Mini Obsessions - Part One

Warning: This series is exclusively about real minis made by Austin, Morris, British Leyland and Rover etc, from 1959 to 2000. Anyone wanting to read about those enormous modern ‘mini’ badged vehicles made after this time is not best served here (because in my opinion those cars are neither mini nor minis). However, this isn’t about bashing BMWs reinterpretation, just celebrating the real thing.

Why should any of us, even in the 21st century, have to justify our mini obsessions? The quiet madness of driving an original mini on a regular basis can easily be understood by what underpins all classic cars ownership...obsession. Obsession and passion even, surely need no explanation.

Lots of people still drive minis everyday. In 2000 I became one of them, being lucky enough to purchase an exquisite C registration (1985) Mini City E in Russet Brown, bought from an elderly neighbour. She was a hawk eyed pensioner who made full use of the excellent strategic position of her property at the entrance to our cul-de-sac. She had owned the mini for 9 years and only put 5 thousand miles on the clock. My Grandma knew her from when they were colleagues at Boots. The lady claimed she didn’t work for the money and that she kept her unopened wage packets in a draw at home. Silly bitch. The mini was maintained by her husband, who seemed to spend most of his time outside the house, keeping himself busy with all kinds of large and small maintenance jobs, including the upkeep of the mini. Seeing him changing the spark plugs and topping up the oil and water was the only reason I knew of the minis existence.

I came to enquire about its potential sale due to writing off my Saab 99 Turbo (whole other story) and so needed a cheap car. I happened to also really want a mini. I remember the purchase in snap shots, the first as I approached the old man with a speech prepared about giving the mini a good home, the next snap shot is of the test drive and that I will never forget. Stepping into the car, noting the immaculate chocolate brown interior, it started first time and easing the choke in a little and pulling out of the close, the mini felt like it was brand new. First and second gear dispensed with, I was suddenly doing 50 miles an hour without really trying. The front disc brakes felt unbelievably powerful after my heavy Saab, and the wonderful directness of the steering was a joy. Before I knew it, it was mine. It was a scenario every would be mini owner dreams of, finding an un-restored, low mileage mini in fantastic condition and all for £500 (including an early 70’s maintenance manual). I know all good condition minis look great, but this one was genuinely beautiful to look at, the combination of straight and unblemished panels and this particular shade of brown really made it stand out, to me at least.

The worst car sickness I ever suffered was when driving the mini. Not that I can blame the motion or the mini. It was hot summers morning that I crawled into my mini, clutching a nauseating hang-over and a plastic bag, destination: work in Thames Ditton. I made my way across the downs to sit in traffic on Ewell bypass. It’s very hard to be inconspicuous in a mini, driving a car so low off the ground means adjusting your trousers or picking your nose can be seen by anyone driving anything taller than Fiesta. That morning I also found that concealing being sick into an Asda bag whilst driving in 2 miles an hour traffic is virtually impossible.

You really can fit a lot in a mini, it’s not just something minis owners say, it is quite accurate. After a night out in Dorking with my girlfriend’s sisters mates, I offered to drive two of them home to Epsom. The couple that got into the back of the mini will remain nameless because I need to describe them accurately, but not necessarily diplomatically. They were both easily 16 stoners, yet both were surprised when they were able to find room for themselves without too much difficulty. The same can’t be said for the acceleration, which was somewhat blunted with the extra weight and rear visibility was zero, due to the solid wall of human on the back seat.

There is actually a reason this time for writing about a car I owned ten years ago and I will tell you what the reason is, because normally there isn’t one. The reason is my sister-in-law Edel. Her mini obsession started in 2004 when her dad brought home a brown, 1980 (W Reg) Austin mini. Theo (as her mini was christened) was a birthday present. Whilst Edel learnt to drive, Theo endured a whole year of total neglect, sinking into the pavement outside her mum and dads house. However, once licensed Edels mini obsession finally took hold and in a very big way. When I first saw Theo it triggered the memories of my own and it wasn’t long before I too had another mini in my life, a 1996 (P Reg) Mini Cooper, christened Pickle. Some of our many adventures in these two cars will be detailed in part two of Mini Obsessions.

I will finish part one with my original Mini City and an intriguing paint query. When the sun was going down, the paint colour on C431 JGT would transform from brown into a hazy purple colour and it looked beautiful. Does anyone know what causes this affect? The image will be forever burnt into my memory. I miss looking at this mini and the sense of pride I felt in owning and driving it. I’ve never felt quite the same way about any other car and certainly not for any other mini.

Some snow causes transport meltdown in UK

It’s been an eventful week logistically in the UK. We awoke on Tuesday morning in Manchester city centre to find we had clearly entered a new ice age. The taxis rank normally wakes us up with their incessant beeping by 7:30, but it was about 11 o’clock before we stirred and looked out the window to see a city covered in snow, ice and more snow and not a taxi in sight. This was not surprising when we ventured out and saw that there was nothing to distinguish path from road surface.

The fact that civilisation as we know it had affectively ended (albeit hopefully temporarily) in the North didn’t seem to concern our London centric ‘national’ news, which barely registered the severity of precipitation north of Watford. That of course changed by Wednesday when they realised it was heading down south and London and the South-East generally went into economic and social meltdown. My mother and father in Surrey have not done a days work since, although they have made sure all the grandparents have been given food rations. On Monday night I had watched the Bolivia Top Gear special (at one point it does look as though Clarkson is going to fall down a ravine in an ancient Range Rover) and wanting my own dangerous car adventure I decided to ignore the overnight snow fall and skate down to the Boddingtons car park, dig out the car and attempt the journey to work.

The Probe never ceases to amaze me with its hardiness. The pictures don’t do justice to the sheer amount of ice and snow it was entombed in.

It was that cold that a thermos flask inside the car, filled with hot water the day before had frozen solid. Yet, it started first time, and with my trusty red seaside spade and ice scrapper, I was slipping and sliding out onto the A6042 in under 15 minutes.

On my way to work I damned nearly drop my phone on a number of occasions trying to take photos of the journey. I have spared the shame of the BMW drivers out there by not taking photos of the many who were stranded. I have counted five of Germanys finest so far, many of which had found that rear wheel drive and automatic gear boxes don’t cope very well in slippery conditions. One Z3 has been abandoned all week outside a Shell Garage and now resembles an oblong shaped igloo, I assume being an aggrieved BMW driver, they just went out and bought a replacement Z4.

I thought cars were supposed to look glamorous in the snow, but then I realised that this notion was subconsciously based on James Bonds Lotus Esprit in For Your Eyes Only. In reality the snow and ice mocks our cars, giving them stupid white humps on their roofs, like ugly roof racks and attaching muddy snow clingers to the wheel arches. The ice also makes you look like you drive like a fool. If you haven’t lost traction whilst trying to accelerate from the lights, you are driving at four miles an hour to avoid careering off the road, whilst braking earlier for traffic than anyone over 70 usually does.

My colleague, a proud Jaguar XF owner has also had an eventful week. Now that Jaguar have successfully built a BMW 5 series, Neil found out that the rear wheel drive, automatic gearbox set up in the XF made him drive like a BMW driver too. On Tuesday, Neil barely made it into work before 10:30 and he had to leave for home at 1:30 pm, in case the slight incline on the road out of the Quays caused the XF to give up and slide to the side of the road. Neil has been very forgiving of the cars shortcomings, but that’s only because he’s glad he still has a car...early on the same morning an unlucky commuter was sitting in the dark, in traffic on Hale Road, when he started to hear strange noises coming from his Peugeot 308. Then on noticing sparks, he pulled into a side road and parked up next to Neil’s sleeping Jaguar XF. The Peugeot promptly set itself alight and followed this with a series of small but flamboyant explosions. Surely only a French car would have the indecency to catch fire whilst driving on a block of ice. Neil awoke and on looking out his window deduced that it was his XF causing the impromptu bonfire. However, on rushing outside it was to his utter relief that it was only a silly French car burning. Acting quickly, Neil bravely moved the XF out of harm’s way.

This is Neil’s surprisingly artistic photo of the fireman attending to the blaze, so fierce that it has melted a small, warped car shape into the tarmac.

Although dramatic Neil did not have the worst week transport wise. This accolade goes to my wife’s sister, who had a very difficult week car-wise in her brown 1980 Austin Mini. On Sunday night I managed to pour half a pint of Newcastle brown ale down her back seats, something she wasn’t best pleased with, especially when having to remove her sopping seat cushions out and clear up the mess at 1:30 am. Her journeys to the Trafford Centre this week have also been a complete nightmare. Her mini being as light as snow has meant virtually no traction. Her solution has been to drive to work in first gear, calculating that if crashing, she couldn’t do much harm to herself or to her precious mini. Her pace has caused a few road rage incidences with drivers of big stupid off-roaders. Having witnessed the smug behaviour of 4x4 drivers over the last week whilst driving the Probe, I can only imagine the hassle that Edel has had in the mini. Well done 4x4 people, I hope you all enjoy the only week EVER where owning a 4x4 actually has a benefit. Theo (as Edel’s mini is called) added insult to injury this morning by failing to start. The Probe meanwhile has taken everything mother nature could throw at it. I love to hate that this car, but having now spent the best part of my twenties explaining to people that its the wife’s, I have to grudgingly accept its growing list of abilities, now added to which is ice skating.

Well done Probe, you have started first time every day, defrosted quickly, you didn’t get stuck in the snow or slip off the road and haven’t yet caught on fire. Thank you.

Dude, Where's My Car? (on classiccarbook.co.uk?)

Delete ‘dude’ and add the word ‘classic’ and suddenly this bad teenage flick title has resonance: ‘Where’s my classic car?’ It’s a ’73 Capri, a Mark 1 Golf, or a Triumph Vitesse etc, etc. They haven’t been mislaid or stolen and they aren’t even my classics. They’re the opening lines of those poignant advertisements in the classic car magazines. Submitted mainly by men like Derek from Dorset, or Clive from Huntingdon who suddenly feel the urge to put pen to paper in a trippy fit of publically displayed nostalgia and regret over a car they owned 30 years ago.

Partly the blame lies with the classic car magazines preying on our latent desires for old cars. Pages packed with an array of engaging stories, their positive words so reassuring, imbued as they are with a sense of excitement that you can relate to and an unshakable faith in out-dated technology that perhaps you can’t, but no matter, you suspend disbelief anyway. These articles draw us in with glossy photos of pristine paintwork and pleasingly familiar lines. They remind you of what made cars great in period and provide you with various reasons why they are still great, and why you should want to own one now. How many times have you read an article and inspired, flicked to the price guide at the back? You scan the pricing, usually in four categories; poor, good, excellent and dealer/ concourse, delusion reigns as you try to ignore the fifth unwritten category ‘cars selected for magazine articles.’ Quite rightly magazines strive to show you the best examples of a model they can find, but are sadly never representative of most of the crap we all gawp at on eBay Motors. In any case, the damage is done, they’ve triggered those unpractical emotions and made you want cars you know are bad for you. You know this because years ago you suffered the inconvenience of owning one of these cars and yet suddenly you want them back.

Derek from Dorset again suddenly desires his Rover P4, forgetting the steering wasn’t opposed to pulling him into the on-coming traffic. Clive from Huntingdon forgets that his old Capri wasn’t averse to setting itself on fire. On the M1. These things have become distant memories, the grown up in us dissolves along with our usual sanity preserving ability to undertake a mental checks and balances list. The minds puppeteer creeps in and temporarily rearranges reality, you find yourself minimising factors such as space, cost, practicality and reliability and maximising factors such as shininess and acoustic satisfaction (yes shiny vroom vroom). And let’s be clear on the cars themselves. The ones we most desire are the ones we have owned and could own again, no rarefied celebrity Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa or a Bugatti Type 41 Royale’s thank you very much. We just want our every day cars from yesteryear, normo cars that have just gotten old, inferred classic status because, despite all the odds, they have avoided the crusher.

This craving for cars that have long since disappeared from our lives defies all reason and yet neatly distils the drama of the classic car obsession. Secretly we know that in all likehood these machines have been crushed long ago and turned into the tumble driers in our kitchens, yet I once saw my mum’s old Nissan Primera in New Malden a few years after we thought it was a goner. However, we are talking about three years rather than thirty since ownership, so road legality wasn’t quite yet in the realm of fantasy. I constantly saw my Austin Maestro years after it was sold, but it was bought by someone very local. The new owner had the worst eczema I had ever seen and I would often see one of his Turkish delight arms poking out the window as he motored by. I couldn’t help imagining the profusion of human dust in my poor old car.

Time for my own ‘have you seen my car?’ advert, which is as follows:

Mini City E, 1985, Registration C431JGT, in Russet Brown. Sold to some kid in the Farnborough area in the early double 00’s it had body work that could be described as near mint and is sadly missed. Any information as to its whereabouts gratefully received. £10 reward waiting for the information leading to its purchase. Please contact https://twitter.com/classiccarman

I could have chosen one of at least ten cars so why the mini.....I would be lying if I said it was because I thought it stood the best chance of survival. I think mostly it is curiosity over its condition. Much in the same way some people wonder how an ex has aged, I wonder how much the mini’s body work has suffered with the ravages of time and whether or not the intermittent engine fault finally consigned it to the scrapper. I really think there is a niche market for a car equivalent of Facebook. Classiccarbook perhaps. I would join and I think Clive and Derek might too. We could all post details of our former cars and ask the world if they know of them....are our cars still alive and if so, can I have at least one of them back?

Rover P6 Sophistication

I know how much of a loser this makes me, but when I was at college, I once spent a whole afternoon wandering the streets of Surrey with the sole purpose of looking for a particular classic car, the Rover P6. I think I secretly hoped that upon finding one, the elderly (imaginary) owner might see me and offer his mint (imaginary) P6 to me for a £150 pounds. I did actually find one, a dark green 2.2TC in Ewell. Staring at someone else’s property for five minutes didn’t make me feel any better about my non classic car ownership or diminish the absurdity of the action. A wasteful afternoon was what it was.

Car obsession has over the years affected personal relationships. It wasn’t until I met my wife that I could honestly say that I loved someone (family aside) more than a car I had owned / might own / might never own but loved anyway. I got hold of my first Rover P6 some months after the Rover walkabout incident and meant my college girlfriend thereafter suffered the consequences. The classic car in question was a money burning monster in Avocado Green, bought from an RAF chap for £160 pounds and dragged out of deepest Surrey one Sunday morning on the back of a rented tow truck.

The car was truly an obsession and why not. Despite a couple of rust holes in the ‘bolt on’ wings, the monocoque base was immaculate and so was the burnt orange box pleat interior, albeit a bit musty. I spent hours marvelling at the sheer quality of the dash materials and the clever design details. The best surely is the way the controls for the heater, lights and window wipers are all different shapes so you can identity by touch which one is which without taking your eyes off the road. My P6 didn’t work though, it just sat on the drive staring at me all day and meant clever design details quickly lost their appeal. Its permanent inertia merely fuelled the obsession and in the process turned me into a mean, introverted and uncaring person. Six agonising months of slavish expenditure later won me an MOT certificate and lost me a girlfriend. It wasn’t the money spent she objected to, it was the amount of thinking time I set over for the car itself. As you all know, there is much to think on when you own a classic. Many hours (read majority of) were spent simply imagining the driving experience of the P6. The journeys I would take, all those country and coastal roads and the night drives into central London. The car that tells everyone how grown up and sophisticated I am. Pathetic notions indeed, but this was my first proper classic after all and as it turned out I needed all the imagination I could muster, as it barely lasted a month. My local garage wanted £1200 to replace the clutch, a sum that was six times more than I had paid for the car and nearly as much as I had spent on the new exhaust and brake overhaul. Sophisticated or grown up it was not. I looked exactly what I was in my P6, a slightly odd 18 year old with no friends. Even in the month it was road legal, how I thought this particular car was going to achieve the above aims I don’t know. Avocado green as you might well imagine was exactly that, accept that avocados is not what one first associates with this particular shade of green. Yes I looked like I was driving round in a big rusty bogey.

The classic car obsession means we humanise cars, imparting to them not only human characteristics but free will and the ability to exercise it. I have read comments from more than one classic car owner to the affect of ‘my classic new exactly how much money I had left in my wallet as that’s how much it took to fix’...or...’the car waits until I get a bonus and then it breaks’ etc etc. If this was the case, my Rover misjudged the finances badly. It couldn’t hide behind its worthless MOT certificate forever, when your car won’t move, this piece of paper becomes an irrelevance. Or maybe it just didn’t like me. Whatever the reason, I left for college one morning knowing that by the time I got back the Rover would have left my life forever and in the same manner it had arrived, on the back of tow truck. It broke my classic car heart to see it go, girlfriend or no girlfriend, I loved that bloody thing.

2 + 2 = Classic Car

“...Lorry, red lorry, red lorry, red lorry, red lorry, red...” Yes, when I was nearly three years old, I repeated this phrase for a whole 18 hours straight. I went to sleep saying it and woke up the next day, still babbling the phrase in constant repetition. Ok, so it was a lorry rather than a motor car, but at that age I don’t think I pondered the distinction. What was important was that it had four wheels, an engine and it was red (obviously the latter was of particular significance to me at the time). Although this period of early psychological dysfunction may disturb some of you, it was certainly an early indicator of the obsession taking hold and something I am no doubt wrong in feeling quite proud of. Can anyone else boast of suffering from some kind of car related breakdown of the physiological kind? I’m adamant some of you can. (Surely its no worse than having an imaginary friend...? Yes apparently I had one of those too...called Durn).

Car obsession has its place though and like any addiction, you may find yourself returning to it in times of stress. During my GCSE exams I was utterly obsessed with the Caterham Super Seven and I don’t just mean during this period in my life, I mean I was thinking about this car whilst undertaking the actual exam papers. The car represented escape and freedom and although it’s tempting to blame Colin Chapman for the state of my GSCE Maths grade, surely day dreaming about cars is an escape into our imagination when reality gets too boring. I really would love to have a go in a Caterham.

Surely the cars we choose to think about says a lot about who we are, or who we would like to be, at any particular moment. Recently I became obsessed with another Lotus, the classic Esprit.This obsession was structured ar

ound a number of real world considerations. It’s a fairly reliable classic and one I could drive to business meetings. It would also be a kind of statement about my lifestyle choices (read no kids thank goodness, so no need for back seats). Its also a classic piece of British engineering, with classic ‘pop up’ head lights. The very last factor is my wife’s concern. She loves pop up head lights and wonders why more cars don’t have them. We haven’t yet bought an Esprit, as my wife is very attached to her Ford Probe which also has pop up head lights. I am therefore stuck on how to promote the Lotus as a more attractive car? Who gives a damn for aerodynamics or fuel efficiency when an essentially mechanical gimmick is bestowed such weighty importance.

When we first purchased the Probe, I thought it had the design inadequacy of not being able to flash the head lights quickly, as you might do when letting someone out of a side road, or want to bestow permission to a pedestrian to cross in front of you. I thought you had to pop up the lights every time you needed to perform the motoring equivalent of Morse code, i.e. flashing your lights in a certain order to communicate with other road users. Most of us have become casually acquainted to some version of ‘flash code’. Personally I flash once to let a pedestrian cross the road and two flashes to let a car out of a side road. In all cases three flashes or more means hurry up and get out of my bloody way). It was taking me an inordinate amount of time to locate the column stalk light switch to operate the front beam, which was initially very distracting and dangerous. I did a whole week of nearly knocking people over as I fumbled for the head lights and like a twit, wondered why I was getting funny looks. I felt quite the dunce when I realised the Probe has front spot lights, visible at all times within the front bumper and operational without the need to pop up anything. These smaller lights could be flashed in the normal manner, with minimal fuss and at a moments notice. But I’m sure most of you already know this.

Next I would like to introduce you to an example of the Rover P6. It wasn’t my first car, but it was my first classic car obsession that wasn’t just a day dream. Ownership was a test of sanity, but that’s all in the next blog.

The Primera Years

The Primera years started with the end of the Morris Itals. It never actually stopped working, which with hindsight seems quite impressive after ten years active service. It had just got to the point when much newer cars suddenly became affordable, although the decision to get rid wasn’t entirely down to economics. Mum had been moaning for ages about how fed up she was with the effort it took to park the thing and to be fair you did need super human strength to manoeuvre it at low speeds. However the real kiss of death for our Ital was her experience behind the wheel of a brand new Saab 9000 Turbo, borrowed off my dads boss whilst he went on holiday. The Saab had been immediately requisitioned for the school run and dad wasn’t back in the drivers seat until the following Monday when he got to drive it back to work. Thanks goes to Neil from RBS Croydon, who was blissfully unaware his company car was used as a taxi service for one week back in 1994. Climbing back into the Ital after getting used to all that Swedish sophistication was a genuine shock for all concerned and it had mum and dad hurrying down to Wilson's in Epsom to marvel over what the world of motor car manufacturing had produced in the decade since their last major car purchase. It wasn’t long before a fine Nissan Primera was selected.

We thought it beautiful. A maroon, four door hatchback, two litre, 16 valve automatic had entered our lives. What a car and what a motoring revelation. These days a high degree of reliability is not just expected, it is assumed. Compared to the Morris Ital and its ancient engine technology the Primera seemed to be powered by something beyond mere internal combustion. Not until its immobiliser started playing up in 2002 did it once fail to start first time. It felt so futuristic to sit in too, the wonders of injection moulding gave the Primera a snug, textured interior in grey and black plastic, the dash integrating into the doors. We revelled in the warming fuzzy material of the seats which felt so luxurious compared to the Itals cold vinyl. Add to this the electric windows in the front, a tape player that actually worked and a heater that could defrost the car even when buried in a snow drift and we were smitten.

It was the family workhorse that ferried us all over the country for eight years and it did us proud. We never went abroad on holiday as my younger brother had terrible asthma as a child and needed to be within a short drive of an A&E. Mum also had claustrophobia, so planes were out of the question, plus we had sod all cash. So during our teenage years we mainly went camping and this brings me to the most amazing facet of the Primera. I challenge anyone to produce a car that in relation to its external dimensions, has more internal luggage space. It is quite extraordinary what you can fit in a Primera and we had no trouble fitting all kinds of camping equipment into its cavernous boot. If you don't believe me, buy one off eBay and see if you can’t fit everything you own into the back of one, especially with the back seats down. Mums Primera lasted until late 2002. We took H678 FBB back to Wilson's to trade her in for a newer Nissan due to the intermittent immobiliser fault. Mum was most put out when they would only offer £500 for her in part exchange and on asking why so little, they tried as tactfully as possible to suggest that with 196,000 miles on the clock, they considered it a reasonably high mileage vehicle. The visual assessment was equally as damning, revealing at least one dent in every panel, the cost of rectification they said, outweighed the value of the car.

When I met my wife years later, she also drove a Primera. A 1.6 litre manual in black, with Nissan alloy wheels and a big noisy exhaust. It was a Primera with a very different character to my family car and yet my wife and I loved it until the day we blew its head gasket coming off the M61. Being my wife's first car, she felt the need to personalise and 'upgrade' the interior, which of course meant adorning it with animal print seat covers and massive pink fluffy cushions, all of dubious taste. At the time we could only afford to run one car and 'Princess' (that was our black Primera, not my wife) was what we used for the daily commute. I was briefly the shipping manager of a commercial importer in Cheatham Hill, Manchester and I remember with a mixture of embarrassment and pride my first day. Arriving late I had to drive past the warehouse lads, who were outside having a smoke. Princess, with her pink cushions and zany cow print seats were in full view. It’s fair to say they laughed their socks off and as a result I was shown very little respect from them during my time there. I didn’t mind as it was a fabulous car to drive, the stubby gear stick with its short throw produced satisfying gear changes and it handled beautifully. It also accelerated off the line very swiftly, but only nought to thirty. Anything of greater speed took an age, which was perfect for my wife, who loved driving fast but who was a rubbish driver at the time. Princess ended her days banger racing. We found out that she lasted just the one corner, being shunted from behind and on losing control received a terminal crunch into the tire wall.

To the original Nissan Primera then, a quietly British built car introduced in 1990. Despite denting very easily, it was in my opinion, streets ahead of the competition in terms of price, reliability and practicality. Ford took another three years to launch their Mondeo and that was more expensive, far less fun to drive and had far less internal space. Writing this has made me want to get another Primera. Maybe I will. So what is next you may ask? Before I get started on some of the other cars in my life, my next couple of blog posts will be on the nature of the classic car obsession itself and some of the consequences involved in its pursuit.

Adolescent Ital

Vivid, block colours on cars are perennially inflicted upon us by most car makers. The Italians seem particularly at ease with dousing anything from their outlandish Lamborghini Murcielago, to their chic Fiat 500 with paints described as ‘Fluorescent Green’ or ‘Tropicalia Yellow.’ In Great Britain, such gregarious displays of colour are now mainly confined to cars like the Ford Focus ST (btw how would Ford badge an ST Diesel variant?) which of course is available in, among other questionable colours, ‘Electric Orange’. Irresponsible use of colour peaked; it seems for us British, during the 1970’s. British Leyland were splashing all kinds of nonsense across our motor cars and seemingly no hue was spared the spray booth; giving us mimosa yellow, blaze orange and even cosmic blue. But whatever happened to the vinyl covered roof? No dubious paint option of the era was ever complete without a resplendent piece of mottled vinyl to cap it off. Examples of this practice include Triumph’s Dolomite Sprint and Jaguar’s XJ Coupes. I’ve never thought of vinyl as an engineering or even cosmetic necessity on the exterior of a car, since the vinyl is stuck to a roof that is already doing quite a good job of covering the top side of the vehicle. However, I’ve read that Jaguar used it on their XJ Coupe’s to cover rough weld markings, but that sounds rather suspect to me. More likely they thought it looked stylish, but as with any fashion device, perspective can be a harsh critic and I imagine people now either love or loath their vinyl roofs, but it still doesn’t explain their permanent extinction...or does it?

Style over substance, vinyl roofs and garish colours leads me straight into my next car, of which I was a passive occupant for nearly a decade. A 1981 Morris Ital. It looked as though it had been dipped in cheap custard, before having a black bin liner steam transferred to its upper portions. Friends, relatives and sometimes complete strangers would often remark on our whereabouts weeks after the event, so conspicuous was our ride. And it wasn’t just the looks (if anyone has a photo of one in yellow with vinyl roof I would love to see it), it also had a droning engine / exhaust note that was quite unlike anything else I’ve ever heard, possibly because even by 1984, the technology was so outdated, there was nothing left on the roads to compare it to.

The most memorable event in our Ital, was a collision with one of those shiny milk lorries on our way to Pevensey Bay in 1985. Approaching a Give Way junction that admittedly looked like a roundabout, my dad mistakenly thought it was his right of way. He was wrong. Ignoring the oncoming tanker and continuing on, the Morris Ital suffered the indignity of being rammed in the front passenger door at some speed. I remember the tubby milkman jumping from his cab with remarkable deftness and being very nice to us all in the aftermath. The Ital took the punishment like the tank it was and only needed a new front door and a bit of paint. It didn’t even stop us from continuing our journey to the campsite and apart from being a little shook up and a few tears out of my younger brother, we were all fine.

My parents had chosen a school virtually outside our catchment area, so the 4.5 miles to ‘middle school’ were undertaken in the Ital, I don’t think there were any direct busses, suffice to say that none of my class mates had ever heard of the village I was from. Mum with two other mums with children spilt the school run. We had the worst car by some margin (the other two cars were a mark 2 XR2 and a Mazda 626). It didn’t help that one of the other kids we drove to school with thought he knew everything worth knowing about cars, as his dad was involved in some form of motor sport and always drove around in a brand new Vauxhall Senator. This lad was constantly telling us how shit our car was and how his dad could perform high speed handbrake turns; this claim seemed particularly enviable at the time. By the late 1980’s I would exit the school gates cringing at the sight of the Ital and wishing that at the very least, it could have been painted in something less yellow, which is so typical of an adolescents ungratefulness isn’t it. My Dads cars have always been worse than my mums and his two car purchases during the late eighties didn’t help matters. They were (in order) a mark 1 Vauxhall Cavalier, which had the most pristine bodywork but died of terminal engine failure in a matter of months and its replacement, a Datsun cherry estate, which lasted a couple more years. The Datsun had the most amazingly sweet engine, but the bodywork of a Lada bathed in acid. Its colour? Yellow, but only where it wasn’t brown and flaky from the rust. It failed its MOT test when the tester could put his hand through one of the holes in the bodywork. To this day that car is my dads personal favourite.

Briefly back to the Ital then, a car which holds many happy memories that doesn’t include why or exactly when we got rid of it. Perhaps I have blocked it out as a painful recollection. Or maybe it’s because the memory of the day we got our next car is emblazoned. Our Nissan Primera ushered our family into the truly modern age of motoring, the car and its magnificence I will explain in a later blog. In comparison to the Ital it felt like taking a ride in an alien spaceship and it comes as little surprise that the Morris Ital was voted the second worst British car ever in a poll in 2008. Some cars are ahead of their time and some cars are just behind it.