Great thread
I love my car.
I'd always known that I wanted a classic car. Originally, I was after a VW beetle, or a Type 3 Squareback, or a fastback, or what about a sunbeam rapier, or a mk1 escort, or an opel kadette.....? Didn't want an imp though. The first time I ever saw one was on telly.The Used Car Roadshow or some such. I remember the "Wishes-he-was-good-enough-for-top-gear-chap" saying "How about that for rear engined then?" but thinking, "Nah, not a fan of that, bit ugly really." But eventually opinions change and a bit of internet research told me I could get insurance for less than £500 and a car for less than £1000, so a quick sign up on the owners club forum and I was hooked. I needed one.
The first imp I ever saw in the flesh was my one. My Dad had a look at it for me and sent me photos, a deal was arranged and I travelled 200 miles to go pick it up.
When we pulled up and I saw it for the first time, I was the happiest person on the planet at that moment. I had my very own classic car and it was gorgeous.
Sadly, not long after buying it, I crashed it.
December 12th, I killed my little baby.
A perfect 22,000 mile car and I stuck it on it's roof because I was an idiot. I drove like an idiot and I coulda have killed myself and anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just like the people I moan about and claim should be locked up, I had become one of them. I hated myself for that and even cried as I sat there next to it, upside down, in a field in the middle of nowhere.
But now when I think about it, the car did me proud even then, despite what I had done to it. No broken glass, the engine still ran, the doors still opened and shut perfectly. Two new tyres and an exhaust manifold later and I drove back to Essex, from Leeds for Christmas.
I rolled a car and drove it 200 miles home the following weekend....
Since then I've just grown to love it more and more.
It's impractical
It's too small
It's too noisy
It's too slow
It's generally quite unreliable
And of course, there's always something that needs doing
But that's what it's all about isn't it?
Surely something that is none of the above is just too simple, too sensible, too boring?
Where's the excitement in that?
If I had a big car with loads of space in it, it wouldn't be anywhere near as much fun trying to cram bikes, clothes, stage pianos and general house moving stuff into it between uni terms!!
I love it in the morning when you get in, couple of pumps of the loud pedal, turn the key- normally at this point it will jump off the starter, so a couple more pedal pumps, turn the key and..... "whhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-uuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm," there she goes.
A couple more completely unnecessary blips of the throttle pedal just to let everyone know you're around and to hear that noise again, clutch up, foot down and you're away in a cloud of blue smoke to the sound of a screaming janspeed silencer that doesn't exactly do what it says on the tin.
Everyone within a 2 mile radius wakes up and says "ooh, there goes Frank in that funny little blue car again."
That bloomin condensor has gone again, or maybe number 4 is just missing for some seemingly unexplainable reason, or maybe those tappets are all wrong since you last had the head off....? So it's out with the overalls, off with the engine lid and time to get your hands grubby.
None of this on a modern car 'ey?
No fun in that I reckon.
On a modern car you don't overhear little kids asking their parents as they walk past, "Why's that car so old?" or "Why's that engine in the boot?" as you curse your way through another head gasket change...
Normally (especially up here in Leeds) some old feller will walk past, probably off his face on all manner of substances, but somehow he still manages to get out a charming anecdote from 30 years ago about how he had an imp with a bag of cement in the front...
No one has any interesting stories about when they last saw a peugeot 106 do they?
People take time to stop and talk to you, to show an interest and to share stories. It's not just the oldies who remember them either, youngun's too like me who just want to know what it's called and how old it is.
The best bit comes though when you've finished tinkering and jump in for that "round the block test drive" that somehow always turns into an hour long blast.
Everything in the world just seems "right".
When the car's happy, I'm happy. Nothing else in the world matters.
Just as long as that little lump of ally in the back is still making a noise and pushing me & my baby along, there's nothing more I could want.
You come to a corner and whilst others brake and tremble at the thought of a bend in the road, you chuck the car in, feeling the road through the steering wheel making tiny adjustments for every bump and dip.
With the windows open (you'd be roasting otherwise, after all, you've ripped that heater control valve out or you need the heater on to stop everything from boiling over) you can hear the engine singing it's way up through the rev range, like it's practically begging you to sink that right foot a little further.
After the excitement of the lanes though, you get back into town with this massive beaming smile on your face and you look around at all the euro boxes. Their owners are so busy listening to music, or staring at the sat nav that they probably wouldn't even notice if their car was to start singing the theme to the Adam's Family out of the exhaust. There's no emotion, no attachment.
As you roll along in between each set of traffic lights, you try so hard to keep looking forward, pretending you've not noticed the group of people outside the pub watching you roll past in awe.
Normally, I wouldn't say I'm much of an attention whore, but when I'm in my car I love the way that people can't take their eyes off it. I love the way they smile and think "I've not seen one of those for years" or maybe "what on Earth is that crazy little thing?!"
If I drive through town on a busy day I'll almost always get a text five minutes later "ooh, just seen you in that funny little blue car!"
I "waste" so much money on my car according to everyone else. But is it wasting? I enjoy spending money on my car more than I enjoy say... spending money on drinking. Hell, it's a hobby, people spend money on hobbies don't they? There is nothing else I'd rather spend my money on, so where's the waste in that?
Suuuuuuuuure, I should probably sort out the worn valve guides instead of buying tyres for the new alloys and yeeeeeeeeeah, I probably should put some money aside to sort the body out, but why not just stick a bit of primer on the bare bits and spend the money on go faster stuff instead
So yeah, sorry for writing an essay (credit if you even managed to get this far, I no I'm not much of a writer so apologies to any English teachers out there for putting you through that!) but there is something so, so special about that feeling you get when you take a couple of steps back, stand there, look & think to yourself....... Yeah, that car is MY car and it's the coolest god damn car on this street.
My car makes me happy. End of.