Jonathan Dodd: Unwashed but not unloved

Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed

I sold Swamp Car this week. I feel obscurely guilty about it, when there’s no reason to. Swamp Car was the only car I ever owned that acquired a name, and the only car I ever had that surprised me by being better and more useful than I expected. I hope Swamp Car has a future, but somehow I think not.

I’m usually a car’s last owner. Almost all of them were got rid of and hastily replaced because they broke or blew up or failed MoTs catastrophically. I’ve never crashed a car, I’m proud to say, although I have to admit I’ve come close occasionally. I’ve been crashed into three times, only once in a bad way. On the other occasions the other car has added a dent to the bumper or already-scraped bodywork.

I approach in my current rattletrap
Cars have always been a utilitarian necessity to me. I’ve bought cheap and driven until they’ll go no more. I’ve been uninterested in the external (and sometimes internal) state of the vehicle, and I’ve never invested very much money at any time. I can still count on my fingers the times I’ve actually washed or cleaned out cars I’ve owned.

Loved car:

I know people who love their cars, and use words like ‘Pride and Joy’. They keep their vehicles considerably cleaner and tidier than their houses or even themselves, and they worry constantly about anything that might sully the surface of their precious metal box. They wince whenever I approach in my current rattletrap, and they think I’m weird. I suspect we both are, in completely opposite ways.

A lot of tumbling and cursing in the back
Selling Swamp Car has made me think about all the cars I have owned over the years. The thing that has surprised me is how almost all of them had some individual quirks that never added up to a whole personality, but each became a sort of friend over time.

Minivan

There was my first car, an old minivan, bought for me by my dad when I was learning. I used to take my friends out to Brighton in it. One lucky person sat in the front with me, and everyone else had to clamber in the back. There was one special sharp corner on the way to the pub that was our exotic hotspot for the night, and I used to gun the engine as we went round it, causing a lot of tumbling and cursing in the back. For some reason that gave me great pleasure.

Pressing the accelerator would make you slow down
I had an old Saab 96 for a while. It had a column shift and a handle under the dashboard that operated a freewheel. So when I took my foot off the accelerator, the engine disengaged and the car would coast. You had to press on the accelerator to get back in gear. When you approached a roundabout you would change gear first, then pressing the accelerator would make you slow down. It took a lot of getting used to, but it made you very aware of the cars in front.

Saab:

I had a Triumph Spitfire once. The seat springs were shot, so it felt like your bottom was scraping along the road, and there was an enormous amount of filler covering the rust. Every time I shut the door, bits fell off. I had to sell my red Ford Escort XR3i because people kept trying to steal it.

I had locked my car with the engine still running
I was once late for work, and I jumped out of my old Escort van in the car park and pressed the door button and slammed the door. As I raced away I could hear the sound of an engine, but couldn’t see anyone in any of the cars there. I even went round inclining my ear towards various bonnets, until I realised I had locked my car with the engine still running.

I had an Austin Princess with a vinyl roof. It took ages to reach 70mph, but then it was wonderful to drive. Unfortunately, it had a habit of cutting out and losing all its momentum, which wasn’t good in the fast lane of the M25. Several AA men and garages were completely unable to find out what was wrong over several months, because it would mysteriously cure itself. Eventually it turned out that there was a loose piece of metal in the silencer, which sometimes shifted and blocked the flow of exhaust gas.

I learned what the term ‘fishtailing’ meant
I once owned a Rover with a 3.5 litre engine which rusted before my very eyes, and it was so powerful that I learned what the term ‘fishtailing’ meant every time I took off in it. My most glorious car ever was a shiny black Alfa Romeo 164, that had a large engine with a deep growl and a dashboard filled with buttons and lights. It was so fast that I could have reached 100mph on the sliproad between a roundabout and a motorway. Not that I ever did that, of course. Its engine and gearbox needed replacing regularly though, and I eventually saw sense and traded it in.

alfa romeo

I have had some gruelling and gruesome car experiences. There was more than one Citroen BX, with completely plastic bonnet and tailgate, and a central reservoir of green liquid with multiple pipes running all over the place. Any leak in any pipe would very quickly empty the reservoir and everything would stop working. I used to carry a lot of spare liquid, because this happened regularly.

The water just poured straight out onto the road
My Nissan Sunny developed a crack in its engine block. I had to keep filling it up with water, until the crack got so bad that the water just poured straight out onto the road. There was a Saab 9000 which decided to let all the water into the cylinders of the engine. That stopped the car effectively.

Nissan Cherry

A wheel fell off an Austin Allegro Estate once, I had a Morris Marina that was so leaky that the top of the petrol tank rusted away, I’ve had cars where the windows stopped working or the doors wouldn’t lock, or which needed jumpstarting every journey, and all of this was always really annoying at the time.

Your awful smell and your sunny disposition
So how is it that I remember all these cars with a big smile on my face?

Battered old toy cars: