Old Lad

I’ve never been a fanatic over cars. I was never one of these people who drooled over high performance motors. To me a car was a necessary item to be able to travel from A to B, preferably in comfort and with good load carrying capacity. My favourite car was the Volvo 240 Estate car -not a glamorous looking vehicle but it did the job for the family plus dog. Any form of motor sport watching cars go round and round a track is a form of purgatory! So why in the twilight of my years have I just bought a Classic car? Its a 1979 nutmeg brown Triumph dolomite 1300 for those who like the technical details.

The official reason I bought it was for my grandson who is a petrol head, and who is going to make a career in motor engineering, having just secured an apprenticeship with a company called M Sport which builds rally cars. But to my surprise, I have now become hooked on classic cars. I think its another manifestation of the nostalgia germ that infects us Oldies. I learnt to drive in a Ford Anglia – you may remember those , they had an angled rear windscreen. This was our first family car in the 1960s – my Dad only passed a driving test when I was about 12. This car transported a family of four plus dog, but when I see one now it looks tiny and I wonder how we all fitted in! The Dolomite similarly looks small now but my memory of it at the time is that it was quite a reasonable sized car. Its interesting to read the sales blurb for this particular model which boasts “luxury extras” such as a walnut dashboard, carpets, windscreen washers, a wing mirror on the driver’s door, carpets and front seat belts!

During this summer my grand son and I have taken it to a couple of classic and vintage car shows. This has been fascinating and enjoyable in equal measure. It soon becomes apparent that the majority of the classic car owners are of a mature age, and when you turn up they are incredibly friendly. So what are we all trying to re-create with a classic car. The nostalgia thing certainly. There’s a certain simplicity under the bonnet with an engine that can be worked on as opposed to being plugged into a computer. (So far I have drawn the line at polishing bits of the engine but there are those who do). There’s also the challenge of driving a vehicle without aids such as power steering or servo assisted brakes – Steering after an hour or two provides a good upper body workout and you return to a style of anticipatory driving to take account of braking distances. The Dolomite always provokes interest if I go shopping or go to a petrol station and inevitably somebody will come over for a look. we had an emotional encounter at one of the car shows with a man who disclosed that the exact model was his first ever company car and could he have a photo with it.

I suppose the attraction of a classic car is its another manifestation of another of the features of growing older and painting a picture of our past where we can gloss over reality – such as the fact that the car is not that comfortable and getting in and out of it is not as easy as my present car with its higher seating. I think classic and vintage cars represent a yearning for a gentler less frantic age – or maybe that’s a myth too. But its a bit of fun. And in your seventies you need a bit of Fun.