale in the UK was a replica (a standard 1963 saloon with the roof chopped off by a good coachbuilder) and the dealer wanted £50,000 for it. They are, to coin a phrase, like hen's teeth. So it's hardly surprising the only place I've ever seen one is a stone's throw from Porto Fino, in Italy's millionaire's playground, on the Ligurian coast. The other two are probably in St. Tropez.

Sadly, I seemed to be the only one who noticed. Everyone else was too busy trying to stop my girlfriend's nephew from dropping his ice cream on the floor. Oh well. Their loss!

The new, new Fiat 500

2007-07-06T09:27:00.000Z

So it has been launched. What started off as an industry rumour has ended up a finished product. According to Fiat CEO, Sergio Marchionne, "the new Fiat 500 will be the iPod of cars". I hope so. These relaunches of classic models have been a mixed affair. The new Mini is a fantastic little car, but then the new Volkswagen Beetle is dull and completely undeserving of the association.

I'll reserve judgement on the new 500 until I actually see one, but it can't be any worse than the last "Cinquecento" Fiat put out. I'm tempted to go to a dealer over the weekend and see if I can get a test drive - just for fun!

On a slightly different note, the photo in this post looks like a Fiat 600, right? Wrong! Apparently this is a Zastava 750 and my father took this photo in Croatia. It is a re-badged Fiat 600 and the "750" refers to the engine capacity, as the later models had 767cc engines.

Famous Fiat

2007-04-26T22:24:00.000Z

Well, the Classic Car Agency has paid off. Both cars are listed, but somehow I knew it would be the Fiat, not the Lotus, that got booked. They're just such cute little cars.

And not only was it booked, it was double booked. A fashion shoot in Manchester wanted it on the same day, but a publicity shoot with the DJ duo, The Shapeshifters, and their singer, Jenna G, in Battersea won hands down, both for glamour and location.

Silly as it may sound, I've also created a MySpace for the Fiat. Why not, eh? The car is on its way to being a celebrity in its own right, so it should have a MySpace. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

I look forward to the next booking. And the cheque will help pay for the Lotus service. *phew*

Servicing Shock

2007-04-10T10:28:00.000Z

The Lotus, in spite of spending most of the last twelve months laid up in one workshop or another, has not seen a true specialist in a while. For this reason, I decided to take it to a Lotus specialist nearby (known to the Club) for its long-overdue "full service".

I am still shaking from the bill. Over £1,000!

Don't get me wrong, broadly speaking the Lotus is reasonable economical. Until now the car has caused me little trouble, but three years without a proper service have taken their toll.

Couple that to the fact the rotoflex joints on the rear axle (similar to the one pictured, courtesy of BoatUS.com) need changing this time, which is no small task, and must happen at least every 15 years or so, regardless of mileage (the rubber simply ages). The final bill is eye-watering.

There's a lesson here. Avoid the annual service at your peril! Ignoring the working classic car until it breaks is a false economy, as I keep attempting to explain to my long-suffering girlfriend. She, like many people, only sees the bills - £100 here, £200 there. But in the grand scheme of things, these small "hits" to keep things ship-shape pale into insignificance compared with the cost of ignoring a car for 3 years and having to fix everything at once, and some!

Of course, when I get the Lotus back I sincerely hope that will be it for a year, and it should be. That's the point of a good service by a specialist engineer. There's always the potential for finding a gremlin in an old car which has been lurking for a few months, waiting to be spotted by the sharp-eyed mechanic.

But it's important to bear in mind even the big gremlins (like my £500 rotoflex replacements) on a classic car are cheaper than some of the monstrous creatures to be found lurking in a 5-year-old modern car. Something like a new catalytic converter (courtesy of a malfunctioning engine management computer) means a truly horrific bill for even the cheapest 2002 Fiat Punto (it would effectively write off my Rover) and these things do happen.

So I philosophically accept the pain of running a classic car, and remind myself the guy driving around in a second-hand BMW M3 is shaping up for a much larger bill before too long.

Company Car Drivers: Show Some Respect

2007-03-20T11:54:00.000Z

We have the Fiat back! Actually, we've had it back for a couple of weeks now, but I've been too busy to write anything.

The car is (nearly) as it was. We've used it a few times for shopping trips and mechanically it's perfect, however, I must report the after-market body pressings currently being produced for the Fiat 500 in central and eastern Europe are not of the same quality as the original Fiat pressings. Perhaps I was naive for ever hoping they would be?

Not only is the new engine cover missing the charming, albeit unnecessary, Italian stickers warning you not to do silly things like rest your hand on the exhaust manifold, it also doesn't quite fit properly. It's immediately obvious when you know how it used to be. Bob (bless him) has done his best with the pressing he could get, but you can just tell it isn't right.

The handle no longer closes neatly behind the latch (indeed, he had to cut an inch or two out of the existing rubber seal), the lid seems a fraction too wide and tall for the hole it is supposed to cover and while it used to fit like a glove, now it just about closes tightly with a bit of jiggling and jostling.

What a shame! And all because some silly idiot wasn't paying attention.

The person responsible for this mess doesn't realise, and would never appreciate or probably even accept, is that while this was only a £500 repair, it knocked a small fortune off of the "saleability" of the car.

Little details like this make a big difference to charm of the vehicle and a little bit of the car's soul was lost the day that stupid fool mangled the original Italian engine lid beyond repair. It's not like replacing the plastic bumper on a 2004 Ford Focus.

Call me melodramatic, or even overly sentimental, but I'm serious. This sort of detail makes the difference between a truly sound, original car and a "restored" car. The former will always be more desriable to the purist and a little bit of that desirability was lost that day.

But you know what winds me up the most? The fact it was a company car.

Doubtless the offender in this case got a replacement car immediately, was totally unaffected by her careless antics and is free to do the same to someone else tomorrow, totally without penalty.

We had endless hassle and stress dealing with solicitors, doctors, insurance companies, valuers, garages (we had to fight just to get it fixed by a specialist), recovery companies and more besides ... and we had to pay a £50 excess for the work!

While she signed a piece of paper admitting liability and handed it in to HR.

Where's the justice in that? Where's the punishment? Where's the tiniest little piece of incentive for her to not drive around like Britain's Worst Driver in the future? Her premiums won't even go up, not that she'd care if they did, because the company is paying.

There seems to be something about not owning your car which makes a person treat it with total disregard. This doesn't bother or concern me, to an extent. I mean if you want your car to be a mobile skip, filled to the brim with burger wrappers and discarded coffee cups, what do I care? If you're not bothered about that four foot scratch down the side, where you used the supermarket railings as a parking guide, who am I to comment? However, if your attitude extends to privately owned cars belonging to other people, then I, nay we, have every right to be angry.

I hope the lady concerned felt at least a small pang of guilt when she saw my girlfriend choking back the tears as she observed the mess that was the rear of our Fiat 500. The Fiat 500 her brother sourced for her from a proud, elderly collector in Milano. The Fiat 500 we drove from Italy in a 5 day adventure. The Fiat 500 which has been a part of people's lives, and a part of her native Italy, for nearly 40 years. The Fiat 500 which is so much more to someone than "just a car".

Sadly, I fear she felt nothing more than a slight pang of iritation that now she was going to be late for lunch at her mother-in-law's.

So what you gonna do?
Simple: if it were up to me, people with company cars would be obliged to organise their own insurance.

Sure, the company can provide you with a car. They can do the routine maintenance and pay the road tax. But every individual should organise their insurance personally, so they get the hassle and the paperwork when they run into someone. Then, just maybe, a few of them would be a little less blasé about other road users and a little less prone to using their 4-door family saloon as a mobile battering ram.

Taxing Problems

2007-02-28T18:07:00.000Z

Well, what a stir good old Mr Blair has caused with all this "price by the mile" nonsense. It doesn't really affect me as a "classic motorist", as my mileage is comparitively miniscule anyway.

However, quite apart from the various good arguments against such a scheme (and also glossing over the rather lame response, supposedly from the PM, which was appropriately and immediately marked as Junk by Hotmail) what really irritates me is a number of the green lobby who seem to think cars are the preserve of the rich and famous! "Cars are a luxury item," they cry. Apparently, poor people shouldn't have cars anyway, so raising the tax is no big deal.

Ugh?? That kind of dim-witted drivel can only have been written by some odd-ball daughter of Geldoff who already has more dollars than brain cells, but is still busily trying to deny it by hiding out in the Indonesian jungle, saving monkeys or some such!

I'm not sure what planet they live on, but here on Earth, particularly in the UK, cars are anything but luxury items. In fact they are the work horses of a nation, depended upon by young and old, rich and poor, for better or for worse. By way of an example, I just calculated (while forming this rather hurried rant) that buying a car saved me at least £100 this year. Furthermore it will save me a lot more than that next year, simply because I won't have to use the extortionately priced public transport system!

To quote myself (I quite like doing that):

In the UK people with a low income drive a car, because successive UK governments have put an end to [cheap, reliable public transport] by privatising and fragmenting our railways and other public transport mechanisms beyond recognition, allowing jokers like First Great Western to run up massive profits operating an awful service, by privatising what should never have been taken out of public hands - and for what? A few quid of some city banker's tax bill so they vote for you again in 2 years time!

Clearly, the British public transport system is no alternative to car travel, for rich or poor. Pricing people off the roads achieves nothing but confining low income folk to their locale. Don't feel sorry for me, because I can afford the train - I just don't, because it's a horrific waste of time and money!

So for those who say cars are a luxury item, pull your heads out of your behinds and look at the real issue here. The CAR is the ONLY viable means of transport in this country where the public transport system has been repeatedly raped by greedy and vote-hungry men. Until the government sorts that out, they should forget about driving people off the roads.

Blah! I'm going to the pub.

Spring Forward

2007-02-20T17:11:00.000Z

Well, I got the Lotus back on the road all by myself! I had a look at the throttle problem a couple of weeks ago, and on closer inspection I noticed three things:

1. What I thought was the throttle cable was actually the choke cable (how embarassing!)

2. The throttle cable is, in fact, nearly new.

3. The return spring is, in fact, very, very old!

You see the little hooks on the ends of the blue spring on the right in the photo? (Photo courtesy of Pated Springs, by the way.) Those hooks hold the torsion spring in place. On my Lotus, one goes through a hole in a piece of sheet metal, which appears to be something to do with holding the carburettors in place, and the other goes through the end of the throttle cable.

After a thorough forensic examination, I deduced that a combination of the metal being very old and my over-exuberant application of the throttle resulted in the hook at the throttle cable end sheering half off, thus causing the spring to dangle helplessly beneath the carburettors! That's why the throttle stuck open with alarming effect, half way around the M25.

On the plus side, enough of the spring was left to effect a decent repair with some garden wire, so not only is it now driveable again, I'm also in less of a hurry to take it for its service (though I really should sort that out soon anyway).

The Fiat lies with Bob right now. He's had it for a week now, so knowing Bob, he's nearly done!

One other piece of news. I'm not sure if I'm proud of this or not, but Honest John featured me (about two thirds of the way down, headline "...to hold you?") in his column in the Daily Telegraph. As an example of what happens if you don't give mechanics a deadline. Oops!

Happy New Year!

2007-01-16T11:35:00.000Z

Sorry this message is somewhat belated. I've changed jobs and been crazy busy! I still am, actually, but decided I really must post something in my blog. Especially since I now work in "Web 2.0 marketing", a decent junk of which is blog management! Very poor form to leave my own covered in dust and cobwebs.

Anyway, things are looking brighter at this end of the Christmas period. I have the Lotus back finally! It was running well, until I rather over-exuberantly applied the accelerator pedal and the throttle stuck open on the M25. It never rains...

So, next month it's going to Barry Ely for service, fluid change and fixing the now-sticking throttle. It's a fairly simple job so shouldn't cost too much. I'll have a quick go myself at the weekend, just to get things driveable.

Also the Fiat is getting valued on Thursday, so hopefully that will be back on the road by February too! Bob has quoted for the work and we know he'll do a good job.

Anyway, time still presses hard upon me, so I'd better keep it short.

If you get a chance, take a look at my latest project: Infield Parking. It's a NASCAR community based in the US. We're all very excited about it. It's going great guns!

A Long December

2006-12-07T10:43:00.000Z

As The Counting Crows once sang, a long December indeed it is proving to be. Still no Lotus, the Fiat is off the road too, so no classic motoring at all in the run-up to Christmas. All is sad, and the weather's been so nice too, adding insult to our collective injury! At least we got to ride our new bicycles more than we otherwise would've done.

So, lacking any news on the personal front, I shall instead reminisce about earlier events, namely my father and I visiting the Classic Car Show in the Birmingham NEC towards the tail end of October. We spent an entire day digging through the auto-jumble, admiring and observing all sorts of marques and models, chatting to various clubs staff and members and generally having a good old time.

I should note I would normally provide my own photo, but as per usual, I forgot my camera. Instead I have provided a photo I found through Google Images, which turned up a fantastic classic car photo collection on Flickr kept by a certain "tonylanciabeta". Click here for his full NEC collection on Flickr. At least next year I'll have a camera with me, since I have just received a rather nice Sony camera phone from O2, which is jolly decent of them! No longer shall that age-old excuse be employed.

As you can see from Tony's catalogue of photos, they really did have everything there. My father got rather excited about the various 3.0 litre Ford Capris on display (he used to have several - not all at once, mind you) and I spotted the distinctive (on account of it's paint job) Messerschmitt bubble car which used to be lying outside a store in Camden's Stable Market, but was now being lovingly restored by an enthusiastic bubble lover.

The whole event was extremely well organised and it was wonderful to see all the various clubs out in force. Top marks go to the Morris Minor Owners Club, who had the most impressive club stand by far, and some lovely examples on display.

On a side point, I was disappointed to see neither of the Lotus clubs had a Plus 2 on display. Shame. I know I'm biased, but I happen to think it's one of the prettier models. Maybe next year, eh...?

Oh, and one other thing. Does anyone actually buy cars at these events? The dealers were out in force too, and while one or two seemed to have reasonably priced cars on their stands, many were clearly having a great big belly-laugh at the expense of anyone stupid enough to whip out a cheque book. They must have more money than sense!

With Heavy Heart

2006-11-13T15:10:00.000Z

It is a sad November post. Tissues at the ready.

The Lotus is still not back from the mechanic. I don't know what the hell is going on, but he's clearly having serious bother with the electrics. I'm really not sure what to do now. I can't fetch it while it isn't running without incurring further expense, but I'm starting to lose faith in this man's ability to fix it... Ho hum.

And the Rover has a stuck electric window. More hassle.

But far, far worse is the predicament of the Fiat. Sadly, the baby of the family was rather cruelly bashed in the bum by a Vauxhall Vectra, driven by someone to whom the concept of looking in the general direction of travel is clearly alien.

It all happened yesterday afternoon as we were exiting Hatfield House after visiting a Christmas Fayre. We were stood waiting to turn left on to the A414 when **BAM** ... what the ...? The silly idiot behind had just driven straight in to the back of us, and without any mitigating circumstances whatsoever! Just plain carelessness! I was so angry, but to my credit I refrained from attempting to strangle the individual, who clearly should've been sporting a white stick - I can't think of any other reason she would've collided with a stationary vehicle in such a manner.

The Fiat still ran well enough to get us home, but some coachwork is clearly required and I have a horrible suspicion the engine may have moved a little, judging by the nasty groaning noises and the way 1st and 3rd gears are now tighter than they were.

Suffice it to say, we're absolutely gutted! Apart from anything else, we now have the serious hassle of getting the repairs done. And to cap it all off, we both have whiplash. With such a light car, no headrests, low seat backs and seatbelts which don't retain you, whiplash is inevitable, even with very minor impacts.

So ends a miserable month of motoring. We're off to nurse our sore necks and curse our poor fortune. Roll on 2007!

Bon Voyage, Et Bon Chance!

2006-10-04T10:00:00.000Z

An old school friend of mine, already infamous for his hare-brained schemes, is at it again. Tim Rennie (AKA Binner Benny Boy) and his encourageable wife, Kully, are attempting to travel from Peckham to Pakistan in a Morris Minor. I have already noted they should be using a Fiat 500 to ensure their safe and timely arrival, but they ignored my sound advice.

Their website includes a diary charting their progress (slow and painful, of course) and other information about the trip. They are asking for sponsorship and all proceeds go to the Nottinghamshire Leukaemia Appeal, a truly worthy cause. I'm going to sponsor them, whether they make it or not.

Unfortunately it seems they have already encountered mechanical issues on the edge of Greece and are considering calling it all off, which is a real shame. I've drawn the attention of the Morris Minor Owners Club to their plight, and I hope someone can assist them before it is too late.

See? I said they should've taken a Fiat...

Good luck, guys! Don't give in!

Good Time Had By All

2006-09-12T07:42:00.000Z

The Taste Italia event, organised for and by Little Haven Children's Hospice (and not forgetting the Taste Italia team, whose generosity allowed it to happen) was a really lovely day out. Believe it or not, the British government supports hospices for adults but does not support hospices for chidren. I know nothing of the detail behind this seemingly ludicrous piece of policy, but it certainly appears to be grossly unfair and leaves organisations like Little Haven on their own to raise £1.5million a year just to stay afloat and care for the terminally ill children in their charge, so it really was for a worthy cause. The club will be making a donation and so will I.

Anyway, that's the serious stuff out of the way! It was great to see all the Fiat 500s lined up on the lawn and the weather was spectacularly good for the time of year. And someone brought a beautiful old Alfa along as well, which we were proud to have in our midst (see photo).

The food, wine and the setting were all as perfect as the weather and it was lovely to meet more people from the club too.

And I discovered the proprietor of Taste Italia's son has a newly imported 1971 Citroen DS which has the number plate directly after the one on the Fiat, with just a one number difference. Turns out Chelmsford DVLA hand out old plates in order and his Citroen was registered shortly after our Fiat and was next in line for 1971 plate allocation. What were the chances of meeting like that??

Sadly, the Lotus is still laid up at the mechanic's in Ongar. It seems the electrical problem causing the inability to start is proving a swine to track down! I hope to get it back soon though.

Taking Advantage

2006-09-06T11:08:00.000Z

Wow, a whole month without posting. Terribly sorry about that, folks. I've been extremely busy and I won't bore you with the details.

Anyway, the main news is I've decided it's time these fuel-guzzling freeloaders of mine started paying their way! That's right, the cars are going to have to earn a living like everybody else (with the notable exception of the cat) - I'm putting them to work.

The Top Gear "sexiest car" article set things in motion once more. About a year ago I spoke to a company called the Classic Car Agency, who keep a register of classic cars available for hire to film and advertising companies (for a surprisingly modest one-off fee) about getting listed. The way it works is you sign up, they act as your agent and get your car booked for movies, photoshoots, TV programs, etc. They then take a commission from your fee, if everything goes according to plan. Fair enough, eh?

Of course, being me and being busy, I never got around to it with the Lotus, but after all the fuss about the Fiat 500, and with the 50th anniversary next year, I revisited them and noticed they didn't have one on their books. Figuring this might be a good opportunity, I filled in the forms and registered both the Fiat and the Lotus.

Sadly, I have no bookings as yet, but hopefully I'll get a few a year which will at least pay for the maintenance. It would be a great help! We'll see I suppose.

On a not entirely unrelated note, the organisers of an "Italian Summer" event for Little Haven Children's Hospice have contacted the Fiat 500 Club and requested the presence of ten Fiat 500s to spice up their garden party. Being reasonably local, we are happy to oblige, since they're offering free entry and it's all for a good cause. I hope the weather holds!

Sexiest Car In The World

2006-07-26T09:33:00.000Z

That's what James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond (along with the rest of the Top Gear Magazine team) had to say about the Fiat 500 the other week! I quote:

"[The Fiat 500] has the allure of the wholesome and uncomplicated.
"Everyone, from strapping blokes to fainting flowers of womanhood, looks sexually charged behind its wheel.
"It works irrespective of age, beauty, wealth and position; even a nun in a 500 seems to telegraph a faint tingle of the procreative urge."

Interesting! It's a good thing I trust my girlfriend, as she drives the Fiat far more than I do. I'm not convinced the car itself is actually 'sexy', but who am I to argue with the experts? It is very, very cute, there's no denying it.

Anyway, needless to say there's been a sudden upturn in interest in the little Fiat. All of a sudden everyone knows what it is. We got a lot of attention before, but now we get even more! The club's been busy too, handling all the queries, and the message board has had a sudden influx of people asking how easy they are to import, etc.

I'm sure all the fuss will die down soon enough. And then comes the 50th Anniversary. We really must make sure we're in or around Turin (Torino) for that!

With Flying Colours

2006-07-19T10:56:00.000Z

I took the Fiat down to Wallinhurst Garage in Billericay last weekend for its MOT and I'm pleased to say it sailed through, no problems. There's a bit of corrosion underneath which needs sorting out (no surprise there!) but nothing unsafe, so we're good for another year. Hurrah!

The garage was actually recommended to us by a local classic car mechanic called Graham King, who always takes vehicles in his charge to Wallinhurst Garage for their MOTs. And we weren't disappointed. It's a great little place.

The manager, a chap called Chris, did the MOT himself as the usual tester wasn't in on Saturday. He was very thorough but also very fair and friendly too. And the lads working at the garage seemed to enjoy seeing the little Fiat. By the time we came to collect it they were referring to it as "the little one".

Chris even threw in a new bulb for the number plate lamp! Can't be bad. We will be going back there again. Good call, Graham.

Happy Holidays

2006-07-12T10:37:00.000Z

Apologies for the extended silence. I think I needed a brief blogging break after all the excitement of seeing a ludicrously quiet diesel-powered Audi win Le Mans. If they all go diesel we won't need our ear plugs next year!

Unfortunately, the Lotus remains sad and lonely, parked up on a quiet side street under a grey tarpaulin. A local mechanic is due to come and (hopefully) fix it next week at some point. The sooner the better. It needs a run and it needs putting out of harms way in a garage.

As for Le Mans, we had a great time. Happily mum lent us her little MG-F (pictured) for the week, which was very very kind of her and greatly appreciated. It made things a lot more fun, especially since the weather was glorious, so baking in the new runabout wouldn't have been very enjoyable.

The people were friendly, the accommodation was cute and authentic, the food was good, the racing was great and the weather was just stunning. And the cars... wow! It seems nearly everyone coming to Le Mans brings a Porsche, a Ferrari or a classic of some description. It was incredible to see so many gorgeous cars in one place! It was like a mobile car show.

Dad's XJ-S purred to France and back with no trouble at all. Not that I thought it would be any trouble, but dad was very nervous about it for some reason. One of our fellow guests at the gite can appreciate that. He too came all the way from the UK in a classic car, but he was so nervous about it lasting long enough to take him home again, he practically refused to drive it all week. And would you believe it was a Lotus Elan +2S? What a shame mine couldn't make it.

By the way, I've rather foolishly gone and let the MOT expire on the Fiat. *sigh* I now have to find a sympathetic local MOT station where they won't quibble too much about the headlamp lenses. That's my job for the weekend.

Highs And Lows

2006-06-13T14:26:00.000Z

Well, tomorrow we leave for the Le Mans 24 Hour race. Which will be great fun, I'm sure. However the edge is taken off of the occasion by an unfortunate problem with the Lotus.

I was so looking forward to taking that car down across France, but it seems with rotten timing (or perhaps good timing, since it didn't happen in the middle of France!) the fuel pump appears to have given up the ghost.

I can't quite see exactly where it's coming from, but petrol is pouring all over the tarmac as soon as you start the engine, and it looks like the fuel pump is the offending item...

This is particularly irritating, as the car has just had a £430 look-over by a mechanic who has cleaned the carbs and supposedly fully checked the fuel system, since I already had a leak I asked him to look in to.

Oh well. Suffice it to say, I'm gutted and the Lotus isn't going anywhere.

Under The Hammer

2006-06-02T14:24:00.000Z

I happened across this website yesterday. It's a classic cars auctioneering company. I happened across it because they had mis-identified a Fiat 500F as a 500D (this is such a common mistake, since a lot of people don't seem to know there even is a 500F). An error, I might add, which was genuine and put right on the day before the sale, though it seems from their records it didn't go.

Anyway, I digress. The point of posting this site is they regularly auction a wide variety of classic cars and keep excellent online records of the auctions. As a result, it serves both as a place to look at good examples of classic cars and a sort of price guide for owners at the same time.

Plus every now and again something comes up which makes me think I should give them a call... Look at this beauty going under the hammer in Derbyshire on 26th July. I always thought the old Mercs fetched more than that...

Not Much Luck

2006-05-31T09:28:00.000Z

Every time we take the Fiat out at the moment the heavens seem to tear open in to a torrential downpour, leaving me scrambling for a cloth to stem the all-too-familiar water dribble from the corner of the windscreen.

It's extremely irritating. The weather keeps doing this "I'm a lovely day... oh no I'm not!" trick... like a cat inviting you to rub his tummy, then clamping his teeth and claws in to your hand as soon as you accept the invitation.

And to cap it all off, on Monday afternoon the garage door stuck open. So there I was, in a hail storm, at the end of May, dripping wet, wrestling with a stuck garage door while my girlfriend wiped the car down. (I failed, by the way - the council are fixing the door on Friday and the car is on the street.)

Anyway, weather aside, I checked the "hand accelerator" and it is there. I forgot to try it though, as I got caught up in other things. I also checked for the paint code on behalf of a Fiat 500 Club member who is looking to paint his newly restored Fiat 500 body the same colour. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it, but he believes the Fiat colour is Avorio, which makes sense - it's the Italian word for ivory.

I also found the drains mentioned on the Fiat 500 Club boards which channel the water away from the windscreen corners and are intended to prevent the water dribble from the corner of the windscreen.

I say I found them. That's all I did, however, as we were anxious to get going and the pipes had been painted so pulling them off wasn't such a simple task. I'm also well aware of what happens when you pull old, perished rubber pipes off. They invariably refuse to return to their original position. So it may be wise to purchase some replacement pipework before pulling the old stuff off.

I've also just this moment realised I forgot to make a note of the engine number. D'oh!

Cruise Control??

2006-05-24T12:18:00.000Z

I discovered something amazing the other day. Something I would never have believed. The Fiat 500 has cruise control, or rather, what is known as a 'hand accelerator'.

This little device is in the form of a cable and a lever (so far as I've read - I'm yet to check for it in ours, but I'm assured I will find it). It is rather simple really. You pull the lever and it opens the throttle, simply locking in place (a bit like a choke) where you leave it.

As one club member observed, "it means you can stand up through the sunroof and still drive"... Quite. I shan't be travelling anywhere with you, Mike!

The down (and rather dangerous) side to this device is it has exactly the same effect as dropping a brick on the accelerator pedal. There are no nice disengage safety features when you brake or anything like that. Oh no. Neat as it is, only a true tricolore, young (probably male) Italian would ever use this 'feature' in normal driving conditions.

Though it comes in very handy if you ever have temporary problems with the idle speed.

Italian Cars Day

2006-05-15T09:42:00.000Z

As I mentioned previously, on Saturday 6th May we hopped in our little Fiat 500 and drove over to one of the most notorious bikers hang-outs in the UK - the Ace Café.

For the uninitiated, the Ace is where all the Rockers used to meet in the 1950s and 60s, up on the outskirts of London, for wild parties and street racing on the North Circular London bypass road. (I initially said the Mods and the Rockers, but as a 500 Club member, John Briggs, rightly pointed out, the Mods weren't welcome!)

Still a very popular haunt for bikers, it has also become home for all motorists of a nostalgic persuasion, and has both classic car and bike days.

We arrived (fashionably) late for the Italian Cars Day and the weather was dreadful, so unfortunately all the Ferraris, Lancias, Maseratis, etc. I was hoping to see didn't show up. Wimps!

But top marks to the Fiat 500 club who turned out in half-decent numbers in spite of the rain. It was lovely to meet everyone and I also discovered we aren't the only ones with a leaky windscreen. As I have long suspected, there is a design flaw allowing water to collect in the corner of the windscreen. Over time the seal fails, then water gets in and corrosion begins, leading to a common failure in the car's ability to not drip water on the passenger's knee!

We also got an excellent tip from the club chairman, Carl. Unclip the roof and open every door, hatch and lid before locking the garage to let everything breathe and give the seals a break while you're not using the car.

The photograph shows Carl's Fiat 500 with rather fetching trailer too. It's made up of half of another (previously rotten) 500 he chopped especially after stripping for spares. (Sadly some of these little Fiats are simply beyond repair, and this is a good, innovative use of what would otherwise have been scrap metal. Bob has one he wants to turn in to a sofa.)

Unfortunately, ours isn't in the picture because we were parked behind (with a gorgeous original Abarth - which had already left before we braved the weather to take photos... more's the pity). And I have to say, we were rather shamed by the immaculate condition of everyone elses Fiats. But at least ours was the only left hand drive there.

We now have to decide if we can be bothered to drive all the way to Beale Park from Epping in a Fiat 500 a week on Monday. It will be a nice day, but it's a pretty long way...

The Runabout Is Dead

2006-05-11T15:42:00.000Z

Long Live the Runabout! Actually, it's not 'dead', strictly speaking. It's for sale, as I have gone upmarket and bought myself a rather nice Rover 600 as a replacement. Unfortunately, this means I have to endure endless 'flat cap' jokes and various other amusing jibes. From my father, of all people. The nerve of the man!

In case anyone is interested, the Citroen is going for £125 on Autotrader.

What about the Italian Cars Day?? Patience. I'll get there. Maybe tomorrow.

The Golden Age Of Advertising

2006-05-05T10:08:00.000Z

The cheesy smiles, smart pin-stripe suits, boys in caps and 'short trousers', knee-length dresses, perfect families with super-modern accessories. Hilarious. I found this website with a collection of old Fiat 500 ads from all over Europe. It's well worth having a quick flick through, if you have five minutes. As someone who worked in advertising until recently, I always enjoy flicking through old advertising. It makes me smile.

And while I'm posting links, I also came across this website with a reasonably accurate account of all Fiat 500 models from the 1936 Topolino onwards, including visual representations of the changes from model to model. All good stuff.

May Day Fun

2006-05-02T09:04:00.000Z

I think it's fair to say Spring has officially Sprung. We have flowers exploding all over the garden, the sun is shining, my grass seed is growing (in spite of the best efforts of the the local pigeon population), I haven't worn my winter coat for a week or two now and haven't needed to. Even the lazy, good-for-nothing cat (who has utterly failed to prevent avian seed theft) has ventured in to the garden temporarily, if only to uproot some carefully tended bulbs. At least he did a little of his molting outside for once!

So this Bank Holiday weekend the Lotus took a spin over to Derbyshire for a stag do. It was the first time I'd driven it since it was worked on over the Winter - in fact, the first time in months - so I was very glad to give it a good 100 miles on the clock to see how things feel.

Firstly, it starts like an absolute dream with the new starter motor! I am extremely pleased I no longer have to spend half an hour with a pair of jump-leads trying to coax and tease it in to life every time I want to go anywhere. It's a vast improvement.

Once going, I think it runs a bit leaner, but when you get to 3,000 RPM and put your foot to the floor it leaps in to life with impressive vigour. Nipping by people in 4th was definitely easier now the twin Delorto carbs have been cleaned and tuned.

The only remaining (or rather, newly developed) problem is the clutch master cylinder seems to be doing something funny. The clutch simply disappears temporarily. I need to get that fixed before we go to France in June, but it's not a big job. More expense.

Saturday will be busy. Weather permitting, we're off the Italian Cars Day at the legendary Ace Café on London's North Circular road. I'm also replacing the runabout. I've seen a nice Ford Escort Estate I want to look at either this evening or tomorrow, if the chap still has it. I'm fed up of driving around in a battered, noisy old Citroen AX!

Drive It

2006-04-25T09:37:00.000Z

Apparently Sunday was "Drive It Day", and to quote Fiat 500 Club board regular, paul1947, "we are being called upon by the great and good to take our cars out and about to raise public awareness of vintage and classic cars".

I didn't. On Sunday it was pissing it down with rain, and rain is not a good thing for a 1971 Fiat 500. Especially not lots of rain. Humbug!

And so "Drive It Day" was a total wash-out in the South East of England. Mind you, apparently (and rather perversely, given the usual state of affairs) the North West of England was bathed in glorious sunshine, so I hope Northern classic car owners took full advantage. Many South-dwellers less wimpy than myself also braved the changeable weather.

Other news-worthy events. I went out in the Lotus a few weeks ago. That is, my father drove me around in the Lotus because I accidently messed up the insurance renewal and was not legally permitted to drive myself. Anyway, it's running very sweetly and starts first time with it's new upgraded starter motor, timing adjustments and cleaned carbs. Thank you Neil (current chap charged with keeping the Lotus ticking). I'm still waiting for the bill. Eek!

Also, though we didn't make "Drive It Day", the Fiat did take an outing on the Saturday before, which was bathed in glorious sunshine. We made the mistake of going to a garden centre - just to look around, of course.

Three plants, compost, pots, watering can and grass seed later, we had an interesting 3D jigsaw to complete in order to get everything in the Fiat. Much to the amusement of the good folk coming and going from the establishment in assorted 4x4 and people carrier things. Let me just say, it's a good job the roof opens.

We Found It!

2006-04-11T14:12:00.000Z

The garage! We know where it is! Hallelujah! There is a God!

I'm going to map the garage sites of Epping (I now know every single bloody one) and post the map to the District Council, suggesting they make multiple copies and hand them to new garage keepers so other people don't end up taking a week to find their newly rented property!

Still, it's a nice garage and a quiet spot. And we still have the keys to the old one, in case the County Council change their minds and don't knock them down after all.

Filthy Habit

2006-04-07T16:17:00.000Z

Remember Uncle Buck's car? Every time he started the damned thing it billowed smoke like a factory chimney. The Fiat must've seen the movie too. They are exactly the antics it has decided to mimick to the point where it is really beginning to get embarassing.

Picture the scene - it's a busy supermarket car park. We put the shopping on the back seat, hop in the Fiat and ready ourselves to depart (which involves all the usual faffing with seatbelts, fumbling for battery isolator key, &c.)

Meanwhile, and unbeknownst to us, a middle-aged lady wanders over to the car parked behind us and starts to transfer shopping from trolley to trunk (or boot, or whatever you want to call it). We reversed in, she reversed in, so there we are, back to back.

Oblivious, my girlfriend gives it a quick pump of the gas, turn of the key and the little 500cc motor ticks in to life... with an enormous black cloud of oil smoke, completely engulfing afforementioned unfortunate shopper. Oops. We make a cheerful apology and a hasty exit.

I really must get it fixed. While the rest of the country obsesses on quitting smoking, our Italian baby starts! Typical!

In the meantime I'm waiting for it to develop the other Uncle Buckesque trait - the window-shattering back-fire when it stops.

Garages - The Full Story

2006-04-04T13:04:00.000Z

Look. No 'N'. I'm proud of me for breaking that vicious cycle. Now, I know I digress from the topic of motoring slightly with this (and the previous) post, but I simply must tell you how things panned out with the Council(s). And I strongly suspect the local paper would like this too.

Now a garage is a fairly simple structure (see photo - those are actually in Slough, probably most famous for The Office - but you get the idea). A concrete shed with a thin metal door suitable for keeping a car in. Unfortunately, most garages are owned by local Councils and the upshot of this is the bureaucracy and incompetence surrounding their management is often jaw-dropping.

When I moved to Epping last July I intended to take on the tenancy of the garage the previous owner occupied. He had done this five years previous when he took on the cottage himself and didn't seem to think it would be a problem. He informed us the Council tended to give preference to the cottages where I live, because we have no off street parking.

There was just one piece of information missing - he didn't specify which Council. Being new to the town, we assumed he meant the District Council since they have the most imposing presence and fanciest building.

So off I go, bravely and naively in to the realms of local government to try and claim my garage tenancy. Nine months, three letters, multiple emails and telephone conversations later, I am beginning to decipher what actually happened.

Under the impression the District Council rented the garages behind the church in Epping I contacted them first, explaining the situation, telling them I wished to take tenancy of the garage behind the church - as the previous property owner had before - and was this possible? Here's what they said:

No. We'll send you some forms so you can join the list.

And here's what they actually should have said:

We have to confess, we don't have anything to do with that garage site. In fact, it is controlled by the Town Council but I'm sure they can tell you what their policy is if you give them a call.

Bit of a difference, wouldn't you say? If they had told me in the first place the garages weren't actually theirs, this whole saga would never have happened.

Onwards.

The District Council proceeded to send me forms to apply for a place on a garage site they didn't even run. The forms arrived, I called the District Council to ask the proper name of the garage site and was told to put "behind the church" (this was their second opportunity to tell me the garages weren't actually theirs), filled them in and sent them off. There. I'm on the list for a garage in Epping, with a stated preference of the site behind the church. All I can do now is wait.

In the meantime, our good neighbours to the right of our cottage both move to Chelmsford, vacating a garage on the site. One of them popped over and said we should call the Council as there was a garage up and he was sure we'd get it. Again, I called the District Council about the garages behind the church, only to be tersely told to wait my turn. (A third opportunity to tell me they didn't even look after those garages!!)

I gave up at this point, I resigned myself to being on the list until something came up. So imagine my shock when I discover the District Council are saying they have a glut of garages in Epping (see previous post). Now, and only now, do our heroes inform me:

They don't look after the garages behind the church - the Town Council do
They have loads of garages, but thought we only wanted one on the Chapel Road site

I wanted to scream, cry and laugh all at once. I didn't even know where Chapel Road was! Why would I want a garage there specifically??

But at least there was now light at the end of the tunnel. The District Council immediately offered me a garage on their Springfield 'C' site, which I took because a garage fifteen minutes away on foot is far superior to no garage at all when you want to keep a classic car dry.

I picked up the keys this morning, however the lady I spoke to didn't know where the garages were. Of course! What else should I expect from a local government organisation which kept me on the line for nine months trying to rent me a garage they didn't own?

There are three council garage sites somewhere in the south end of Epping, down the hill - Springfield A, B and C. I drove all over the place this morning and found A. I continued, in and out of every side street, and as I was verging on giving up I found B. I then gave up. I still have no bloody idea where C is and neither do the Council. I've spotted a likely location on Google Maps using the satellite imagery (see the sandy vertical strip in the centre of the shot) which I shall be investigating, as it's the last likely location I can see anywhere in the whole town. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, I finally knew who really did look after the garages behind the church - the Town Council - so I could call them and ask about getting one. The sucker punch?

The Town Council only rent the garages behind the church so can't help. They don't own them. And the County Council (who do own them) have ear-marked them for demolition. Of course, we don't know that for sure yet, because much in the same way as the District Council don't actually know where their own garages are, the County Council don't know what they do with theirs - instead they referred me to a private property management company who look after all that stuff for them. And this company will only deal with me in writing. So that's where my Council Tax is going, eh? Ho hum.

New Garage

2006-03-27T11:03:00.000Z

I really must start my next post with some letter other than an 'N' - it's reaching epidemic proportions. Anyway...

Something like 6 months ago I requested an application form from the District Council in Epping to put myself on the waiting list for a local Council garage. I received the form, filled in most of it, but got to a part where it asked me to name my preferred site. Unsure as to what to put down, I called the council.

I got through to a perfectly helpful (I'm guessing middle-aged) lady to whom I explained I was interested in the garages behind the church, but anything in Epping would be fine. She cheerfully clucked at me that the waiting list for those garages was "years long". (No particularly surprise to me, given the scarcity of garages in Southwell, Notts. where my parents and the Lotus live.) But nevertheless, she assured me if I wrote "behind the church" on my application, everything would be fine and dandy. So I did.

So 6 months on, imagine my surprise at finding this news item on the Council website:

Renting a garage in Epping Forest district
Do you want somewhere to park your car?

Well, yes actually! I thought I was on your list!

Council garages are available now at discounted rents in Buckhurst Hill, Epping, Loughton, Shelley (Ongar) and Waltham Abbey.
We own around 3,000 garages throughout the Epping Forest district. The normal rent is £12.50 per fortnight for council tenants, and £14.68 for other residents. Some garage blocks are in high demand and have waiting lists, others are less popular. These low demand garages are available now at a discount of 50% off the normal rent for the first year.

Is that so? Then why on God's green Earth has no one called me and asked me if I want one of them, since I'm on "the list"?? I was a little irritated by this, and sent a terse (admittedly) but fair email to the Housing Services division of the Council to that effect. Their reply?

Dear Mr Harvey,

When you completed your application form you stated you would like to be considered for a garage behind the Church, these garages are not owned by the Council so I put you on the waiting list to our nearest site, Chapel Road. As you are now willing to accept a garage not so close to your address, I would be able to offer you a garage on our Springfield 'C' site as we have a few vacancies there at the moment.

Woah woah woah...! So let me get this straight. Firstly, the garages I wanted to rent (the ones I dicussed on the telephone) don't even belong to the council? Instead they signed me up to a different list for some garages I didn't even know existed? And no one thought to mention that to me?? Secondly, now I stand accused of changing my mind, according to the Council representative concerned... what the...?

Well that really is rather irritating. The fact is I *never* said I was unwilling to accept any garage except for the ones across the street. In fact, I specifically remember stating exactly the opposite on the telephone! And since the form asked me to state a preference, I had no idea that in doing so I was completely excluding myself from being offered any other garages in Epping.

Naturally, I replied - politely - explaining how the misunderstanding came about and suggesting how they might rectify this so it doesn't happen in the future:

For the record (and by way of feedback - I appreciate there was clearly a misunderstanding here) from my perspective I was never aware I was only on the list for one garage site - when I spoke to council officials previously on the telephone (and in all dealings on this matter) I have always stated behind the church was ideal location, but not essential and was given the impression that was understood and I would be considered for any garages in Epping. Evidentally this was not the case, and had I not seen the news item on your website I would've been on the list for the Chapel Road site until doomsday while other Epping garages lay empty.
The confusion was exacerbated by the wording of the council form I filled out when applying, which gave me the impression I was stating a preference for a garage behind the church - not accidentally excluding myself from being offered any other options in the town. Might I suggest adding an extra option on the form - a checkbox allowing people to express an interest in other sites if offered? This would avoid such confusion in the future.
Thanks again for getting back to me so swiftly, and I look forward to taking on a garage.

The response to my suggestion? Deafening silence. Now, call me old fashioned, but I would expect at least a "thank you for your feedback and we'll bear it in mind" - even if it's an insincere load of old cobblers, it is still better than nothing. I didn't even get an acknowledgement. Rubbish! If a private company carried on like that they wouldn't have very happy customers.

Never mind. The good news is it looks like we have a garage again for the Fiat. The bad news is my lack of faith in civil servants is once again proven completely justified. *sigh*

New Plates

2006-03-19T19:45:00.000Z

The new number plates were fitted to the Fiat this morning and they look good. The front one takes a bit of getting used to as it is much larger than the Milanese plate that was on the car.

For reasons known only to himself, the first owner drilled holes through the front panel to fit the original plates. We're now stuck with that decision, unless we fill and respray the front panel or replace it entirely - neither of which are a particularly good idea at this moment in time.

Normally people hang British plates beneath the front bumper on UK registered Fiat 500s, so it doesn't look like the car is sporting a moustache. This is infinitely preferable in my opinion, but sadly not an option right now. One thing I can do is procure a motocycle plate for the front at some point. I don't think it's technically "legal" , but no one cares anyway and it will look a lot less imposing on such a tiny car.

We also had a bit of a dilemma as to how we might put holes through our new ironmongery - we expected them to come pre-drilled (since we left the originals with the shopkeeper) but to our dismay they weren't and the chap we bought them from wasn't sure where we could get them drilled.

I wasn't comfortable drilling the holes myself with my cheap Homebase power drill and free metal bit (of dubious quality). So I ended up taking a lump hammer and a 6" nail to the metalwork which is, as I suspected, actually a very effective and controlled way to put holes in thin sheet metal, even if it sounds a little hairy! Infinitely preferable to a drill slipping, or some similarly ugly mishap.

So there you go - fully street legal in British trim. Very nice. And for good measure we went for a nice long drive and got an "English breakfast" for lunch. Yum!

News Update

2006-03-17T14:15:00.000Z

Not much has happened in the world of classic motoring over the last month. The weather has been dreadful, so the Lotus has been in the workshop getting a new starter motor, an MOT and a tune up in readiness for the summer.

The Fiat has been holed up in the garage with no number plates on it while we wait for the black and silver British plates to arrive. We're taking advantage of our remaining time with a garage to make sure everything is street legal. Still looking for another garage, but it's looking bleak I'm afraid. I may be reduced to a card in the Post Office. You never know!

I'm looking forward to driving the Lotus for the first time in ages next weekend (25th/26th March) and can't wait to see if all the mechanical tinkerings have made much difference.

And we pick up the new plates for the Fiat tomorrow morning, so I will fit them and take it out for a spin with British plates and tax disk for the first time! Hurrah!

More next week.

Homeless

2006-02-17T13:13:00.000Z

Oh great calamity! Oh woe is me! For Epping Town Council have decided not to renew their lease with the District Council on the plot of land behind the church in Epping.

So?

That very plot of land is where Epping Town Council has three rows of garages, one of which houses our Fiat, all of which will be demolished on, or shortly after, 1st April 2006. I'm sure the District Council will then sell the land to developers who will shoe-horn twenty three "luxury" homes on to the plot and sell them for £749,999 each.

All of which I couldn't care less about. I will be street parking our beloved Fiat 500, something about which I am not best pleased. And I suppose we will all be placed on the same council list for the remaining Epping garages, which is much longer than any normal man's arm and has just been about doubled in length by recent events. In other words, there is little chance of the council rehoming the tenants of the garages they are demolishing any time in the next five years!

I am now trying to procure a garage privately, but alas private garages to rent seem to be about as rare as Fiat 500 roof racks.

Ho hum.

A Rose By Any Other Name

2006-01-09T13:44:00.000Z

Would it really smell as sweet? What am I babbling about? Bear with me ...

My father is a Daily Telegraph reader. Terrible habit, I know, but what can you do ... ? One thing it does seem to do very well though is the motoring section. Which seems to be about the only bit he reads. He has an Honest John quote for every occasion!

So when I visited for the weekend before Christmas he had saved an article for me. And courtesy of all these newspapers publishing online these days, I can share it with you - "Why Buy An MX-5?"

Now let's get one thing straight. The MX-5 is actually a corking little motor. It's modelled on the original Lotus Elan of the 1960s - that's why it's so popular. It represents classic motoring with modern reliability, and it's the car which delivers the most bang for your budget ... until recently, that is.

Enter Spyder Cars. They will take an Elan +2 (like mine, though I wouldn't cut up such a nice example) and throw away everything but the bodyshell and the interior. Those bits they will stick on top of their own custom chassis, complete with 2.0 litre Ford Zetec engine for about the same money as a new MX-5.

Wha .... ?? So, you have a brand new car and a classic Lotus Elan all at the same time. Wonderful! Alternative to running a classic +2S? I don't believe so. The Spyder Cars Lotus conversion I would buy. As a day car. But from my perspective, there is no way on Earth you can replace a genuine, well kept classic with a modern conversion. The rose would smell more like an orchid. Still very nice, don't get me wrong, but just not the same.

If the company I work for offer me a £20,000 company car allowance tomorrow though, I know exactly where I'm going ...

Photograph courtesy of Practical Classics.

Taxed And Plated

2006-01-03T13:31:00.000Z

I just thought I'd note the DVLA sent through the UK license plate letter (indeed, we've been assigned an old 1971 'J' plate) and the free, "Historic", tax disc for the Fiat. The steps I detailed previously in "Done And Dusted" are indeed correct at this present time and we had everything processed without issue.

At the moment the Fiat is still carrying Italian plates and tax information, as I don't see the point of displaying a UK tax disc with Italian plates. It's more likely to attract the attention of some traffic warden like that than it is with all Italian markings - and at the end of the day, if I get a producing order everything is UK-legal. So, next weekend off to a number plate manufacturer to get our black and white (well, silver really) plates made up!

My only problem now is going to be finding someone who is prepared to do me a motorcycle plate for the front. The one on it at the moment is a slightly smaller size than is strictly legal. Hmmmm ...

They Must Be Mad

2005-12-21T18:50:00.000Z

What happens when you take a standard Fiat 500, rip out everything, put the stripped bodyshell (with newly flared wheel arches, of course) back on a custom racing chassis and fit a super-light, 150bhp, Ducati 999R motorcycle engine in the boot? You have the F500, perhaps the most ridiculous supercar known to man.

It will do 0-60mph (0-100kph) in under 4 seconds. It is limited to 120mph (195kph). It has the most ludicrous power to weight ratio in the known universe and better performance than a Ferrari Enzo. Indeed its makers, racing engineers Hartham, refer to it as "truly a miniature Ferrari in every sense".

This sort of insanity and irresponsible engineering is very likely to get people killed. But they will die with the smile to end all smiles on their face if they do it at 120mph in an F500. Fantastic. If I had the spare cash, I'd order one today.

And you've got to love the badging.

Done And Dusted

2005-12-19T14:14:00.000Z

I've finally done it! I've completed all the DVLA paperwork, the Customs paperwork and the insurance documentation and the Fiat is on its way to receiving UK plates.

This process is in fact simpler than you might imagine for a classic car. It does still require some research however. Fortunately for you, if you live in the UK and you are bringing a classic car in from within the EU, I've done the research for you.

Purchasing Your Car

All the usual business applies here when selecting your vehicle. Once you have decided this is the car for you and set about purchasing it, make sure you end up with the legal equivalent of the V5 log book for the country you're in. This is both proof of ownership and proof of age, which is very important later on.

In many EU countries the legal transfer of ownership must be carried out by a special type of solicitor (not like the UK, where a green slip and a handshake is enough!) Don't forget to check what the local laws are regarding transfer of property, and if you find you do have to hire such a parasite (I mean, individual), factor this in when setting your budget. It will cost a few hundred pounds.

Getting Your Car Home

So, vehicle paid for (corresponding backs scratched) and legal paperwork in hand, it's time to head for England! Your best bet is usually by ferry, so most people head for the nearest UK-serving ferry port. Note, if you have bought a particularly slow vehicle (such as a Fiat 500) I strongly recommend staying off European motorways, unless of course you are seeking the ultimate cure for constipation.

Fresh off the boat in your chosen UK ferry port, proudly sporting your newly purchased classic car, you can pretty much expect to drive through Customs and off home without any issues - they're not in the business of bothering people driving old cars with foreign plates. Unless afforementioned cars are stuffed with canabis.

Getting An MOT

That's the next job. An MOT should be sought immediately and can be done on the chassis number. Also while odometers reading in kilometres are technically illegal in the UK, this is not part of the MOT test, so the car will pass without modification. Do, however, strategically position little triangular bits of black tape on the headlamp glass to correct the angle of the beam for British roads, or it will fail.

Headlamps will be set up for the "wrong" side of the road. Of course, the reality is most classic car headlamps in original condition are about a dazzling as bicycle lights so, post-MOT, ghastly tape can be removed without unduly upsetting your fellow motorists. However it is preferable to set the lamps up correctly for driving on the left.

Getting Insured

Once again, UK insurance can be obtained using the chassis number. Here it is a case of "buyer beware". BIBA themselves (shame on them!) put me through to a bunch of crooks who were going to charge me £200 for one month of insurance by chassis number, on the basis it was "specialist" insurance. This is nonsense. I contacted my usual classic insurer of choice, Footman James, who immediately covered the car on its chassis number for the same fee as I would've been charged to cover it with a UK plate.

Paying Your Taxes

Or indeed, not. There is nothing to pay on a second-hand classic car, as VAT is considered to have been paid in the EU member state when the vehicle was new. And there's no import duty because you're within the EU. All you need to do is obtain and fill in all the details you can on a VAT-414 form from Her Majesty's Revenues & Customs. This is available online. It will ask you for a UK license plate, but leave this blank and send the VAT-414 with your DVLA application (covered next) and the DVLA will fill it in and forward it to Customs.

Getting UK Plates

The final step! Now you have all the information to hand the DVLA will require before they will issue a UK license plate. You need to fill in the DVLA V55/5 form (this is only available by calling or writing to the DVLA - you cannot get it through the Post Office or download it). You should receive an information booklet with this form, telling you how to fill it in, but even with that much of the information requested is not relevant to a classic car. I called the DVLA to ask their advice and they took me through it step by step. I advise you to do the same if you're not sure.

Don't forget, if the vehicle was first registered prior to November 1973 in another country you should not be due to pay any road tax. In this case the "license fee" (as I think they call it) should be £0.00.

Once this form is completed, you will need to include a cheque for the admin fee (currently £38), proof of identity (e.g. passport), proof of address (e.g. bank statement), original vehicle documentation from the EU country in which the car was purchased, car MOT, valid UK insurance certificate and your completed Customs VAT-414 form. Pop this lot in the post to your local DVLA office (in my case Chelmsford, but the DVLA can advise you) and wait.

Note this is where the proof of age mentioned at the start is very important and must be included with the V55/5. If the DVLA cannot ascertain the age of the vehicle they'll issue a Q plate, and no one wants a Q plate on a classic 1960s automobile!

De-registering The Vehicle

When I said you were done, I lied. You're finished with the paperwork for the UK, however, you must also inform the authorities in the relevant member state the vehicle no longer resides there (the equivalent to a SORN declaration in the UK). This obviously varies from country to country and you'll have to find out about this yourselves, but I imagine the consulate for whichever country is concerned will be more than happy to assist you.

And that's your lot. In due course you should receive a V5 logbook for your car, with which you can go and commission your UK license plates. We're still looking forward to this happy day, as we only sent the forms off a week ago, but we qualify for black and white plates (the same rules apply as for road tax) which will look really nice on our cream Fiat 500. Can't wait!

Road Tax

2005-12-05T12:46:00.000Z

Today is a good day to rant. It's Monday morning, I have a hospital visit this afternoon (just routine, folks) and I want to be at home in bed!

So, road tax. This isn't a new issue any more, but I got to thinking about it yesterday, and it really, really annoys me. Ever since the UK government began taxing motorists for the use of the nation's tarmac (as if they don't take enough tax from the cost of petrol), they have incremented the exemption year for tax so that cars over 30 years of age are tax exempt.

Why? Because these vehicles are clearly labours of love. They wouldn't be on the road at all if people weren't looking after them, they do very few miles and it's like a reward scheme for people keeping little bits of motoring heritage alive.

These museum pieces would all be on the scrap heap if it wasn't for the dedication of their owners and no one would ever see Lotus Elans, MGB GTs, Jaguar S-types, etc. - even more lowly specimens such as Mk 1 Ford Escorts or indeed, our own little Fiat 500, would be forgotten and resigned to black and white photo albums by now.

So it's a nice gesture to give people who poor their hearts, souls and wallets in to the maintenance of these days gone by of motoring a bit of a break. Great idea, no? Well the buggers stopped all that in 2004.

My 1974 Lotus Elan, a beautiful car, every bit a classic and in spite of being over 30 years old now, will never be tax exempt if the current government has anything to do with it. My father's early Jaguar XJ-S convertible, in spite of still having about 15 years to go, will thoroughly deserve classic status when it gets there. There weren't very many made. However under present legislation he can forget about it.

The government is just not interested any more. Worse than that, they seem to be discouraging any future classic car ownership. I'm sure they have got more important things to worry about, but why oh why did they change the rules when everything was going along just swimmingly?

There's also a more serious implication for post-'74 classics. It has to affect the value of vehicles built after the tax "watershed" - especially vehicles which span both sides of the cut off date. The ones registered prior to '74 must be more sought after than post-'74 vehicles, precisely because they are tax exempt.

The most gauling thing for me is my car was actually built in 1973 and was registered on 1st January 1974 as the original owner was one of these people who wanted to try and get one of the very first plates of the year. D'oh!! At least the Fiat is 1971.

Anti-Corrosion

2005-11-21T16:08:00.000Z

Yesterday we braved the cold and the salt and headed up to Saffron Walden for the day, towards the north of our county. (A lovely town it is too. We went on a Sunday and nothing was open, but we will go back another weekend for a Saturday and actually see the place properly.)

It's always a bit of a toss up between leaving the car in the garage to get stale and damp, or braving the elements and running it out for a while, even if the conditions aren't the best they could be. This was one of those occasions. The sun was shining, the ground was dry(ish) and the car could do with a run, so out it came.

(An amusing aside: one nice chap, in his mid '50s I'd say, barely escaped with his life after an off the cuff comment about the car on the Saffron Walden high street. My girlfriend is, well, "protective" of the Fiat. Fortunately she didn't hear him say to me "oh, we used to have one of those - an original of course - many years ago!" I waited until we were far enough out of town to render turning back to find him a task not worth undertaking, before telling her of the conversation. At this point she started spitting something about ignorant Englanders, our car coming from Italy thus being ten times more original than any Fiat 500 sold in Britain, 1971 it was made, &c. Next time I have a conversation like this, I won't mention it.)

Anyway, all in all it was an enjoyable afternoon, but I'm less than comfortable with the fact the car is now sitting back in the garage with a light spraying of salt water under the sills, in the wheel arches and worked in to just about every other nook and cranny salt water can get at.

I was told by one of the mechanics at Paul Matty Sportscars, from where I purchased the Lotus, the best tactic for a classic car to be used all winter is putting it on a ramp somewhere and giving the entire underside a fine spraying with duck oil. I'm not sure how effective this is, but he swore by it, and in my experience these fellows do tend to know what they're talking about. This may well be an option.

I shall ring some local classic car specialists and see if they've heard of the practice. What a shame our rather handy next door neighbour, a lovely man by the name of Roger who services a very wealthy man's 14-car Porsche fleet for a living, has moved on. He would be able to tell me. I'll have to pop in to "The Welly" in Epping and see if he's about ...

Finally, confession time. I still haven't done the forms. But I must must MUST do them very soon. Unfortunately this sort of paperwork is always bottom of the list of priorities. A bit like cleaning the oven, but worse. I know it's worse, because we actually cleaned the oven in preference to facing the DVLA forms this weekend!

Paperwork

2005-11-07T10:52:00.000Z

Very sadly, the time has come for the Fiat to lose its Milanese license plates. Unfortunately the common market does not extend to automobiles and our little car must receive some British plates if it intends to stay here in the United Kingdom and remain legal. Up until this point, because my girlfriend is still legally a Milanese resident, the car has qualified as a "temporary export" but this grace period with the government will soon expire and we must either return the vehicle to Italy or bring it in to line with British regulation.

At least we can prove its age so it will qualify for the old black and white plates (which always look nicer) - it should be either an old J or a K registration, depending on which side of the 1st August 1971 it was "born". I'm not sure off the top of my head.

The sad thing about this is it will lose its Italian plates completely, which are originals and in the old format (with the MI denoting Milan) and even if re-registered in Italy at a later date it will be issued with a new style plate, which will be just wrong. So far as I'm aware, the Italian system doesn't work like ours (ie: you don't get a plate for the year of your car - you simply get the next plate on the list). It's a real shame, but the law is the law and we have to do it.

So this evening will involve sitting down with half a dozen forms and a black biro, signing the Fiat's plates away.

The Long Journey

2005-10-31T15:42:00.000Z

I've finally managed to copy the journal of our drive from Milan to London in the Fiat from my Greatest Cities blog to this more appropriate home. Visit the January archive and start from the bottom of the page to read about the entire journey.

I should note that following the drive from Milan the car continued to be my girlfriend's day car for a few months, taking her to work and back as well as going on a trip to Southwell. It was around then it took the first trip to Bob.

We had to do about five hundred pounds-worth of work at this point. Half of this went on cosmetics (such as an aluminium number plate lamp), various little bits to get it through the UK MOT and giving it a good service and oil change. The other half was to replace the timing chain (the engine sounded like a broken sewing machine) and the carburettor (which had a split base plate causing the tickover rate to suffer and petrol fumes to invade the car via the heating ducts, not to mention being the original carb it was very old and worn).

And that pretty much brings you up to the first post, Introductions, with the Fiat.

In Mourning

2005-10-27T12:43:00.000Z

I lost the roof rack. Some swine out bid me by 56 pence! I suppose it's fair enough really since I decided my maximum was £32 and he decided his maximum was higher and that is, after all, the way eBay works. But I'm still gutted and I'm still looking. So if anyone comes across a Fiat 500 roof rack for sale, drop me a line and you'll be on my Christmas card list forever. I will definitely be interested.

Roof rack aside, some good news. My girlfriend went out to wax the Fiat last Sunday, since it was a beautiful, sunny afternoon in Epping. About ten minutes later I heard the distinctive sound of the little Fiat engine, putt-putting away outside the front door. (She knew I'd recognise the engine sound straight away - nothing else sounds like a Fiat 500. She didn't even need to beep the horn.) I grabbed my coat, opened the door and there she was. "Hop in! Let's go for a spin!"

It transpired that unbeknownst to me, she had tried to push the car out of the garage to wax it in the sunshine. Light as it is, there is a slight incline and once you lose momentum it's game over. She gave up pushing with the car half way out of the garage and stubbornly refusing to shift any further. But before giving up completely and calling me she decided to try and start it. Remembering what happened the previous weekend, this time she didn't pump the accelerator as she turned the engine over. Bingo! It started, no problem. Suspicions confirmed. It was a simple case of flooding. Which is great news, because tow-starting the damned thing every weekend with the runabout was getting tedious, to say the least!

That's all for now, except to say many thanks to Chris and Victoria, who put up with my interuption of their beautifully prepared dinner to run to the Internet and place my final (and pointless) roof rack bid. I'm such a geek.

Roof Racks

2005-10-19T12:18:00.000Z

Approximately a year ago, on a typically stressful visit to Ikea ( in our Fiat 500, as it happened - we only wanted some bits and pieces), we noticed some of their in-store advertising featured a yellow 500 with a roof rack, presumably transporting newly purchased Ikea flat pack furniture and happy owners home from the bustling superstore.

"Perfect!" I cried. "That's just what we need." At that time our only car was the Fiat (or rather, our only car in London) so if we wanted to buy flat pack furniture for example, it was a case of either hire a car or book a taxi. Neither of which are, well, cheap frankly!

Ever since that fateful day I have scoured the planet for a Fiat 500 roof rack and discovered them to be the only commodity actually and genuinely rarer than hen's teeth. I've found luggage racks galour of the variety that clip on to the rear of the vehicle, but not a single ordinary fitted roof rack.

Luggage racks are fine for suitcases and the like, but as soon as you want to transport something a little larger, say a Christmas tree, or perhaps (heaven forbid) a flat packed wardrobe, they're no good whatsoever.

After a not small amount of searching, I had all but completely given up in my quest for a roof rack befitting of a Fiat 500. Given up that is ... until today. For today I noticed someone is selling one on eBay. Hurrah!

Of course, I don't technically need one any more, but who knows when I might, and who knows who might have the car in the future and need one? And so I am going to bid for it. I won't be linking to it, however, for two reasons:

There's no sense in pointing the competition in the right direction
eBay links die after a few months and I'll have to remove it

Knowing my luck however, the AdSense links for this page will probably fire up an eBay link to the only Fiat 500 roof rack for sale in the known universe and I will be lost in the flood of anxious owners, desperate to get their hands on its hallowed tubular steel. Grrrrr...

By the way, apologies for the photograph, but there are so few roof racked Fiat 500s about the only photographic example I could find was this toy. I promise, should I win the roof rack, I will post a photo of it, on my Fiat 500, in this blog so anyone scouring Google for a photo of a Fiat 500 with a roof rack in the future will at least find one suitable picture!

Photograph courtesy of Scale 18.

Interesting Aside

2005-10-17T16:15:00.000Z

Since this is a slow news week as far as action from the weekend goes (my parents were over for the weekend, so travelling about in the Fiat was, well, inconvenient) I figured I'd document an interesting coincidence.

I wrote a post a little while ago called Temptation where I talk about wanting to get my hands on an original Series 1 Jaguar XJ6. The photograph I chose was an L registered dark red XJ saloon.

My father read my blog for the first time this weekend and commented that this particular photograph depicted the exact make and model of car I had my first ever journey in. Right down to the colour. The only difference is the photograph depicts an L registration which is one year newer than my first carriage, being a K registered vehicle.

How about that? When I was a baby my father owned a K registered dark red Jaguar XJ6 (with cream interior, so he tells me - I couldn't remember) in which I was brought home from hospital. In the words of the great Harry Hill: "What were the chances if that happening, eh?"

He still blames my appearance for having to sell it just a few months later. I think he's joking.

Two other noteworthy items:

1. The runabout got checked over while dad was at my disposal, and apart from needing four new tyres (which is ok, because I spotted that and negotiated a discount) it seems very sound.

2. Apparently my mechanic in Nottinghamshire, where the Lotus currently resides, is finally promising to fix the fuel leak this month. Hurrah!

Flashing

2005-10-10T12:18:00.000Z

You learn new things all the time about old cars. No matter how long you've owned them for, there's nearly always some feature or quirk you never noticed before, awaiting discovery either by some freak of chance or perhaps by the intervention of someone more knowledgable than yourself. Here is one such example:

Take a look at the picture. It's the horn and indicator/headlamp stalks for a Fiat 500 F or L (I think they're interchangeable). Those stalks look and feel pretty rigid when they are attached to the car. They certainly don't look like they're supposed to flex in any direction, so attempting to persuade them to do so was very far from my mind. Until I read Mike England's post, here on the Fiat 500 boards.

It never occurred to me our little Fiat 500, whose interior shares so little in common with modern car interior layouts, would actually have a stalk you can flex forward (like any modern car) to flash the lights. But it does!

And so when the weather turned out to be fine this weekend (better than fine actually - it's unseasonably warm and sunny and has been for days) and we decided to play with the Fiat again this weekend, I couldn't wait to try the newly discovered headlamp flashing abilities. Sure enough, it works great! And a Fiat 500 flashing its little headlamps somehow looks, well, even cuter than ever.

I think I've also discovered the reason for the starting problems as well. We in the IT profession would call it "user error" (or "luser error" if the perpetrator of the crime is particularly irritating - not in this case, I hastily add).

My girlfriend, who tends to drive the Fiat as I prefer to be a passenger in this particular vehicle (the Lotus is "his" and the Fiat is "hers"), often goes first in attempting to start the car. It usually coughs a bit for the first couple of attempts then stops firing completely. When I have a go the starter turns the engine over but fails to create so much as a hint of a spark.

Well on Saturday I believe I discovered why. I looked on over my girlfriend's shoulder as she was starting the car from cold and she was pumping away on the gas while the starter motor was turning. A sure way to flood the engine if it doesn't fire quickly. On Sunday I told her not to pump, but to turn the starter over with a little gas and then only try and catch the engine with the throttle when it actually fires. And bingo, the Fiat started without any pushing or towing.

Hurrah! I'll re-test my theory next weekend, weather permitting.

Photograph courtesy of Ricambi-Automobilia.

A Good Run

2005-10-03T15:56:00.000Z

Following the panic about garages, we decided it was high time the Fiat stretched its little legs. It hadn't been used for a couple of weeks and the weather was nice and dry on Sunday morning, so we figured we would take the car up to Sawbridgeworth Maltings and have a look at some antiques. (The Maltings host a handful of different antiques stores, so if you're that way inclined and in the Hertfordshire/ Essex/ Cambridgeshire area it's well worth a Sunday visit.)

We pushed it out of the garage in to the sunshine and eagerly set about firing the engine. Or at least that was the plan. The Fiat, however, had other ideas. Having been abandoned in a cold, damp garage for two weeks it seemed to be in what might be considered as the automotive equivalent of a sulk. Arms folded, bottom lip wobbling, looking the other way, refusing to respond to cohersion of any kind.

We knew it was only being beligerant though. We'd been here before. So out came the tow rope ... again. (Push starting a warm 500 is a doddle, but a stone cold one takes more persuasion!) I went to fetch the runabout, hooked it up to the Fiat and within one length of the garage forecourt it was running. And judging by the amount of time we had to keep the choke out for (about 5 minutes compared to the usual 30 seconds) it had gotten very, very cold. Perhaps further anti-garaging evidence? Who knows.

In the end all was well. We had a nice morning out, and after a good run up the road the little car started first time in Sawbridgeworth. It developed a funny rubber-squeaking sound from the back left wheel (as you sit in the car) which concerns me slightly, but I'll deal with that another time. The important thing is that we had fun, the car had a run and everyone's happy!

Track Days Aren't Cheap

2005-09-28T16:39:00.000Z

Yesterday evening I was killing some time by idly clicking my own AdSense ads, in a vain attempt to defraud Google to the tune of approximately $1.57, when I actually spotted an ad which grabbed my interest. (I suppose this is likely, given that my blog is about my interest and my ads are based on my blog. Anyway, I digress.) Under the broader heading of "Lotus Cars" there was a link advertising Lotus-specific track days run by a group calling themselves (in truly original fashion) Lotus On Track.

This, I thought, sounded like a lot of fun. I read the introductions and the rules and it sounded even better. These cheery folk have a lot of good, safe enjoyment, in the company of their peers, out of harms way and without causing a nuisance to anyone. Then I clicked on the gallery and was slightly disappointed and surprised to see very few "classic" Lotuses. (Or should that be Loti?) Everyone was hurtling around in Lotus Seven kits or Elises/Exiges and there wasn't an original Elan in sight. Strange. Finally, I read the FAQ and things began to make sense.

If you own an irreplaceable classic like an old Elan, with which you have a certain affinity and don't particularly want to see mangled, reading advice such as this is not exactly going to encourage you to partake in the activity:

"... if you decide to take your car on to a track, you must be aware that you are accepting the risk ..."

Further examination reveals, depending on how much fun you have, you are likely to have to shell out for a set of tyres, some brake pads and an oil and filter change as a matter of course ... every time you go! And this note sends shivers down the spine of any sane, mortal, classic Lotus owner, knowing as you do that your engine is over 30 years old:

"... your engine will spend more time at high revs than ever before ..."

I don't know how much a Lotus engine rebuild costs, and I don't want to find out just yet (though I suppose it's inevitable I will one day). Track days are suddenly sounding less like the picnic I initially considered them to be.

All of the above leads to me only one possible conclusion. In order to thoroughly enjoy a track day, you have to be one (or more) of the following:

Rich.
A good home mechanic with ample access to inexpensive parts.
Driving a hire car and insured to the hilt! (Something Lotus On Track won't let you do, probably on account of the fact you'll be driving like Jason Plato in the BTCC!)

I am unable to match any of the above descriptions to myself, so it is with great sadness I admit I'm going to have to limit my track day experiences to those adventure packs you see in WHSmith. You know, the ones where you pay £150, use someone elses car, wear someone elses helmet and overalls and thrash someone elses engine and tyres to pieces.

It got me thinking it would be wonderful to be able to fix your own car like our friend Bob. His Fiat 500L is his pride and joy. He tells us he was the first person in the UK to do the now popular "Panda head conversion" (which is apparently neither cruel to animals nor illegal) making his 500L on 126 running gear good for 90mph.

I can tell you travelling at 60mph in an unmodified 500F - which is only possible downhill and with a following wind, by the way - is bloody terrifying, so 126 running gear or not, 90mph must be pure white-knuckle-inducing terror! The other day Bob apparently decided to push it a little. At an unmentionable speed (I wouldn't want to get the man in trouble) and egged on by his mate in an Alfa Romeo, the entire exhaust system sheered itself straight off the block.

"I'm an idiot," says Bob, "but never mind. I'll just fix it."

If I could say that, I'd be going to track days!

Temptation

2005-09-22T14:20:00.000Z

You could well consider all this interest in classic cars to be my father's fault. I certainly do. Not that I'm complaining. Except now I've picked up another of his expensive habits. Jaguars.

He is the extremely proud owner of a 5.3 litre V12 XJS Convertible, which I have to say, in spite of being a car of an era I don't particularly admire (I was far happier when he was considering a nice 1968 S-Type) is a lovely car.

And mine? Well I recently began reading Martyn's XJ6 diary (sadly now offline it seems, but the link goes to his web page) on the Classic Cars Magazine website and this has added fuel to the little Jaguar-loving fire in my belly. I was already aware of what a bargain the old XJ6s are and I really quite fancied getting one at some point. Martyn simply served to remind me of their existence. I mean look at the wonderful machine in the photograph. Isn't she beautiful? And you can get hold of a mint one for less than £4,000, according to Classic Cars Magazine's current price guide. "Light blue touch paper and retire ... " as the saying goes.

Knowing me as I do, I realise this is the beginning of the end. I can see this going only one way. In a few years time, if not sooner, I will probably arrive home in a newly purchased S1 Jaguar XJ6. Watch this space. It might be a blog for three classics instead of two. And sooner than you might think. I just need to do the kitchen first, apparently. Bah!

To Garage Or Not To Garage?

2005-09-21T16:58:00.000Z

That is the unanswerable question.

Ever since I bought the Elan, the race has been on to find a garage. The car was sat on my parents' driveway for a good few months which meant two things. Firstly, my mother was getting rather fed-up with her driveway not being her driveway. (Something my girlfriend's mother can also appreciate, not having a garage at the moment courtesy of her son's Alfa Romeo GTV6 - but that's a different story.) Secondly, I wasn't exactly filled with joy at the prospect of my motor spending the winter exposed to the elements in the rain-soaked north of England.

Finally, after months of searching, I found a spot in a privately owned, ex-council garage block, with reasonable rent (£100 a quarter - actually cheaper than my council garage rent in Epping). With a good deal of relief, I removed the Lotus from the afforementioned driveway and parked it in its new home.

Until recently, like many others, I held firm to the idea that cars over-wintering in a garage were somehow protected from time and the worst that could happen to a car in such a condition was a thin covering of dust. But then I read this article in Classic Cars Magazine which scared me silly! To summarise, the piece warns of the dangers of storing a classic car for winter, covered and in a cold, damp, concrete garage. Furthermore, the author goes in to great detail about all the expensive and destructive things such conditions can wreak upon your precious automobile.

Heavens to Betsy! The present storage conditions of the Lotus precisely match their worst possible case. It's even covered. Sounds like I'm doing everything the article says you shouldn't do.

My first reaction was to email Classic Additions, the manufacturers of my cover, to find out what they advised. They informed me since I had the "light breathable" cover, it was ideal (their exact words) for using in a cold, damp garage - indeed this was exactly the purpose it was designed for. Great.

So I had a chat with my father, who noted it has lived happily for more than a couple of years now in that very garage with no obvious damp problems. On top of this, it goes out for a good run every dry weekend God deems to send us (not that many, as the geographical location would have it), even over winter.

One further point worthy of note is of course the body shell. It's glass fibre, and the chassis is all one metal (and a modern galvernised replacement, as most Elans are now on since the original chassis construction was prone to rotting to nothing at an alarming rate) so there are very few places where the chemical principles of rust can come in to play.

*Phew!*

But what about the Fiat? It has no such luck. It is already renowned for its shoddy build quality, especially the native models which seemed to be made from the off-cuts of the "for export" versions. One of the sills is already well filled, though the chassis is remarkably sound. Here I will have to be careful, as it too resides in a cold, damp, concrete garage, but with none of the advantages of construction which help the Lotus.

I will be inspecting the few appearing rust blebs regularly. And it will certainly go out and about whenever the weather permits, just to get some air circulating around the bodywork. Fingers crossed, eh?

Back In The Fold

2005-09-20T15:20:00.000Z

Hurrah! The Fiat is back home. Bob has done a stirling job, as ever, and the new starter cable is in place and functioning as it should. We should be alright for a few months now I imagine. These little Fiats are usually fairly mechanically reliable. (He says, thus cursing the car and all who ride in her ...)

One thing I didn't like was the alarming amount of dark, oily smoke which fled the exhaust when we started the car. I reckon oil must be leaking slightly down the valve stems while the car is stood, because after the engine has been running for a couple of minutes there are no more signs of smoke. This is probably because the worst of the oil which collected in the cylinder has burned off and the oil escape isn't significant enough to cause the engine to smoke in normal running. Indeed, it doesn't seem to use much oil, which is good.

Bob reckons it'll be alright on low mileage until the spring and it'll need a decoke then anyway, since to the best of our knowledge it's never been done. We were going to ask him to "convert" it to unleaded while he's at it, which involves replacement (harder) valve seats and that'll fix it. Then we should be good for another 35 years' motoring!

I wish.

Hitting The Marque

2005-09-19T10:44:00.000Z

It seems to me the correct badge for any given Fiat 500 is an ever-open debate. There was some recent chat on the Fiat 500 Club message board regarding the never ending confusion over this very issue. A lady by the name of Sue had posted a question about her 1966-registered Fiat 500F. She wanted to know if her 500 should sport the L-type badge (a small silver oblong on its end with Fiat written within in silver on a red background) or the D-type badge, or moustache as it is known, as pictured. At present her F apparently has the L badge, but appears to have a dimple in the front panel ready to take a "moustache". Mysterious!

You would think it would be relatively easy to badge a model of car correctly. Not so with the Fiat 500F. In fact, it seems many people mis-badge their Fiats of all types, either deliberately or out of ignorance. There are a number of factors which don't help owners when it comes to deciphering which badge your 500 should carry.

Firstly, the F overlaps with both the D and the L and never had its own definitive badge. For this reason it is often sighted with both sets of badging, or even mixtures of the two. Why the D and the F overlapped for so long, Fiat alone know, since the F clearly supercedes the D, but they did. The L at least makes some sense, given as it was the "luxury" (ha ha ha!) model.

Secondly, there are all kinds of variations on the available themes out there, largely thanks to generations of owners being somewhat 'creative' in their badging. Some of this is down to front or rear panels rotting and being replaced with incorrect panel/badge combinations, and some of it is simply because everyone seems to prefer the "moustache" badge. Owners the world over apply it to every vehicle they get their hands on, even though Fiat no longer used it after 1968. (Fortunately the previous owner of ours had acquired a "moustache", but never got around to fitting it so we retain the correct L-type badge on our '71 500F.)

I imagine there is also a degree of confusion caused by the frequent mis-selling of models. While looking to try and find something reasonably definitive to post in my initial message board comment, I found two 500D cars being sold as F-types! (The D and Nuova models are easy to spot with their "suicide doors".) For people who are new to 500s and don't know what they're looking at, this breeds misconception and confusion.

So what's the rule when it comes to correctly badging a Fiat 500 then? (If you really care, of course.) It goes something like this:

All D and Nuova models have the "moustache"
F cars from 1965 to spring 1969 have the "moustache" badge
F cars from spring 1969 to 1972 share badges with the L
L cars should never have the "moustache"
Same applies to the R, which has a completely new set of badges again, the front of which is apparently shared with the 126

So basically, the F should be badged by its year rather than its model letter. The rules (should you choose to follow them) are fairly similar for rear badging and number plate lamps too (pre-'69 lamps were aluminium, post-'69 were plastic), except I think the F had a different rear model badge to the L in the 1969 to 1972 run.

To put this in terms of practical examples, our 500 carries the same front badge as an L which is correct for its year (though we've cheekily added an aluminium number plate lamp because they're rare and look nicer - ours should be plastic). As for Sue, she does indeed have the wrong badge on her 1966 F. 1966 is the realm of the D badges and her suspicions about the moustache-shaped dimple in the front panel are confirmed. She now has the arduous task of scouring the world for an original Fiat moustache.

There is still some debate as to whether these should be aluminium or plastic, since most after-market moustache badges seem to be plastic though there are some aluminium versions around. Prevalent opinion is divided: For example Fiat 500 message board frequenter, "Paul 1947", refers to La Guida as saying early badges were plastic, however the equally frequent "Mike A." says he has owned two Nuovas which were in definite, genuine and original trim, both sporting aluminium badges he's certain were factory fitted.

Good luck Sue! And I hope you find the right badge!

Edits courtesy of extra information from "Paul 1947" and "Mike A." on the Fiat 500 message board. Thanks!

"Most Under-valued Classic"

2005-09-15T13:31:00.000Z

Thanks to McReis, a chap from the Ultimate Car Page where I occasionally irritate others with my opinions, for re-surfacing an old article from Classic Cars Magazine (in this thread on their forum) regarding under-valued classics. And what was number 1? Why the Lotus Elan +2 of course!

I haven't really told you much about the cars themselves yet apart from the problems! This isn't entirely fair, so I figured it's high time I extolled some of the great virtues they possess which make up the reason for us to remain in the honey trap of maintaining them. Starting with "the green one" ...

The Lotus Elan +2S 130/5 is enormous fun. It is fast, it sounds great, it handles like a dream, it looks great, it's (reasonably) economical and it's amazingly comfortable.

That's right. I said comfortable. So comfortable my girlfriend actually falls asleep in it every time we go anywhere! Believe it or not, Colin Chapman's theories on car suspension meant he didn't subscribe to the idea of racing cars being skittery surface-skaters on suspension with about as much give as an orthopaedic mattress. He believed good racing suspension was about perfect balance rather than a hard ride, and he proved it with the Elan (amongst other cars) and with the development of the famous Chapman Strut. They are actually surprisingly softly sprung.

Indeed, when climbing in to the cockpit of what is essentially a walnut-lined go-kart, passengers often expect their bones to be shattered by the first unfortunately placed pebble in the road. They visibly flinch as you hit a speed hump and then remark with surprise when it handles afforementioned hump better than their BMW 318. And then the real clincher. As you accelerate out of town, tailed by the magical boom of the exhaust note, and hurl the car in to the first corner, you realise this vehicle simply redefines the term "cornering on rails". The grip is just amazing and the confidence this entails in the driver is second to none.

It is also fair to say the 130/5 model (with the "big valve" engine and 5-speed box - early ones were all 4-speed) is perfectly at home in the modern world. It is comfortable and relaxing during a long run down the M1, with its electric windows, original radio (albeit restricting you to long wave) and comfortable seats. Yet if you discard 5th gear and thrash the (slightly clumsy) gearbox it out-performs the S1, S2 and S3 coupés in the country lanes. According to Classic Cars Magazine's monthly price guide, it has the same top speed as the Sprint coupé too, though I'm not so sure about that. Sounds dubious to me, as the +2S definitely carries more weight.

The only place I wouldn't recommend an Elan is in the city. The heavy clutch soon causes you to become rather tired of changing gear in slow-moving traffic. It's definitely a car for the open road (while we still have some!) and is much happier at 3,500 RPM than when sat idling in a queue.

Finally, I am pleased to report (though marginally disappointed as an owner) the perceived value of this particular model of Lotus remains the same. Despite all the hype from the various magazines in the classic car genre about the Lotus coupé's poorer cousin, they're still an absolute bargain! Bear this in mind next time you're poking around Autotrader thinking of replacing your classic, adding to your collection or even starting from scratch as a classic car virgin. I can tell you from personal experience that you won't go far wrong if you buy a well looked after +2S 130/5.

Naming Cars

2005-09-12T16:44:00.000Z

There are two types of car owner. Those who name their cars, and those who don't. I fall firmly on the side of those who don't. Quite frankly, I find it all a bit ridiculous.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not cold hearted about these wonderful machines. Sentimentality does creep in, and I might refer to the Lotus as "her" ocassionally (for reasons to follow) but fond as I am of my cars, naming them goes a bit beyond the pale in my opinion. At the end of the day it's a lump of steel and plastic. It's great fun, but then so is the TV and I haven't named that. It's pretty, but so are the curtains, and I don't refer to them by name. It's useful, but then so is the microwave, and no, I haven't named that either. Have you? For that matter, have you named your car?

If the answer to the former is "no, of course not!" and the answer to the latter is "yes!" then I have to ask you why?!

My sister named the battered old Volvo 240 she used to barge around the Estonian highways in. The bloody thing was a disaster area. It would've failed any sensible road safety test and the boot was held shut with a padlock. To be fair, my father and I called this car several different names at various points in its life, none of them complimentary. We can't fathom how she even came to be attached to it, never mind name it ...

Indeed, were it up to my sister (and in spite of my frequent protests she still insists on this) the Lotus would be called "Lotty". Now quite apart from the fact that "Lotty" sounds like the name of a TV presenter trapped in the multi-coloured world of pre-school programming, what kind of name is it for a vehicle of outstanding racing heritage and prestige?? Even the script writer for Bob The Builder wouldn't call a Lotus "Lotty". (Not twice if I found out where he lived, at any rate!)

Furthermore, a colleague of mine has a VW Beetle called Benjamin. What sort of name is that for a car? All other reservations aside, it's a male name and everyone knows cars are female. I'm not being sexist here. In all the Latinate languages, except the ones I'll ignore for the purposes of this post, car is a feminine word. In French, la voiture; in Italian, la macchina; etc. So this particular car namer is not only daft, but also misguided.

And I'm also relatively sure my girlfriend has named the Fiat. I've wiped it from my mind (post-traumatic stress if you ask me) but I think I may have a vague recollection of being told the 500 had a name. My fuzzy picture of the event is something akin to me shouting "La La Laaaa, I'm not listening!" as I walk away with my fingers in my ears, girlfriend trailing behind me attempting to announce the unfortunate vehicle's ridiculous new title.

I can draw only one conclusion. I am surrounded by idiots.

Potential Disaster

2005-09-09T11:48:00.000Z

I recently used Money Pit #1 for some very important formal duties. It isn't often one gets to do important things with one's classic car, but on this occasion I was most honoured and priviledged to be invited by an old friend to be the (joint) best man at his wedding.

As luck would have it, this particular friend is also a great fan of all things British, especially British, old and mechanical. It made absolute sense (and would please him down to the ground) to take the groom to his wedding in a Lotus Elan, and since I happened to have one to hand, that is precisely what I set out to do.

The morning of the wedding I fetched the Lotus (which involved spending twenty minutes down at the old council garage I rent indulging myself in the usual rigmarole of throttle pumping, attempting to start it, swearing, leaving it for a minute, trying again, etc.). Once I had it running I sped over to the village where the groom's parents live with the other best man, pulled up outside the house and in we went to have our ties straightened and carnations fixed by the groom's father (as he was wont to do, being an old hand in the sartorial game).

Pleasantries exchanged and time running out, the groom and I headed back outside. My fellow best man had hastily made other arrangements with the groom's brother. Either he couldn't stomach another batch of my driving or didn't fancy squeezing in the back of the laughably named "Plus Two". (Plus two what? Shopping bags? Midgets? Cats??) And so we hopped in the Lotus. I turned the key and the engine span over fast, the oil nice and warm from the ride over. But it didn't fire. Not even a hint of it!

Never mind. It's a warmish day and occasionally the fuel vaporises in the lines if it's warm and you have to pull some fresh fuel through before she fires, I lied to myself. I try again. The same. Ok, this is getting alarming, not to mention embarassing. I'm trying, and failing miserably, to look as though this is quite normal. It isn't! The Lotus always ... and I mean always ... fires first time once it's been running for five minutes. All I can think of are the infamous effects of Murphy's Law (or Sod's Law, as my father usually describes the same principle, rather more crudely than I, even if I do say so myself).

I try again. And again. Finally a bit of a kick back from the engine! An attempt to fire! We're getting somewhere! A couple more tries, a cough and a splutter, and it bursts in to life (much to the relief of both myself and the groom, who was rapidly looking like he might be arriving at his wedding in '02 Fiat Seicento rather than a '74 Lotus).

And so we arrived at the church, unfazed and on time, I deposited the groom at the steps and nipped around to the rear to stick the car in the church car park.

After the service I experienced the same reluctance to start when I went to run the Lotus home (literally around the corner) before festivities began. After a minute it fired and I popped down the road and backed up the drive. When I got out of the car, I noticed a little stream of something on the road and up the drive. A quick sniff of a sample collected with the tip of my finger confirmed this something was petrol.

(Note: I always check any errant fluids immediately I spy them, lest they evaporate. Something my girlfriend was less than impressed at:
"Do you have to do that now??")

The last time I experienced a similar fault, one of the twin Delortos got a stuck float and it cleared itself the next day. (The rather precarious location of the distributor, directly under the carbs, is precisely what makes the old Elan particularly prone to engine fires.) This time however the leak seemed to be out of harms way, but this was evidently why the car was struggling to start. Fuel starvation! So simple.

I'm not sure if I have the nerve for any more important occasions. I'm certainly extremely glad what might have been wasn't! I'm also going to recharge the fire extinguisher in the boot.

On the plus side, we all enjoyed a great day, a lovely service, a cracking wedding reception (largely made by the outstanding speech by the best men, of course) and much food, wine and merriment. Smashing, as Jimmy Saville would say!

Simple Show Stopper

2005-09-08T14:06:00.000Z

Doubtless the folks reading this blog are of all sorts of backgrounds and ages, and depending on your motoring experience, or indeed your own era, you may or may not be familiar with vehicles which do not start with the turn of a key. (An alien concept to many these days!) Indeed, I myself remember my father's 1950s Ferguson "Petrol/Paraffin" tractor having a start gear with which you sparked up the electric "self-starter" if you were too lazy to have a go with the starting handle (which being a teenager, I invariably was). The revelation of not turning a key to start the engine made this rather fun. I'm not sure to this day why ... it just did.

The same is true of the Fiat 500, and when carrying a 500 "virgin" they always comment with something like "how funny!" or "how does that work then?" when you start the engine, not with a key of course, but with a little lever down between the front seats. Marvellous!

Far simpler than the electric start buttons on some sports cars of a certain age, the start lever on a Fiat 500 pulls a cable exactly the same in nature as you would expect to find operating the brakes on a push bicycle. This cable pulls the lever on the side of the starter motor through two positions. First position spins up the motor and second engages it with the flywheel to turn the engine over. In the course of a swift pull you don't notice these two positions, but they are very much there. All in all this remarkably simple starting system works very well without requiring any electronics. There is only one thing can scupper you. Any change in the relationship between the location of the lever, the location of the starter motor and the length of the cable.

That sounds pretty unlikely, but a good friend of mine couldn't start his any more after an unfortunate shunt. Everyone checked for damage, swapped insurance details, all the usual stuff and then he went to start his car only to discover the chassis had been compressed by an inch or two by the collision and the starter cable was subsequently too long to engage the starter motor of the newly shortened Fiat!

Or you can suffer simple wear and tear problems with the cable, as we did.

Being the intrepid "wannabe" mechanics we are, myself and my girlfriend decided to fit our new starter motor ourselves. We called our man Bob (the 500 genious) and asked him what to do. When he'd stopped lauging (I still can't figure out what Bob found so hilarious about the prospect of us fixing our car) he told us what we needed to know and off we went.

The task involves blindly disconnecting the afforementioned cable by cutting a wire pin holding it in place, removing the starter motor from a gap only fractionally larger than the unit itself and right at the back of the engine bay, replacing it and re-connecting the cable with a fresh pin. After much jiggling, swearing, sweating, swearing some more, jiggling and a lot more swearing we finally succeeded. (It is a b*stard of a job if you don't have the means to safely jack the vehicle up! And you're mechanically incompetent, which I confess, it hurts my male pride to admit but admit I must.)

Now, when you get to the "re-connecting" bit there are three holes on the end of the cable to allow for some basic minor adjustment of the cable length. We had to re-connect the cable using the hole that made it as short as it could possibly be. We did, then eagerly ran to the starting lever and gave it a tug. Nothing. We tried to start the car again, this time from the rear with an arm inside the engine bay pulling the lever. This time the starter whizzed up but failed to engage with the flywheel, preferring to sit there making a noise like a particularly large dentist's drill. (Now you see the significance of the two positions in the starter motor's operation?) The cable wasn't pulling the lever far enough, if at all.

This, coupled with a large degree of paranoia that we'd done something really stupid and potentially damaging to our little car, caused us to do what we always do when our Fiat doesn't work. We called Bob (who don't forget, knows us to be mechanically inept). He immediately announced to us we must have used the wrong hole. "No!" we cried, bitter at this gross injustice. We were particularly careful to use the right hole! Especially as Bob had well and truly instilled in us the consequences of using the wrong hole. Our holes, we were sure, were all in order.

There was nothing else for it. We would have to go and see Bob to prove to him we had indeed used the right hole and we weren't quite as incompetent as he thought (if not far off). We tow-started the car with the help of the runabout and took it over to Hersham (again!) and upon our our arrival, Bob immediately reminded us we must've used the wrong hole.

"Nooooo!!! We didn't!"
And after some banter, a surprise visit by a Fiat 500 loving friend of Bob's, an inspection of our handywork and some more banter;
"Oh. No. You didn't. Your starter cable's all stretched and frayed. That'll need replacing."

Vindication! Hurrah! We knew it! Wait ... what exactly does that mean for the Fiat?

Well it means we don't have the Fiat right now. It's at Bob's. The cable costs next to nothing, but replacing the cable means taking all the seats out and doing (you guessed it) a lot of jiggling and swearing. We decided to let Bob jiggle and swear this time. At least we know we did a good job of fitting the starter motor after all and were merely victims of circumstance. Though I have a sneaking suspicion Bob thinks we had a stroke of beginners luck.

Far Inferior Automotive Technology

2005-09-07T10:51:00.000Z

That's what Fiat stands for, according to a particularly mean American mechanic with whom I was conversing while I was waiting for him to test the fuel pump on our little 500 one sunny afternoon in Richmond, Surrey. (Actually, he wasn't mean at all. He was a very nice man who was helping us out of an unfortunate spot. But he was being very mean about Fiats.)

Fortunately, that is not the opinion of our usual Fiat fixer (and a Fiat fixer of many many years' experience), a lovely chap by the name of Bob Caltagirone. He's a chatty, funny, easy-going man of Sicilian descent, with permanent overalls and cap (I suspect he might even sleep in them) whom it is impossible not to like. And his enthusiasm for the cars, and life in general for that matter, is infectious. Bob loves his cars. In particular, he loves his classic Fiats. And even more particularly, he loves his classic Fiat 500s.

Bob is a rare find for a classic car owner. The country is littered with classic car garages, but finding a mechanic who you just trust implicitly to get on with the job, do it right and charge you appropriately at the end of it is not as easy as it might sound.

That's not to say mechanics aren't trustworthy in the broader sense of the word. Garages have had a bad rap over the years and (almost) all the mechanics I've come across are decent, honest, hard working people, but in spite of all that, actually trusting them is about more than their personal integrity. It's about feeling they really genuinely do know all there is to possibly know about your little baby and that nothing can happen that this mechanic does not know how to deal with ... immediately, effectively and with minimum fuss.

Let me give you an example. As I mentioned earlier, our American friend had his head in the rear of our beloved 500, and while he gave us his opinions on Italian engineering he was testing the pressure from the fuel pump.

"Yup," he opined, "it's your fuel pump! Hardly any fuel pressure at all."

He sounded very certain indeed. Yet he failed to convince me, largely because this was his third expert diagnosis for our loss of power in the last hour. The first had (certainly) been a blocked fuel line or clogged air filter and then it was (had to be) the mixture and now he was absolutely, positively convinced it was the fuel pump. Hmmmmm ...

On top of this, he'd just taken me on a terrifying journey to the nearest roundabout and back where his dismal attempts at double-declutching caused my heart to stop with every gear change, and by way of an excuse for his dreadful driving skills he mumbled that the clutch needed changing. At this point all I wanted to do was pay the man and drive to Bob's in our under-powered Fiat 500 (and believe you me, an under-powered Fiat 500 is a serious lack of horses!) and get him to sort it out for us.

But this mechanic wasn't a bad person. In fact, he was clearly very knowledgeable about engines and a friendlier man it's hard to meet. He went through a checklist of things it could've been. He explained exactly what he was doing and why, in very clear laymen's terms and with the aid of props (old bits of engine lying around the 'shop). He marked each suspect off the list one by one. At the end of it he was stumped. He told us we needed a new fuel pump. We told him we knew a nearby expert who probably had the parts and he looked relieved and said we had best take it to our expert.

We settled up (£60 his boss insisted on charging us for his time, as I recall) and set off to visit Bob. In spite of the fact I'd paid £60 for nothing, I couldn't blame the mechanic and left feeling quite sorry for him. He did his best and looked genuinely a bit crest-fallen. His enthusiasm told me he didn't get many car lovers in his garage, and even less opportunity to work on classic cars. He would've liked nothing better than to set some happy customers on their merry way but he simply didn't know the car and with these quirky old beasts that is fundamental.

And so ten miles away in Hersham, having delivered our Fiat we briefly explained the problem to Bob.

"That'll be your condenser, that will! They get too hot you see; too close to the exhaust system. It's a design flaw really."

He took a screw driver, opened the boot, whipped a small metal cylinder off the side of the distributor, replaced it with a similar cylinder and off we went. It took five minutes, it cost £5 and he even gave us a spare (used, but functioning) for the glove compartment. ("They can go any time - always have a spare!") And that is why I trust Bob for all things Fiat. He just knows.

Runabout

2005-08-31T14:52:00.000Z

One of the problems with classic cars is they invariably aren't very practical for day to day life. It wouldn't be fair to say this is true of all classics, but it is certainly true of ours. The Lotus is a pig to start on a cold morning and daily running would almost certainly sky-rocket the amount of time it spent in "the shop" and consequently the amount of currency I parted with to a local mechanic. The Fiat, though reliable and cheap, has an average speed of about 30mph (it took us 5 hours to go from North London to Nottingham, about 130 miles, last time we tried) and as such is clearly impractical for anything other than dodging about in town ... on nice days (they rust quicker than an Austin Maestro).

And so one is required to purchase what might be refered to as a "runabout". This would be a car upon which you can rely, about which you don't much care and with which you would happily do anything. As such, when choosing a "runabout" (as I did last week) I tend to adhere to the philosophies of "Bangernomics". A good banger precisely fulfills the criteria.

You don't care about it because it only cost about £250, so whether you're transporting horse poo for the garden or picking up an elderly relative from the airport (best not to do the two activities in that order) it makes no difference. If well maintained and approximately 10-12 years old it should start first time, every time (for a year or so at least) unless you're unlucky. If you get one with a years' MOT on it already (always one of my criteria) then you also know it's safe enough and you shouldn't need to spend any real money on it for 12 months, unless you're unlucky. You can park it on the street, safe in the knowledge that no one will steal a car that's pitied by your neighbours and mocked by passing teenagers, unless of course you're unlucky. And if you're unlucky, who cares? It only cost £250! Scrap it! Sell it as a rolling wreck for £50!

And so I went off to Edmonton to some dodgy "you nick it, we'll sell it" style second hand car dealer and bought a 1992 Citroen AX Echo 1.1 for £250. (Sorry - the detail in the year and type of vehicle thing is a classic car anorak habit of mine. Consider yourselves lucky I didn't add 3-door, Petrol, Manual.) It's battered to hell and back, rumbles, is filthy, welded and smells of tobacco but it does start first time and has that precious 12 months MOT meaning no expensive welding jobs required for a good long while. And I care about it so little I even forget to close the sunroof. Which is great because I accidentally get rid of the smell of horse poo and reinstate the faint whiff of tobacco.

Runabouts are great!

Introductions

2005-08-31T14:03:00.000Z

Approximately a year after starting this blogspot space I've finally thought of something to do with it. The problem with blogging is you either have a focus for your literary efforts, such as they are, or you end up posting a bunch of mindless drivel about commuting and filling the space with "funny" emails people have sent you. This is what I've done with my MSN blog space (which now seems to have decended in to a virtual soap box where I rant about the various corporations and businesses who've pissed me off over the years, but that's by the by). But not this. This will be different. This will be focused. This is about a shared hobby I have with my girlfriend. One that we can ill afford but find ourselves tied to regardless of the consequences.

Classic motoring. The wind in your hair, the slight smell of fresh petrol, the squeaky brakes, the restriction to sunny days, the scarce parts, the large repair bills, we love it!

Between us we run two money pits. A 1974 Lotus Elan +2S 130/5 (mine, of course) and a 1971 Fiat 500 Berlina F. I've had the Lotus for two and a half years now and we bought the Fiat at Christmas in Milan, Italy. Both are a constant source of joy and pain, all of which I intend to document here. Hopefully it will be enjoyable and useful to other classic owners or would-be classic owners. Otherwise it only serves to give me something to do of an evening! Either way, what ho! Watch out blogging, here I come!

The Long Journey (prt IV) - Reims to London

2005-01-13T15:35:00.000Z

The morning of Monday 3rd January we left our hotel as early as possible, again to make full use of the daylight hours. A quick stop for petrol and we were on our way up to our first target for the day, Laon. We arrived there as the sun was just beginning to rise, casting the shadow of the car on the grass banks that line the road to Laon. It was funny peering at our tiny little shadow! Unfortunately we didn't have time to stop in Laon - though it did look nice on the hillside in front of us. We carried on around the bypass on towards Saint-Quentin, then on to Cambrai, the site of battles in both World Wars.

It's strange driving through this countryside that twice in this century has been torn apart by conflict. As you get past Laon the terrain starts to become very hilly again and I found myself imagining what it must have been like to fight here in World War II. It must've been terrifying! The fact is you come over the brow of a hill and the next brow is only 2 miles away. So every time you hit the top of a new hill you must've been dreading what you might see in the valley bottom. And by the time you had poked your heads over the hill top it would be too late. You'd be in a fire-fight whether you liked it or not.

We were making excellent time but we did have one unexpected problem that was specific to this day. Lorries. Thus far we hadn't come across much commercial traffic - we left on a Saturday - but it was now Monday and truckers were everywhere, and if there's one thing a Fiat 500 hates more than hills, it's the draft from lorries! Every big lorry that passes throws us around like we were made of papier mache! All we could do was go slowly when we saw a lorry coming and hang on as the car got tossed around.

And so we forged on ahead to Arras. Here I had another one of my little navigational temper tantrums. I have to say, the streets of Arras are an indecipherable maze. Here we hit the usual issue when a main road takes you in to the centre of a French town. Not a road number or confirmation of your direction to be seen! We scoured Arras for about half an hour looking for signs for Bruay-en-Artois and only found a sign for Bruay-La-Buissiere. Now, given the French habit for naming four or five villages in an area exactly the same except for some trailing descriptor, we naturally assumed that this was the wrong Bruay. It was only later that we discovered that the town on our map, Bruay-en-Artois, had changed its name to Bruay-La-Buissiere. Instead we ended up heading out of Arras in the wrong direction but using a side road to cut through to the road we wanted. This is the point at which there was a mixture of cursing and relief as we realised the Bruay sign we hadn't followed was the one we should've followed. Note to self: must buy better map!

Finally back on track, we headed off for our penultimate French stop, Saint-Omer. We got here for about 2:30pm and decided to stop for lunch since the next destination was the ferry terminal at Calais. Saint-Omer is a nice enough place, but it's full of the English on this UK public holiday. It seems that half of England is taking advantage of the UK public holiday and traversing northern France after a break in Europe for the New Year. And they're all in Saint-Omer having lunch in the same brasserie as us! Still, I had the best omelette EVER - so I didn't mind.

After lunch we headed on to the Calais-Dover ferry port without fuss. In fact we arrived about 5 hours early for our ferry - I'd booked it for 9:30pm just in case. I went to try and transfer our tickets to an earlier crossing, expecting the usual nonsense - admin fee, no spaces, non-transferable, etc. But no! Top marks to P&O Ferries! The lady behind the desk said "no problem", printed us new tickets for the 5pm ferry and sent us to go and check-in. Fantastic. And the French lady at the check-in was really lovely - she couldn't believe we came from Milan and loved the car!

It takes about two hours to cross the channel, so because of the time difference (we gain an hour) we arrived in Dover at about 6pm. Straight through customs and off we went. Avoiding the M20 because it was dark, we chose to take the A20 which is the old road - it follows the M20 most of the way. With the benefit of hindsight, this was a bad choice. Most direct, it is - best road, it isn't! And I had to eat some humble pie when it turned out that Folkestone shared similarities with Arras in terms of road signage!

We got in to the outskirts of London for about 9pm. We were pretty tired and grumpy by this stage, but the car was certainly attracting attention as we headed over Tower Bridge and up to Angel! We got home at about 9:30pm, exhausted and thanking our lucky stars that we weren't just leaving Calais as originally planned! We'd done it. The Fiat 500 was outside our flat in London, in one piece and safely back in the buzz of city traffic.

The Long Journey (prt III) - Bourg-En-Bresse to Reims

2005-01-11T15:23:00.000Z

The next morning we were in good spirits. It was Sunday 2nd January and learning from our mistakes, we made an early start and worked out a route that not only avoided motorways but was also shorter, using France's minor roads. We were under way just as dawn was beginning to break. We drove straight north out of Bourg-En-Bresse and made good time up an empty country road, stopping for our first "cooling break" after about an hour and a half of travelling (that's the photo from this installment - can't remember the name of the town).

Actually, the first few hours of our day were lined by pretty towns and villages. The Ain Department is really quite a nice part of the world. Our cooling stops were a pleasure (though admittedly sometimes a little too hurried - we felt the time pressure constantly). It was our intention to try and make Saint Dizier by night-fall. I secretly wanted to get a bit further, but that would've done.

As the morning progressed we discovered that one thing our map didn't point out was hills. And if there is one thing a Fiat 500 hates more than pot holes, it's hills! It now seems to us that France slopes gently upwards all the way from Lyon to Calais. Common sense will tell you otherwise, but I've never been up so many hills in all my life. My girlfriend was becoming less and less amused with every time we were brought to a 25mph, 3rd gear crawl by yet another steep hill. In fact such was her sense of humour failure, she could no longer say the word "hill" without a slightly unnerving air of malice coming out in her voice.

Powerless to alter the geography of the country we'd chosen to navigate, we pressed on and to our amazement (in spite of the hills!) we made Chaumont by late lunchtime. This was beyond our wildest dreams. Suddenly it looked like we might make it to Vitry-Le-Francois or even Chalons-En-Champagne by the end of the day. Phenomenal progress!

After a late lunch from an open boulangerie we managed to find, in spite of it being nearly 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, we continued towards Saint Dizier. The hills were subsiding a bit as the roads we were taking at this point pretty much followed the River Marne in the bottom of the valley. As a result, our pace quickened and we arrived in Saint Dizier at about 4pm. We would normally schedule a cooling stop about now, but everything smelled ok, it was getting dark and there were about 35 kilometres of dual-carriageway along the main road to Paris, the N4, to negotiate if we wanted to make it to Vitry-Le-Francois.

And so we did. We reached Vitry-Le-France about half an hour before sunset. It didn't look like the nicest place in the world so we decided to push on further still to Chalons-En-Champagne. It was only a short hop up a further stretch of motorway and we had a bit of daylight left. And more importantly, I knew that there was a minor road (presumably the old road) that ran up the other side of the valley. We drove up the motorway for about 20 minutes until the light began to fail, then pulled off in to the countryside to finish our journey out of harm's way. A series of farming villages lined the rest of the route to Chalons and the progress was pretty good. We got there about half an hour later. It was just after 5pm, and though we were tired it now wasn't at all far to the city of Reims. A goal we felt was impossible the night before, but we were within touching distance! We decided to give it one final push, as the more ground we covered today, the easier tomorrow would be. We hit upon two problems though:

One, our map was not really detailed enough for the maze of villages surrounding Chalons and two, French road signs in town centres are an absolute joke. Not for the first time that day we found ourselves going round and round in circles trying to find our route, but doing this in the morning when you're fresh and cheerful is one thing. Doing it when you're tired, fed up and looking forward to a hot bath is tantamount to massachism!

The problem is that the French tell you what road you're on regularly (in this case the D1 towards Tours-Sur-Marne) as you're trundling along, which is great. Every sign-post signs the next big village or town and the number of the road you'll be on if you take it. Lovely. Until you enter a major town or city. Then, for some reason known only to French town planners, all route numbers disappear without trace leaving you floundering! No sign reading "Tours-Sur-Marne (D1)" any more - oh no - that sign is plain white and reads simply "Juvigny". As it transpired this was a tiny village on the outskirts of Chalons, not even on our map. Of course we missed our turn... useless! I stood about 10 minutes of Chalons' back streets and side alleys before I exploded in to a torrent of abuse directed at the French (in particular, their signage manufacturers) and our woefully inadequate map.

Thankfully, my girlfriend speaks fluent French (I usually call it showing off, but I was grateful on this occasion) and she asked for directions. A lovely elderly couple gave us detailed directions to get to Reims using the back roads. Of course, we took their word for it but we weren't really sure we were going in the right direction so there were still some tense moments. As we went it became clearer though and ultimately the directions were perfect, so many thanks to them. It took us over an hour to get to Reims and we were pretty tired so we stopped at the first hotel we came across, a Holiday Inn on the river. Not a great hotel and it didn't look very central, but we turned the corner and were greeted by the main road up to the cathedral, which looks pretty stunning as you head towards it. We were very central! We just didn't realise it.

We dropped our bags again and set straight off to find some food in Reims. There's one particular street/long square called Place Drouet D'Erlon which cuts across the city centre from north(ish) to south(ish) which is just packed with little brasseries and restaurants so we found a brasserie there called L'Apostrophe. The food was good, the environment was relaxing and it wasn't too expensive so we had another nice evening before going back to the hotel and straight to bed.

The Long Journey (Interlude - Bourg-En-Bresse)

2005-01-10T15:13:00.000Z

Tired and hungry and finally free from the infernal noises and smells of the poor little car, we set about finding food in the small market town of Bourg-En-Bresse. The hotelier was certainly proud of the location of his hotel, but we were a tough crowd, being in bad humour after the days' ordeal.

As I mentioned, like anywhere these days I guess, the outskirts of Bourg-En-Bresse don't exactly fill you with promise. A typical suburbia just off the motorway - motels, petrol stations, car parks and small businesses. However, the approach to our hotel gave us the first sign this town might be more than that. There's an enormous gothic monastery (the Brou monastery) that greets you from the bypass - a beautiful old building of great history and recently restored, it's an impressive sight. A shame we were too grumpy to appreciate its flood-lit splendour at that point in proceedings!

However, as we walked from the hotel towards the historic town centre our mood began to lighten. After a couple of streets we found ourselves following increasingly narrow passageways between beautifully kept old town houses. And by old, I don't mean Victorian. Oh no, I mean REALLY old - 15th/16th century old at a guess, with bare timbers and "wattle and daub" walls. As we walked through the little streets we were wowed by architectural feature after architectural feature. Pretty little squares, interesting roof lines, sculpture, hidden entrances, you name it, we happened across it. It's almost as though Gordon Cullen wrote his famous architectual study, The Concise Townscape (a must for all architecture students), after visiting Bourg-En-Bresse. Best of all, we were fortunate enough to wander down the streets of Bourg-En-Bresse just at the end of the Christmas season so all the decorations were still up and the festivities under way. The more we walked, the more we realised we weren't really that hungry yet and we were simply enjoying whatever the next corner had to offer.

You know what else I liked about this little town? There are lots of pretty towns in this part of the world of course, but there's something really special about a town the people are proud to live in. It shows. People care for their property, the streets are clean, there's an obvious community effort to keep the place nice. And there's an air of contentment in a happy town. That's what Bourg-En-Bresse has.

It's also obviously a town that is forward-thinking. The nice new bus station in the centre of the main square, well kept and respectful of its historic surroundings. The pretty medieval market square we happened across - with an underground car park! This isn't a place suspended in time. This is a place that understands and respects its history but doesn't let that get in the way of its development.I really liked it here. It was the perfect place for us to stop and relax.

After a while we happened across a brasserie called Chez Blanc that our hotelier had mentioned was nice. We popped in to take a look and it was much nicer than we expected, but we figured we deserved a treat so we booked a table and went for another quick poke around the town. After half an hour we came back to eat a really nice meal in cosy surroundings, with a good local wine. After settling up (it wasn't cheap, but the price was reasonable) we slowly walked back to our hotel, full and relaxed, ready to face the next day. We said goodnight to the porter and turned in. We both slept like logs!

So there you go. I thoroughly recommend Bourg-En-Bresse as a good stop-over place for any journey across the east side of France. In fact, it's well worth a weekend break as well if you live close enough to drive/fly relatively easily.

The Long Journey (prt II) - Valle d'Aosta to Bourg-En-Bresse

2005-01-07T12:43:00.000Z

The next day was the 31st, New Years Eve. It was a beautiful, sunny, Alpine kind of day so we went to a snowy kids playground place at the top of the valley to let my girlfriend's little nephew run around and play for a while. That was fun - you basically walk in and there are sledges, inner tubes, skis, etc. just lying around - once you've paid your entrance you just walk in and do what you like! Unfortunately I was suffering from a bit of a dodgy back, otherwise I'd have done more, but oh well. Next time.

We weren't going anywhere that day, but we waited until the sun shone fully down the valley (doesn't happen until about 2pm because of the narrowing of the valley near the north end and the angle of the sun) and warmed the car up, then we "stirred the tanks" and took it for a little spin down to Introd to buy some petrol and a grolla from a really pretty little wood-working shop in the village.

Satisfied everything seemed well, we returned the car to its spot on the hillside and set about enjoying the evening.

It was the usual affair of guitar, singing, chat, food, wine and general good fun. Then came midnight and we got champagne out and ate the traditional lentils for luck. We chatted on until about 2am and decided to turn in for the night as we knew we had an early start and it was already late.

The next day it was really cold in the morning. We got up at about 8:30am, but we messed about for a while and I think we got down to the car for about 10am and got all our stuff packed again. This morning, I could already feel, was one of those mornings we'd be glad we bought jump leads. The poor little car wasn't going to be at all happy about waking up this morning in the sub-zero temperatures! Still, after a bit of bullying from the alternator of a bigger, newer cousin, the little Fiat sprang in to life and we waved goodbye and set off down the valley towards Monte Bianco (or Mont Blanc, as it may be better known).

After an hour winding along a minor road towards the Mont Blanc tunnel (we weren't touching the motorways in Italy any more if we could help it), via Courmayeur we arrived, had our passports checked and passed through in to the tunnel. All was well, we were in good spirits and about to cross the French border. But then disaster struck. About two thirds of the way along the 11.6 kilometre tunnel through the heart of the mountain we both started to smell petrol. Fresh petrol in fact, very strongly! At first I told myself it was the air but after a minute or two we both realised it was our car. We were both pretty calm as we knew we had to get out of the tunnel anyway, so we just kept driving. What else could we do?

We came out the other end of the tunnel, thankfully, and pulled in to the first lay-by we found! I leapt from the car and ran to the rear, shouting to stop the engine. I opened the engine compartment just in time to see the last of what was a stream of petrol evaporate off of the cylinder head with a sharp "fiissssss". A quick examination revealed that it wasn't serious - clearly something had rattled loose. However, stupidly we had no tools with us and it was New Years Day. It was time to make the call and hope the pan-European breakdown insurance was worth the money we paid for it.

We were a little worried at this point. We'd barely travelled 40 km, we were right up on the side of Mont Blanc, the cloud was thickening and it was freezing cold - the French side of the mountain gets practically no sun in winter and the temperature drop is significant. My girlfriend was already getting cold feet - literally and metaphorically - and we had no idea how long the breakdown truck would be. At first they said they would take the car in to a garage over night, but fortunately we managed to convince the operator at the insurance company that it was simply a couple of loose bolts, so as long as they sent someone with some spanners and spares who knew their way around an engine we'd be fine!

Fortunately, only an hour later a very nice French mechanic appeared, a short-haired chap with a no nonsense manner and a small tool box. We started the engine again for him and this time I was able to see the petrol in full flow! Frankly, I'm amazed enough petrol was still entering the carburetor to keep the engine going. It was pouring everywhere. It was difficult to tell where the petrol was actually coming from as it was spraying, but on a hunch the mechanic changed the clip holding the fuel line to the carburetor and that was that. We were on our way again.

The next stop was only about 3 km down the road at Chamonix to see friends briefly before continuing. Unfortunately our unplanned brush with coldness had left us running behind schedule, so it was a quick hug, a chat and some photos and we were on our way again. Anxious about the time, and no longer in Italy, we took to the motorway once more. Fortunately it was down hill practically all the way out of the Alps from Chamonix, so we were able to keep our speed and didn't get in the way too much. That, coupled with the fact that French drivers are definitely much more courteous, made our motorway stretch reasonably uneventful.

One of the things I forgot to mention is that when you're doing long runs with these little air cooled engines at what passes for "speed", you need to stop for 10 minutes every 100 kms or so to give them a breather. They do get too hot otherwise and you can smell it. This isn't really a bad thing, since you can usually do with stretching your legs every hour and a half or so anyway. And so we crept along, swinging up past Geneva then stopped for lunch quite late about two thirds of the way between Geneva and the turn-off for Lyon. A motorway service station. They're the same all over the world. Globalisation in action. Except for one vital point. In France the food is at least edible.

As we left the service area it was getting dusky and I went very quiet. My girlfriend asked me what was wrong. I was starting to get the sensation that one might get if you lived in Transylvania and dusk was approaching. I wanted to bolt the doors and hang up the garlic! I didn't want to panic her, but I really didn't want to be on the motorway at night. During the day people can see you from a long way off. They can see you're driving a little old car and going slowly. At night all they see is two red dots in the distance. They assume you're going 120 kph like everyone else. They don't realise you're not until it's bordering on too late! This is really dangerous.

I just said "we need to get off the motorway as soon as possible" and left it at that. And sure enough, it happened. We were about 10 minutes from the Lyon (South)/Reims (North) turn off when the sun finally dippped beneath the horizon and the witching hour began! We had never been so scared in our lives. I still swear it's the closest I've been to dying and known about it. I'm not joking, I'm deadly serious. All of a sudden the visibility goes and every 30 seconds someone screams up behind you with their headlamps on full beam, they realise how slowly you're going, slam on the brakes, beep and swerve then scream past you. You think every time this happens they're going to hit you. And you know that IF they hit you in this little tin box, you're dead. My girlfriend was on the edge of tears and we moved to the hard shoulder to continue - we weren't safe anywhere else - not even in the slow lane. We took the first exit we could find. It didn't matter where we were! It probably took about 5 minutes to get off the motorway, but it felt like an eternity. We finally got to a place where we could stop and we just sat there shaking for a minute, both of us thinking about what might have happened.

We never took the little car on an unlit motorway after dark again.

We arrived in a rather sad little town in the valley of the River Ain, with two hotels, both closed. However, we managed to realise that there was a fairly significant town called Bourg-En-Bresse about 20 km away up a minor road that ran parallel with the motorway. We set off, after getting some directions to make sure we were heading the right way, and arrived on the out-skirts. We tried 3 or 4 motels on the outskirts, all sad, all dirty and all fully booked. I was starting to despair but my girlfriend was not going to give up, so we headed in to town where, by chance, we found a nice hotel with a couple of rooms and within walking distance of the centre. We snapped up one of the rooms and dumped our bags. The hotelier told us that Bourg-En-Bresse was a very old and very pretty historical town. We figured he was a local and biased, but it sounded nice. And I have to say he was right. It is so nice it deserves an entry of its own.

The Long Journey (prt I) - Milan to Valle d'Aosta

2005-01-06T12:30:00.000Z

Here's the plot: Christmas 2004, a crazy English guy and his Italian girlfriend decide to buy a Fiat 500 in Milan and drive it back to London... no, really, we did! The photograph shows the very car parked up in Milan prior to its lengthy ordeal.

This particular car is a 1971 Fiat 500F Berlina. We bought it (with loads of help from my girlfriend's very kind brother) from a classic car collector in Milan. It has only ever had 3 owners, including us and him! That's pretty amazing. And best of all, the first 32 years of its life were spent in a cosy warm garage being looked after by a proud old mechanic who had it since it rolled off the production line and that little engine fired for the first time.

(We were naturally cynical about this claim at first, but people who have examined the vehicle subsequently have all agreed it's been looked after very well, so it probably is a true story.)

This is one very original, very nice little car. Don't get me wrong, it's a Fiat 500 which means it's small, it handles like a bucket of frogs, it smells, it averages 40mph (65kph) and it rocks if a knat farts in the wrong direction - but damn, it's cute!

And so, on the morning of the 30th we loaded the little car with all our Christmas luggage and (via a local mechanic to fit a new battery - long and boring story) set off along the motorway for the Italian Alps. The luggage all fitted nicely on the back seat and I, despite being 6'3", had no problem folding myself in to the passenger side of the surprisingly spacious 3' high car. My girlfriend drove because it was on the wrong side of the road for me, you have to double-declutch and she'd had about 5 days' practice hurtling around the streets of Milan. However, we learned two things fairly quickly.

One, the motorway is not like central Milan. Central Milan is Fiat 500 country. There it rules. People smile and let you go. Old folk wave nostalgically as you grind the awkward little gearbox. No one seems to care that you don't even have a 0-60 time (the car tops out at about 55mph). Motorways couldn't be more different. There we cease to be an object of nostalgia and beauty and become a nuisance and a menace. People hate us!

Two, Italian drivers are *%!*&^%s! Excuse the sweeping generalisation - clearly not ALL Italian drivers are *%!*&^%s, just like not all English people like roast beef, but suffice it to say even my Italian girlfriend had to admit they're pretty appalling after about an hour on the motorway. They tail-gate, they drive too fast, they don't leave room, they're impatient - everything you don't need if you're trying to get a little old car from a to b with as little fuss as possible! I could rant for an hour on this subject, but... ach, whatever. There really is no point in raising my blood pressure.

We bit our lips, hoped that no one collected us from the rear, and continued our journey up towards Valle d'Aosta, nestled in the Italian Alps, where we intended to spend our New Year. To be honest, the 500 isn't too tiring. It doesn't make an unpleasant whiney noise like you might expect a tiny 499cc engine to make. In fact it makes quite a soothing "putt putt" sound, so were it not for the 120mph Mercedes and BMWs whistling past our ears, we would've been quite relaxed. Trouble is the prospect of instant death doesn't exactly set you at ease, so I was very relieved when we got off the motorways and in to the winding mountain roads.

Progress through these was steady and we spent a lot of time in second gear, but we had no pressure to go flat out and the little car can climb out of anything because of its very low 1st gear! And we pretty much remembered where to go from a visit to the same villa a year previous, so we didn't get lost which is always a bonus. We left Milan at about 1pm and arrived at the mountain chalet for about 6pm - 5 hours to go about 220 kilometres. Alarm bells were ringing, but we decided to get on with our New Year celebrations and cross whatever bridges the trip threw at us as they came.