I don’t know much about cars, never have. I like VW Beetles because of a childhood love of Herbie, I like the old VW Campervans because the beetle obsession grew and spread to the only other retro cool part of the VW family – and admittedly because it also really suits my inner hippy. I know what I like and a bit about them specifically, but that’s about the sum of my car knowledge really. My Dad loved cars his whole life, he took a job as an undertaker at age 18 purely because it meant he got to drive a Rolls Royce. He trained in various apprenticeships in vehicle panel beating, vehicle spray painting and I don’t remember the specifics but he probably did a general mechanic one as well since he certainly knew what he was doing under the bonnet. He bought me hundreds of toy cars when I was a kid, determined he was going to have his love of cars rub off on me but Herbie was his only success. I think it really disappointed him that I didn’t share his love of cars, and that I never really had any interest in learning to drive either. I only really got my provisional licence as a source of photographic ID but I wish I’d learned a lot sooner. My Dad also had his own driver training company, teaching people how to drive lorries and buses, and as much as I know we would have wanted to kill each other during the process I wish I’d had the opportunity to learn how to drive from him.
Despite my early disdain for driving I did eventually start lessons and after many failed tests I finally passed on the 8th of February this year. A cause for great celebration as the lack of a driving licence had cost me several jobs in my career field due to simply not being able to get to the locations or the job requiring you to be able to drive. So here I am I have my licence, my sister has finally given me her car which she had been holding onto a lot longer than she planned for this very reason and I finally have my transport related freedom… or so I thought.
It turned out it took so long for me to pass that my lovely little car has gotten a bit ill, and it requires a lot of work to keep it healthy. My sister suggested trading it in for a slightly newer car with less issues but everything we looked at despite being newer and considerably more expensive they were all pretty much in a much sorrier state than my little clio. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to a car when its been looked after, my sister is a really safe driver, a touch paranoid due to an accident which was caused by a brand new tyre with a fault blowing out at a relatively high speed and causing the car she was in to crash quite badly. Her experience made her an even more sensible and safe driver so this car I have inherited has been well loved over the last 9 years that she’s owned it. It also helps that for the last 2 or 3 years now she’s had a boyfriend who’s a mechanic and he’s looked after it and serviced it regularly too. So I have decided to try to save my little clio and its been inspected and the list of repairs to pass its mot isn’t too big and should be relatively cheap and all the other problems can be fixed after that to prolong its life. It might be a 10 year old car but several mechanics have looked at it and have been quite impressed by its condition for the age, so I’m giving it the best chance I possibly can to keep it in the family just a little longer. When my sister was in Australia for a year she left the car with my Mum so she could have her own little run about for fun days out instead of having to use Dad’s much larger car which she was perfectly fine driving but wasn’t very keen on. I have a lot of great memories and days out with Mum in that little clio including several trips to Ikea which coincidentally was one of the first places I drove myself to in it after I got my own licence. Mum loved this little car and so do I, even more so because it was so important to her and comes with plenty of happy memories.
I know that the length of time the car will last even with the repairs is uncertain and spending money on repairs only to have it die a week later anyway is a definite possibility due to the nature of the problems a car this old has… but I also have hope and faith in just how good this little car is so I am happy to take that risk, to give it another chance and even if I only get one more year out of it then I’ll be happy knowing that I was right not to give up on it today.
I may still not know much about cars, but I’m pretty sure Dad would be proud of me for not taking the easy route and being prepared to have to do work on the car myself, and I know he would have loved to spend hours outside working on it with me so I’m going to get the relevant Haynes manual for this model and I’m going to learn how to maintain it myself… well the little things anyway, I’m gonna stick to letting the professionals deal with the serious stuff just to be on the safe side!
I went outside to wash the windscreen earlier so that I could treat the glass with a special product that helps rain run off faster keeping the screen clearer and making visibility better and without meaning to I got carried away and before I knew what I was doing I had washed the whole car from top to bottom and scrubbed off all the dirt, so its all very nice and clean now. I certainly didn’t expect to turn into one of those take pride in washing the car by hand types of people, but I was really proud of myself after I was finished and it was nice to feel that way about…. My car!
This blog was written on February 28th but due to an unnoticed error during publishing it failed to go online, it has therefore been reposted today.
