That was my dream machine when I was in my 20s. What a fantastic little bus. Whilst I don’t envy you the sacrifice of your very soul to keep it running, you’ve got a piece of history there.

Yes, sir. Sadly the classic VW busses are now mostly priced outside the budget of those who would most appreciate them, but I’m with you on this. My days of making do are over as well.

You and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to roughing it in the outdoors...

One 16 year old and one 14 year old daughter. The defense rests m’lud.

Old enough to never want sand in my sleeping bag ever again, to never wake up with a rock wedged underneath my spine or to fall asleep against the nosewheel of an aircraft. Younger than you think, I suspect, but old enough to have earned some comforts!

Indeed, but auto license applications are on the rise (See DVLA data). Auto boxes from Skoda, for example, have a lower tax band and are more fuel efficient than the manual.

Whilst I appreciate the ‘No Fear (tm)’, hack-the-planet mentality of VW owners, I’m at the age where I want a hot shower and air-conditioning when I’m leading expeditions into places no human has gone before.

like 1 + .

The other snag, of course, is if you have a car that’s not been looked after properly; flushing and changing the transmission fluid can cause catastrophic damage.

The problem is that we are taught that way. If you pull up at a stoplight, the sequence is stop, handbrake on, transmission to Park. If you don’t do it in precisely this order during the driving test, you will fail. Holding the car on the brakes... fail.

It’s becoming more and more common as autoboxes are now at least as efficient as manuals in many cars, sometimes better. DSGs are also considered automatic so, whilst the percentage of drivers with an auto-only license is still low, it’s climbing.

This is more common in the UK than the States in my experience. Everywhere you stop in the USA, it’s a sea of red lights with the car held against the transmission on the brakes.

If you live in a house that has mood lighting and is kind of purple-y when the sun sets, you fancy a change from your balmy, west-coast existance and would like to know what it’s like to be rained on all the time whilst looking at beautiful, wet, Scottish countryside... drop me a line for a vacation swap.

Sorry, we disrupted the market. Bid for a tyre on Picasso-bay and get seven days of driving it* per year!

Whenever I hear the word ‘disruption’ these days, in terms of tech start-ups, my brain just translates it to ‘bullshit.’

As a British person who always takes advantage of being mistaken for an Australian whilst in your fine country, and therefore probably not the complete patriot I should be, I am still somewhat dismayed to find this myth of British ‘unreliability’ peddled here.

Charter airline pilot a long time ago - MyTravel (no one remembers that name in the UK!) - flew into Batam with the 767-300s. The A330s went into Banjarmasin after the Boeings left but I have fond memories of the place. Now I fly for a company in SE Asia.

I’ve had some dodgy stuff in my time, but even I wouldn’t drink anything from a shoe that’s been on the foot of someone driving a high performance car for several hours.

You don’t have to convince me. There is almost zero chance that any individual politician’s goals and careers will align perfectly with what you, I, or a random person off the street would want from them.

I’m with you on this. In the UK, with leather, you get your ass burned for 3 months of the year, it’s fine for 6 months and then you get an ice-cube where ice-cubes shouldn’t be for the remaining 3 months.