I Like Driving In My Car (Part 6)

By March 1998 I had become so frustrated with my GT Turbo that I made the decision to sell it and buy something else. However, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to go for next, and besides I’d recently noticed a lovely white GT Turbo for sale at a specialist sports car showroom near where I lived, and as much as my brain was telling me that these cars were no end of trouble and I should be looking elsewhere, my heart was telling me to go and have a look at it. In order to justify my decision of even entertaining such a thought, I asked a friend to accompany me so he could act as the rational outsider should I even consider the though of buying it. The problem was that I knew full well that he was as mad on cars (and especially hot hatches) as I was, so he was probably not the best person to ask as an impartial advisor. To further justify my actions in my own mind, I made a pact with myself that I would only consider buying another GT Turbo if it was the best possible example I could find, i.e. good condition, full history, low mileage, as few previous owners as possible, etc. and also that I would only buy from a reputable showroom rather than a back-street trader or private seller. That way I would minimise the potential for the car to have any negative history and thus be as reliable as possible.

So, one Saturday afternoon we drove down to the showroom and had a look at the car which was sitting outside the showroom gleaming in the sunshine. It was H-registration so at least three years newer than my car, and it had only covered 40,000 miles which was pretty good for a 7 or 8 year-old car. It was also in great condition, and the white paintwork seemed to show off the car’s lines so much better than my black version. The only problem was that the price was

£5000, an astronomical price for a car of that age. The owner of the showroom saw us milling around the car and came out to see us, and immediately informed me that he had an identical model at the back of the showroom which had just 25,000 miles on the clock, and asked me if I’d be interested. I said yes, obviously, the price tag of £5,500 for this lower mileage example not seeming to register with my brain, and so we had a look at the car which was lovely, and when he offered me a test drive I began to get those same excited butterflies I’d experienced when I first saw my own car a couple of years beforehand.

Before we took the car out for a drive, he lifted the bonnet and started the engine for me. I was absolutely staggered when he did so, because it sounded nothing whatsoever like my own car. Whereas mine still sounded like a diesel even with the reconditioned engine, this one sounded so fresh and clean, and revved freely instead of sounding like it was struggling for breath. I drove the car out onto the main road (which fortunately was a dual carriageway) and immediately I was utterly captivated. The car looked, felt and even smelled brand new. It drove like a dream, though I couldn’t really feel any significant difference between it and my own car other than the suspension felt a bit tighter. The amazing thing about this car was that it was 7 years old, had yet to reach 25,000 miles on the clock, and had only had one previous owner from new. I had expected this one previous owner to be some bloke in his late teens or early twenties, but it turned out to be one Edna Dorothy Sleap of Romney. This seemed highly improbable to me; I couldn’t believe that some old biddy had bought a GT Turbo rather than the standard fare for pensioners of Nissan Micra or Mini Metro, but sure enough the logbook was all present and correct. I also obtained an HPI check to corroborate the car’s history, and that came back as positive; she had been the only owner of the car from new, and its history was completely clean.

Such was my excitement that I stupidly told the guy that I was very interested in the car, thereby ruining any chance I may have had to beat him down on price, and came away frantically trying to work out if I could afford a loan to pay for the car, not to mention the insurance. My mate was as enthusiastic as I was and certainly wasn’t trying to put me off by any means, so I contacted another friend who worked at Abbey National and asked if he could arrange a loan for the full cost of the car. I promised myself that I’d immediately pay off as much of the loan as the sale of my own car would cover, but sadly this never happened as I had other bills and debts to pay off. Anyway, the loan was agreed, I arranged my insurance and I bought the car. It took me a few weeks to sell my old Renault, during which time I had both of the cars parked side-by-side outside my flat. I loved my new GT Turbo to bits, and my dislike of the old car with all its faults grew steadily over this period. I had to take it round the block every few days just to make sure the battery didn’t run flat, and it was horrible having to drive it again once I’d got used to my gleaming new car.

Once I’d sold the old car, I really settled down and enjoyed my new GT Turbo. It didn’t suffer from any of the problems that were present in my first one, other than the silly arrangement of the clutch cable which still snapped at regular intervals, so I felt a lot more confident with it. I kept my eye on the temperature gauge for as long as I owned the car, purely out of habit, but it didn’t overheat once. In the summer of 1998 I drove down to Cornwall for a long weekend with some friends, something we’d done the previous year when I still had the black Renault. On that occasion I’d had the usual overheating problems, but this time with my new car I had no such worries. My friends were the three brothers I’ve mentioned on many occasions; Andrew, my best mate and co-Doctor Who fan, David, the middle brother who’d previously owned the Blue Escort Ghia which I’d insisted he restore to its original condition, and Stephen, the youngest, who had bought my Green Escort off of me. Their dad also joined us on these summer expeditions, and we were all car-mad (except for Andrew who had no interest in cars other than for getting from A to B) so we indulgently and rather expensively each drove our own cars all the way to Cornwall in convoy. These trips were great fun, mostly due to us trying to stay together as much as possible which required some rather enthusiastic driving for much of the journey. I led the convoy on each occasion, usually followed by Stephen in his Porsche 911, David in his Escort RS Turbo and their dad in his 1930’s Jaguar SS100 replica. The first trip we made also involved Andrew in his clapped out Ford Orion, but he soon lost interest in the actual driving and on subsequent journeys travelled with me, preferring to get his kick out of the weekend by getting pissed every night instead. Of course we all did this too, so the rest of us had double the fun.

I always loved the long journey down the M3, A303 and then A30 as the latter two were such great roads for driving. On the 1998 trip I decided to use the opportunity to see exactly how fast my car would go, and I ended up doing 125mph for a few seconds, though I was most peeved at Andrew who had fallen asleep beside me and failed to wake up for this momentous occasion. In all seriousness I wouldn’t now advocate driving anywhere at that sort of speed, but at the time it seemed like fun even if it was only for a few fleeting moments. To be honest we probably averaged about 80mph overall for the whole journey, so I can quite comfortably say that we weren’t constantly speeding about like mad things. We had so much fun over these weekends, not only immense enjoyment from driving around the great roads in the Cornwall countryside, but also the fact that we stayed on a campsite in a large tent owned by my friends’ dad, Peter. We spent the entire weekend driving around during the day, going to the local pub to eat and drink in the evenings, and then returning to our tent in a fairly merry state only to enjoy a few more beers whilst playing cards - what fun times they were. It was these sorts of occasions where the GT Turbo came into its own and was a sheer joy to drive. Not only was it breathtakingly quick, it also handled like a dream, and this coupled with the slick gear change meant that it was ideally suited to winding country roads.

An unfortunate incident occurred in December 1998 when my car was parked at work. It was a private car park off the main road but was across the road from our building so not attached as such, but was still very secluded. Unfortunately it was so secluded that it gave a car thief enough time to break into my car and attempt to steal it. The offending culprit smashed the driver’s window and opened the door but couldn’t start the engine because of the immobiliser I’d installed to comply with my insurance policy. Unfortunately they tried very hard before they gave up, wrecking the steering column and instrument panel in the process, to the point where the car was immobile and had to be towed away to the insurance company’s nearest approved repair shop. To say I was devastated is a gross understatement, and my usual calm and relaxed attitude to life temporarily disappeared as I vowed to cause real bodily harm to whoever the vandals were should they ever be caught by the police. As if the situation wasn’t bad enough, I discovered a few days later that although I had paid the renewal on my insurance policy, the insurance company hadn’t actually renewed it due to some internal system failure, and then proceeded to tell me that I couldn’t make a claim………….