Take a leak

I was worried to read about the new MOT test rules regarding oil leaks (Richard Hall’s Norfolk Garage, June LRM). I have owned Land Rovers of various shapes, sizes and ages since the 1970s – and every one of them of has leaked fluids to a greater or lesser extent. And I’m not just talking about old Series motors, either. Among the Land Rovers I have owned over the years have been two that I bought brand-new – a 200Tdi Defender and a 300Tdi Discovery 1 – both of which dripped pools of oil when parked.

As Richard rightly stated, there was a time when all British-made vehicles leaked oil. As a teenager, back in the late 1960s, my pals and I owned and rode a variety of British motor bikes, all of which leaked. In fact I thought all bikes leaked oil until a friend turned up one day riding one of those new-fangled Honda bikes which refused to leak.

“That just isn’t right,” said one of my mates. “Proper bikes leak oil!”

Fast-forward half a century and there’s a real danger that older vehicles, including Land Rovers, could end up scrapped because they fail the MOT test on the

grounds that oil leaks are an ‘environmental hazard’.

I can’t see how oil dripping onto a road surface constitutes an environmental hazard. Have the people who make these laws stopped to consider what the vast majority of British road surfaces are made from? Oil, is the answer. Oil in the form of bitumen. It’s the stuff that makes newlylaid tarmac look black.

I thought this sort of pointless bureaucracy was the stuff we’d be getting rid of once we left the European Union, but it looks like stupidity will continue to reign even after Brexit. James Brewster Cambridge