Aircooled Poirot

Yesterday was the first time I had been a passenger in the 1971 registered VW Variant Squareback since, well, I guess it must have been about 1979 or possibly earlier.

I cannot remember the exact logistics but when, as a family of 7, we moved house in that year it consisted of a mini-convoy of large removals lorry and two of the three vehicles that Father had accumulated (The collection peaked at 5 in forthcoming years). At some time it will have been necessary to bring up the straggling third car and I seem to remember it was the Squareback.

As the crow flew, our relocation was only about 25 miles but critically, some 2 years before the Humber Bridge was completed and in use it involved a 70 plus miles drag around the course of the River to the Old Goole Bridge and also, pre-M62, travelling along some old, single carriageway roads to our new town of Beverley- a bit of a girly name but a very picturesque and nice place.

It will have been from this journey that the rear-mounted aircooled engine will have had it's last combustive process and, with the clunk-click of the driver's door it was mothballed for the next 34 years. It will have seen some daylight with the necessary shunting around of parked cars in the triple length garage at the back of the house and particularly with the arrival of car number 4, the 1966 built red mini that I shared with my two sisters. This will have been a manual push process and not under its own propulsion.

If Father happened to be working on oily or complicated looking mechanical things in the garage, pre plug in laptop diagnosis days, we may have breezed on by as disinterested teenagers to cadge pocket monies or to book a lift to or from a party or gig and caught a glimpse of the chrome bonnet badge towards the rear of the parked queue of vehicles.

We had never considered that it may have been kept in hibernation for us to use, but then again it was an estate car and it had window stickers from day trips to the tram museum at Crich, Derbyshire, Blair Atholl Castle in Perthshire, a visit I cannot recall to see the SS Great Western in Bristol Docks and Camping Club paraphernalia.

I admit that, to us, it was not a car with any semblance of being cool. The small mini, for all its skittish driving characteristics and crude engineering satisfied the criteria on cool grounds.

Our attitude towards the VW Squareback did definitely contribute to its survival for all the intervening years. Imagine how it would have fared in everyday use by us as late teens or twenty somethings setting new records for speed, number of people carried, possibly adorned with trendy or catchy badges or even, heaven forbid, some variations of the paintwork. The large load bay will have proven, in my mind, fairly effective for bonking and may have prevented me, on one occasion from misplacing a large amount of loose coinage which fell out of my trouser pockets in a field out near Walkington whilst entertaining a young lady in the great outdoors rather than in the back of an estate car.

As well as such misuse of the interior vinyl, the toll on the engine, transmission and running gear will have been enormous and a few years out on potholed or salt-infused roads will have contributed to the serious perforating corrosion that was the downfall of many a Peoples Car of that era.

The car is now in safe and responsible hands with Mark and Jo.

They already have credibility in aircooled circles as owners of a VW Beetle and it will be fantastic to see both vehicles together.

So, to my 34 years late lift around the block of yesterday.

I was giddy and excited, even more so than when last allowed to sit up front in 1979. I had contemplated secreting away a sick bag just in case or sitting on a sheet of newspaper in a dual bid to stave off queasiness and minimise that unpleasant stickiness when the back of your leg adheres to black vinyl seats. I did have a trial run, earlier in the day, of making some Marmite sandwiches in the quest for authenticity but, as always in my life, ate them at my house before setting off.

Mark edged the Squareback out of the gravelled lane from the garage. I had forgotten how long the bonnet was, a smooth profiled sheet of perfect white original paintwork flanked by the raised hoods of the headlight mounts. There was a cringing scrape and metallic crunch over the brick-setts from the lane to the road. This was a reminder that I had put on a bit of weight since 1979 thus contributing a few extra pounds to the axle weight as displayed on a Dymo-Tape strip on the passenger side door.

 Mark kept up the revs and we were off, ascending the gentle incline of the street, through what resembled an  honour guard of parked cars and across the Common.

A few pedestrians turned their heads at the distinctive throaty sound that characterise the rear engined VW's. Perhaps it invoked their own memories of owning one, or bonking in one, who knows?

It was decided to avoid the speed bumps of the nearest village which would rip out the guts of the car and take a longer route around the ring road. Even though bought brand new in 1971, the VW had only ever done 30,000 miles which amounted to only 700 miles a year, the equivalent of one return trip per year to Edinburgh. The engine was still sweet and you could even say not yet fully run in.

At junctions Mark kept the car in motion and with light traffic they were negotiated seamlessly. Cruising past the racecourse and into town on the York Road Mark pulled up at the traffic lights behind a bright, metallic blue BMW convertible. The single male occupant was immediately categorised by my judgemental mind as a) Hairdresser, b)Divorced, c) On the Pull or d) any other.

At his expense I got a few laughs, politically and gender incorrect, from my fellow passengers. However, I noticed that, on every distinctive throaty rev of the Squareback he would move his head and glance into his rear view mirror seeking out the source of the sound. I thought he felt threatened by what could be a similar sounding air cooled Porsche but it was his upper body language that suggested he was a pure motoring enthusiast.

Granted, his current choice of effeminate car may have been an  error of judgement. I did not give him the benefit of any doubt on that subject. We remained on his tail through a number of junctions and my disrespectful comments continued to my captive audience but it soon became clear that he was adopting a CIA text book of following us from in front.

Like a photo fit identification process I was mentally assembling his features. Eyes from the mirror view, good head of hair, a bit jowly around the cheeks. I had seen him somewhere before.

In a hand gesture that I had experienced in a few road rage incidents he indicated that he wanted a word. Mark was worried that my terrible character assassination at the traffic lights had been lip-read by the driver. In the nose to tail town centre traffic there was no opportunity to pull over or stop, not that we wanted to given the evidence for a possible confrontation.

At a wide 'T' junction the BMW pulled alongside and slightly off the rear wing. I, stiff necked, turned and recognised the persistent driver as the man who in the previous autumn had enthused over and then bought the pride and joy of Fathers' car collection- the 1957 Morris Minor Convertible. In that beauty parade ,overseen by Mother, he had stood out as the best prospect for the car to be restored. He also stood out because he had a false leg as a consequence of an accident quite recently. He had heard of the sale of the Morris Minor through his therapist who felt a project would be good for him in coming to terms with his loss of lower limb. "I see you got it running then" he shouted over the traffic noise "Did you want to see how I'm getting on with the Morris?" It was an invitation too good to be true and Mark fell in behind and followed the BMW back across town and into the industrial estate on the River Hull bank.

There we were shown the Minor. It was stripped down, seats out and wings off but had obviously had many, many hours to date of careful attention to weld up the chassis and body. It was well on the way to a return to the road.

Looking back, I cannot really believe the coincidences of the day. I do however firmly hold that it was a reminder that Father is very much in attendance, keenly watching over us and encouraging us to enjoy our automotive experiences as much as they played a part in his own life.