You know their wife socially, and she is always complain that their husband is always at least a month behind on billing people and would forget to take payment at all if left to his own devices. She says that all he wants to do is play around with bloody car engines all day long.

Ah, you’ve been caught in that permanent traffic jam at Warrington too. 

To be fair, most of it was down the M6. On the other hand, most of it was down the M6. It is speed camera alley as soon as you get south of Lancaster, just about every gantry has camera on it. To say nothing of the massive stretches of roadworks with averaging cameras on them. 

* typo, that should be “for” instead of “four” in the first line there. 

Once drove four almost three hundred miles to look at my unicorn VW Golf Clipper Cabriolet, only too have the dealer, who had promised to reserve it for me, say they had sold it earlier that day. They then proceeded to offer me, instead of the mint condition VW Golf, a rusty Austin Maestro with after market GTI decals…

Mitsuoka.

An Austin-Leyland Mini Metro. If you can find one that isn’t a pile of rust dust by now, of course. Princess Di used to drive one, and if she’d been driving one in Paris then she’d still be alive; just because she’d never have been going fast enough to hurt herself. Seriously though, they are kinda fun. 

Some of us are old enough to still have audio cassettes. 

My depth perception is shit, for Captain Ron-esque reasons, so a good back up camera that can show exactly where your car is gonna be in relation to obstacles is a must for me. 

In the UK it is Range Rovers. The older folks here just love their Range Rovers, the full size ones, I mean. 

My grandfather once told me that I could own a car, or I could own money. But that I couldn’t have both a car and money.

I’ll support the Austin Aquilla, the British Leyland sleeper car that could’ve been great. If only they’d actually made it.

The “solar yellow” used on the Vauxhall Calibra. Now there is something that does blaze like the sun. Although it does make me want to paint a smiley face on the hood.

British Leyland, just why?

Yes.

British Leyland cars collection:

It hit the showrooms looking almost a decade old, because it was almost a decade old even before it launched. Even disregarding the deliberate faux-retro vibe. 

The Austin Ambassador. It was a peak 70s design that launched in the mid eighties. Like all Leyland products it was kneecapped by tightfisted spending policies, and shortsighted management decisions.

Don’t stance them, just drive them. 

Are you dying on this hill because you can’t get the Mirage’s brakes working properly?