Cars

Since I was 17 years old I have owned a number of different cars – from the practical to the exotic. It took me three attempts to pass my driving test ….

I have always been more interested in the driving rather than worrying about the comfort factor: I have never owned a BMW or a Mercedes but I do regret never driving a Porsche Turbo (or any Porsche for that matter.}

My cars have been for the most part British – and they have been pretty awful when it came to reliability and bodywork issues. The full list of 10 cars as I remember them is below.

I was not afraid to “get my hands dirty” and carried out some of the maintenance and repair work myself on the earlier cars. Modern cars, however, have sealed units and are mostly computerised, and so unless you have the test equipment necessary, there is a limit to what repairs can be carried out privately. Now, I am not at all interested in “what’s under the bonnet”, preferring 100% reliability and minimal servicing costs – a good reason for not owning a BMW for example!

Two episodes in my life were related to driving: one was my first and only car crash and the second led to my spending the night in a police station.

The accident happened when I was still in the RAF and commuting from my cottage in Norfolk to the Marconi Headquarters in Chelmsford, Essex. This commute involved getting up early in the morning and setting off in my trusty Mk 2 Spitfire. One fine morning I was driving through one of the villages en route, which had a blind, sharp left hand corner: I must have taken it a little faster than usual – or was not concentrating – because this time I went too wide and lost the backend of the car (in other words, the rear wheels lost grip and I went into a sideways skid). As luck would have it, a tractor was coming the other way, just at the wrong time, and the Spitfire cannoned into the tractors front wheel. I was unhurt although thrown into the road (no seatbelts in those days) but the car was pretty badly dented – luckily not so badly that I had to write it off.

The second experience was a more shameful experience involving “driving under the influence”. More importantly, my passengers were my first wife and our young son.

This occurred in the Citroen in about 1984 – we had been attending one of the late night parties given by our very generous friends Chris and Jenny Efstratiou, who had a marvellous house in Stadhampton Oxfordshire. After much alcohol I decided to drive back to London at about 3 a.m. with the family – not a choice I should have made. I can remember being stopped by the police car on the A40/M40 as we were making very slow progress on the inside lane.  Of course being over the limit and failing the breathalyser test was a formality and I spent the night in the police cell. Equally inevitable was the 12 month driving ban that followed.

Formula Ford Course

While under the driving ban in 1985, I took the opportunity to sign up for some experience in a single seat Formula Ford Racing car at the Snetterton Race Track in Norfolk.
The one week course was professionally done and I learnt a lot  about car control. Later I also experienced the race circuits at Oulton and Donnington Park in a Formula Ford.