Fond memories of my first car
Reminiscing with my sister about our first car. She's eighteen months younger than me but I failed my first driving test so we started driving at about the same time. My aunt gave us her old car when she got a 'new' one. All the cars I've ever really owned in any sense have been hand-me-downs.
So this car. Very fond memories of this car. It was a bright red three-door Volkswagen Polo. It was already ancient when we got it.
On many levels it was a bad car to learn in and drive as a beginner. On other levels it was great. When we were reminiscing my mum mentioned it having a manual choke - it didn't, but it wasn't far off and the fact she even thought it might is telling.
You had to actively drive that car. It was a mental and physical exertion. Hunched over the steering wheel, willing it along. After that car all others feel like bumper cars to me. Like I'm cheating.
My dad bought us a TomTom satnav quite early, he liked his tech. We used it to gauge whether we had time to overtake a lorry before our junction. Five miles? Best not risk it.
People used to honk their horns in displeasure at how slow it was, pulling away from a roundabout or some such. I wanted to say, "Observe the numberplate and hence the age of this car. My pedal is to the metal. I'm going flat out."
It broke down all the time. It stalled a lot and wouldn't restart. I pushed it off so many junctions. One time at the bottom of a flyover and I thought it'd be snooker balled out of there. I also had to jump-start it constantly, which was great practice. At one point the ignition broke and I was just hotwiring it, covering the open wires with a bottle cap. When anything about it broke that was kind of it. If parts could even be found they were too expensive.
My brother, not yet old enough to drive, was also too tall for it. He would occupy the entire backseat and because it was three doors and he's six foot five he would exit by crawling out onto the pavement head first on his hands.
There was no power steering or powered brakes or anything like that but it was light. It had great visibility because the bars (I don't know the names) were thin. These are bigger in modern cars because it's safer - at some point my mum realised all her children could be crushed like a tin can and she would lose her life's work so she banned us all from travelling in it together.
Good times banging about the country in that car. Grinding up Hardknott Pass. Driving around Bolton after my cousin's wedding. My sister and brother got other, better cars eventually. I held on to this one until we moved to London and I didn't need a car at all. I sold it to a woman as a surprise birthday present for her husband, who used to have the same model and loved it. I wouldn't have been able to send it to the scrapper. I hope it is happy in a garage somewhere still, with someone who loves it, because I did.