It is approaching the time for me to think about changing my car.
This happens every three years as the lease contract on whatever vehicle I am using approaches the end.
I say 'using' because in all of my years of driving, from passing my test in 1984, I have never actually owned a car in my own name.
I did share a 1966 Mini with my sisters for a few years but we all needed it for one thing or another and it was a case of having to book it for a few days or a weekend. It was a good vehicle for all its mechanical simplicity and I did have a few hair raising experiences in it. With it's low centre of gravity and grippy tyres any forward movement greater than 40 mph gave the impression of travelling along at twice what it said on the oversized clock faced speedometer.
It was certainly a raw motoring sensation with incessant deafening engine noise, rattles a plenty, draughty sliding windows, no heater and a massive bus-like steering wheel. Many may say it represented the halycon days of private transport but when I had use of it on the congested and manic roads of the 1980's it was more frightening than nostalgic.
On a trunk road the diminutive Mini would be virtually invisible amongst the buses, lorries and larger modern cars. I was constantly in fear of being dragged under the trailer of an articulated truck or just driven over and squashed.
Otherwise I have been fortunate from my first full time employment to the present day to be provided with a company car.
The first of the many was a hand me down car previously used by the wife of one of my employers. It was a gold metallic Austin Metro Van den Plas. More of a granny car than what I had expected as the required mode of transport for a 24 year old graduate. The interior was a plush as a 5 Star hotel with velour upholstery and inlaid walnut trim to the dashboard. All of that weight was propelled by a puny 1300 cc petrol engine. In the inevitable drag race test which every company car user must undertake the luxury motor struggled to exceed 90 mph even downhill and with a howling tail wind.
Rather than the genteel and leisurely life it had previously lived on short shopping runs and trips to garden centres I did eventually wear it out from a rough urban use. The tailgate was not able to cope with multiple opening every day to extract my working equipment and rapidly ceased to function.
I progressed to a much more suitable and durable car in a Ford Fiesta Diesel. It was a real workhorse although having to wait for the pre-heater coil to warm up the stodgy cold fuel was a bit of an inconvenience. It also sounded just like a Taxi and I was regularly hailed from the pavement by drunken pedestrians.
Gradually, as I progressed in the company structure I was rewarded with a better calibre of car and went through the rest of the Ford brochure with a Fiesta XR2 and successive Escort XR3i's. In their day they were stylish hot hatchbacks but seeing a surviving example on the roads now reinforces just how bland and uninspirational they actually were. Compared to what had gone before from British Leyland, etc they were positively revolutionary but the VW Golf and Peugeot 205GTi to name but two were overwhelming competition.
Later, when self employed there was a more pragmatic approach to the company car and it was more a case of seeking out a good deal than being tempted by show and speed.
I wore out a Ford Sierra Sapphire and the four door hatchback version within a couple of years of high mileage and frequent stop-start local driving.
A good few years in business stretched the car-budget a bit and I was able to go for a series of Volvo Estates which kept me going for the next 15 years, each of the five models reaching the 100,000 miles with consumate ease and with very little unexpected expense. I do not think that I missed a single days work for that whole time in a Swedish monolith.
In leaner years the emphasis on cost effective leasing returned but I was able to discover the best kept secrets of the Skoda brand when at one time I would have rather have had a three-wheeler rather than be seen in let alone use an eastern european marque.
The last three years have been in a VW and have proven to be the most enjoyable of them all to date.
It may be a bit of a boring and predictable shape. The seats can be over-firm in typical Germanic efficiency. I may be invisible to other road users because of the non-descript presence. It is silver in colour. I am one of many thousands of other matching VW's. My suit jacket hanging up in the back just shouts out ' company car driver'.
Oblivious I am however to the derogatory mouthings and contemptuous stares of other road users in their privately purchased cars with personalised number plates because my enjoyment stems from a couple of key factors.
The first is that the road fund licence is only £30 per year . The second but the main selling point for my mode of transport for the next three years and 90,000 miles is that I have a stonking digital radio permanently tuned to BBC 4 Extra. I regularly throw back my head and roar approval out loud at the crude insults of Steptoe and Son, the bumbling antics of Dad's Army and the manic comedic talent of Tony Hancock. Others in the traffic jam may think that this is just down to madness and frustration in having to drive a company car. He who laughs last seems to be apt in my case.
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