Eulogy for BK10 HSV

At the age of 56 I can say that I have just sold a car for the first time.

Of course, I have had around thirty vehicles since passing my driving test in 1981 but the difference is that the VW Golf was the first actually owned by the family and not otherwise of company car status.

I have been spoiled in having a succession of motors that came as a perk of the job and spared the stress and anxiety of going through the process of having to sell one before getting the next.

In being a company man I have only had to present the vehicle in half decent condition in a car park near the office for it to be scrutinised by someone working for the Leasing Company before it disappeared and was replaced seamlessly with the next set of wheels.

The Golf was acquired in the Spring of 2010, brand new, and was my wife's principal means of getting about. In its first three years it was on one of those Private Contract Hire Agreements at a monthly cost of £269.

It was a bit of an extravagance in, as always, a hand to mouth budgetary existence and that was even with two decent salaries between us. There were a couple of times in that 36 month period when I did struggle to honour one or two of the payments which did give me some sleepless nights until a bit of financial juggling allowed me to meet the commitments just in time.


At the end of the contract it was just a case of handing the car back. A complication was that the car, a good, reliable and sturdy make and model (1.6TDi) showed the scars of its urban and suburban territory. A few dents at corners, some paint scrapes, chipped door edges, scratched windscreen and a very strange and unexplained dint in the roof. The interior had done remarkably well and just showed a few flashes of glitter, swirls of biro on the seat back, amateur sketching on the headlining and a smudge of blue/green paint on black, faux leather cover of the Driver's handbook.

The glitter had been from a trip to the Fair. The biro from a naughty and bored child passenger. The headlining graffitti was me with the damage having been done by getting out of the car with a pen stuck behind my ear and the blue/green..... well, my wife and daughter had participated in the installation by a world renowned artist in which they had, naked, been body painted and with around 3500 others had laid down on a city centre street to take on the form of an ocean scene. I had seriously thought of keeping the handbook in anticipation of a surge in its value as an art history artefact at some point in the future but it had to stay in the glove box.

On Valentines Day in 2018 a motorist pulled out of a kerbside parking bay without seeing my wife driving past in the Golf. The damage sustained in that swipe was enough to be considered an insurance write off, a Category N status which means not structurally damaged but beyond economical repair.

The "at fault" drivers' payout was fair and left us with a nominal scrap value. We had some cosmetic works done.  I bought a new set of push on wheel trims and paid for a full inside valet and external polishing.

The Golf looked like it had 8 years earlier.

Another story linked to the car were beyond our control. This was the scandalous fraud of VW lying about the emissions which required the car to have something done to it to rectify the polluting issues. Whatever the technicians tweaked meant thereafter a persistent and very intrusive smell of diesel fumes causing  much respiratory discomfort amongst the occupants of the car when in use.

I personally loved driving about in the Golf. Although a basic and boring model and colour (metallic silver) it still had the VW Golf aura that had fascinated me as far back as the Mark 1's and the GTi sports hatchback.

Running costs were, it should be said, quite high not just for fuel but also other consumables such as tyres, wipers, brake pads and filters but I still felt we were getting value for money for the monthly lease payment.

In spite of being all dewy eyed about BK10 HSV I knew that it was time to let it go. We already run another diesel car and felt that this was an unnacceptable contribution to particulates and airborne pollution.

The Golf was replaced by an all electric Nissan.

The local "We Buy Any car" outlet lived up to their unique selling point with our trusty VW.

The price they offered, when added to the 2018 insurance pay-out meant that we had achieved the going rate although the verified mileage was only 57071 so well below average.

I was sad to see it go but at the same time pleased to have gained more parking space on the driveway at the back of the house. They didn't mess around and I have just tracked down the car in a catalogue for a large auction house in the English Midlands.

The mechanical report is all green ticks for good.

The bodywork report is a bit of a horror with a very long list of scratches, poor paint work, dints, dents and abrasions so as to give it a Category 5 rating ( worst).

I will keep an eye on its progress over the next week or so and hope that it finds a good home and gives as good service to a new owner as it has for us over the last decade.