I like driving in my car!  (part two)

Having decided that I wanted to upgrade to something more luxurious, I made the decision to go from one extreme to another and look for a MKIII Escort Ghia, which barring the insurance-bashing XR3 was the top-of-the-range model. This began a long-standing tradition of me choosing cars of a specific make and model rather than just going out and looking for any old car. I always preferred doing this as it was much more satisfying, even though it took a lot longer to find exactly what I wanted. In this particular case I was being even more specific in wanting a 1.3 litre Ghia model which was a rarity in itself, and also a 5-speed gearbox which was still an option in those days. I can’t really remember if I looked at any other cars prior to the one I eventually bought, but I like to think that I’d never be so stupid as to buy the first example I liked the look of, though as I continue my story you’ll realise that this was not the case a few years later. Anyway, I found what appeared to be the exact car that I wanted in the Auto Trader. It was metallic green model from 1982 (Y-registration), 1.3 litre and 5-speed. I can’t remember the mileage but I guess it must have been reasonable for the year, and it was advertised at £1050. So, after I’d secured a bank loan for £1000, I set off one Saturday afternoon on the M25 with a mate of mine in my old Escort, the plan being that if I bought the car then he’d drive my old car home for me. We eventually reached the Dartford Tunnel junction, came off the motorway, and pulled in at the petrol station on the roundabout where I’d arranged to meet the owner of the car. In hindsight this was a pretty stupid arrangement as you should always view a potential new car at the registered owner’s address, but the guy had told me that it was very complicated to get to his house from the M25 so we arranged to meet at the junction instead.

After a few minutes, this beautiful shiny green car pulled onto the forecourt and I knew at once that this was the car I wanted. I had a fair inkling of what to expect from the car as I’d done some research beforehand on this particular model, but nothing could prepare me for the unadulterated luxury that presented itself to me when I got inside. The guy who owned it was a youngster like myself and had obviously loved and cherished the car as long as he’d owned it. It was spotlessly clean and in very good condition, and it really did tug at my heartstrings when I saw it in all its glory. He took me and my mate for a spin round the block but this didn’t really matter; I’d already fallen in love with it and by the time we pulled back into the petrol station I was already insanely grinning with glassy-eyed delight. I hurriedly stuffed the wad of cash into the lad’s hand and waved goodbye as he walked off to get the bus home. For a moment I just sat in the car and marvelled at my luxurious surroundings. Whereas before I had been used to the absolute bare essentials, now I was sitting in what may as well have been a Rolls-Royce. The seats and head restraints were beautifully trimmed with beige velour, which was complemented by the thick-pile beige carpet throughout. The door panels were also trimmed with velour, and were finished off with wood effect insert strips along the top. Instead of the cold and hard-edged black plastic dashboard I’d been used to, before me was a two-tone brown and beige affair which was smooth to the touch and bristling with equipment. I had a rev-counter, something which was still a rarity in small cars of this era, a digital clock mounted on the overhead aircraft-style panel, four air vents, a radio cassette player which had directional joy-stick control for the four speakers and an electric aerial, intermittent windscreen wipers with variable timing intervals (wow!), a centre console with built-in storage for audio cassettes, a wonderfully ergonomic gearlever with that all-important 5^th gear marked on it, and even a lockable glove compartment.

All these things are commonplace on just about every car these days, but back then they were real luxuries, especially considering the spartan cabin I’d been used to with my first car. This new car also had tinted glass which I felt added a real touch of executive luxury, although unfortunately it still had manually operated windows as the electrical operation was still an expensive option on the Ghia which hardly anyone had ordered when buying the cars from new. My first car had a glass sunroof, though it was an accessory fitted years after the car was made and only had a tilt function (though you could remove the glass completely if required but only when the car was stationary). The Ghia, however, had a factory-fitted tilting/sliding tinted glass sunroof which was operated by a natty fold-away winding handle just behind the digital clock. It also had a sunblind which you could pull over the glass from the inside, a function which was almost pant-wettingly lovely to me.

I was really looking forward to wafting back home along the M25 in my beautiful new car and relaxing in my sumptuous surroundings, but unfortunately this was not to be. My mate Andrew who’d volunteered to drive my old banger home was not the most confident of drivers, and as we’d set off he’d been unable to pull out into the traffic off the roundabout at the same time as me, and had to wait several minutes before he could do so. Unfortunately he didn’t see which exit I had taken, missed the M25 exit completely, and started to drive up the A2 towards London. Meanwhile I was blissfully unaware of this, thinking that it may just take him a while to catch up with me. On and on I drove along the M25, having slowed down to about 50mph in order for him to catch up with me, but my almost constant glancing in the rear view mirror revealed no white car in the distance gaining on me from afar. This was years before we had mobile phones so I couldn’t contact him, and I just drove slowly home all the way, hoping and praying that he would be there when I got back to his parents’ house. Unfortunately he wasn’t, and I was frantic with worry over what had happened to him and my car. About an hour and a half later I was sitting on their garden wall with my eyes peeled on the end of the road, and I suddenly heard the low droning sound which I knew was my old banger approaching. Andrew came zooming up the road towards me (as much as that car could zoom), and screeched into the driveway before getting out of the car and slamming the door.

He immediately started moaning at me for not waiting for him, which in a way I could understand, and I also considered that I was pretty silly not waiting for a big enough gap in the traffic, knowing how Andrew lacked confidence with driving. Unfortunately I couldn’t help laughing as he recounted his epic journey, which - and I’m telling the truth here - took him in and out of London via Piccadilly Circus. His frustration was not helped by the fact that the car was very low on petrol and he had no money on him, but I pointed out that he could have used his debit card. For some reason he was scared stiff of using his card for anything else but withdrawing cash from an ATM, a fact which frankly annoyed the hell out of me as this wasn’t really my problem. Anyway, he eventually calmed down and we were able to laugh about it soon afterwards, and I thanked him wholeheartedly for volunteering in the first place.

The green Escort was a fairly reliable car throughout the couple of years I owned it, but there was one occasion when it failed me, and unfortunately it couldn’t have picked a worse time or place for it to happen. My mum and her then partner (now husband) lived at the time in the beautiful village of Edale which is situated mid-way between Sheffield and Manchester at the start of the Pennine Way in the Peak District. They’d invited me to spend a long weekend with them and I decided to go by car rather than by train. The journey up the M1 was fine initially, and I was travelling at between 80 and 85 mph most of the time. Looking back on it now I can see that this may have been a bit too much for a 13-year old car with a relatively small engine, but at the time I had no such worries and the car certainly wasn’t struggling by any means. However, as I approached the junction for Northampton, the oil pressure warning light came on and the car suddenly started to lose power, the engine breaking into a juddering motion which I could feel through the accelerator pedal. Fortunately the motorway was fairly clear at this point, and I was near enough the junction to be able to pull off the motorway rather than having to sit on the hard shoulder. Although there was clearly something seriously wrong with the car, I was still able to proceed, albeit very slowly, and so I headed towards Daventry on the A45 hoping to come across a garage (which was pretty stupid of me – I should have made my way towards Northampton), and fortunately after a few miles I found a Rover dealer which also happened to have a servicing facility.

I stopped at the garage and asked them if they could have a look at the car for me, and they duly obliged, but it wasn’t good news. Apparently there was a blockage in the oil sump (a problem which I was to learn later was a common fault with Escort engines of this vintage) and that it needed to be drained and a new sump filter fitted. Not being a Ford dealer meant that they wouldn’t be able to obtain the correct filter, but they did offer to drain the sump, clean out the existing filter as best they could and then put it all back together with some fresh oil. Unfortunately they were about to close and wouldn’t be able to do it until the next morning (which was a Saturday), so I was stuck. I then had to very humbly phone my mum and explain what had happened, and she then phoned her partner, Tony, who was on his way home from Manchester at the time. He very kindly offered to drive down to collect me, take me back up to their house and then return for my car the following morning. As Tony wouldn’t be with me for at least an hour, I went into the pub across the road and had a drink. The pub was empty except for a couple of girls of about my age, and I ended up chatting and playing darts with them for the rest of my wait, an amazing feat for me as I was generally still quite introverted and obviously had no interest in girls whatsoever.

As much as I was eternally grateful for Tony coming to my rescue that afternoon, at the time I don’t think I really realised just how much bother it was for him, especially as it would now eat into his precious weekend. He had a Citroën BX GTi at the time, a car which wasn’t short of a few horses under the bonnet, and I remember us doing well over 100mph on the motorway on the way back so we wouldn’t be too late. In the morning we had to drive back down to Daventry to collect my car (which had now been temporarily repaired by the Rover garage), but on our return journey to Edale we were lucky to do over 50mph on the motorway as I had to take it very easy. We eventually managed to get within about 2 or 3 miles of Edale before my car ground to a halt again, Tony then having to tow it the rest of the way which wasn’t ideal as the last leg of the journey was a narrow winding road with plenty of hairpin bends. I remember Tony being somewhat less than cheerful when we eventually reached their house, and at this point I thought it prudent to keep out of his way for a while. The car was eventually repaired properly by the local garage, and I made it home without much bother. A few months later my mum and Tony came to visit my grandmother in London and Tony’s car broke down. He needed to get to a business appointment the next day, but as this was a Sunday night the only place to hire a car was at an airport, and so it was ironic that it was I in my little green Ford Escort that took him to Heathrow to pick up a hire car. Not quite an equal return of favour but it made me feel a little better, anyway.

When I eventually came to sell my car a year or so afterwards, my mate Andrew’s brother bought it off me for £500 and kept it on and off for the next 5 years or so, though he did have the engine replaced with a reconditioned unit and made a few other changes such as converting the door windows to electric operation rather than manual. I say he kept it on and off; he eventually sold it to a work colleague who had just passed her test, but she ended up not using it so he bought it back from her. By this time he’d bought another car but loved the Escort so much that he just wanted to keep hold of it, more so that nobody else could get hold of it and trash it, I think! He kept the car for some time, even though he hardly used it. Sadly it just sat on his parents’ driveway rusting away, and eventually had to be scrapped. I remember when he told me that he’d stayed at the car crusher and watched ‘our’ beloved car be pummelled to death and emerge as a dense cube of mangled green metal – it really made me feel rather sad.

I’m sure Miss Hilda Winters would have wagged a scornful finger at me for becoming emotionally attached to a car (though I didn’t give it a name as such) but that’s just the way I am.

More road-inspired recollections next week!