Letters

A garage really is a time caspsule, as one of our readers observes.

‘What’s that?’ said my seven-year-old pointing to a halfshaft in the corner of my garage. I picked it up, wiped away 15 years of dust and explained it was a spare from a Morris Ital axle I once sacrificed to yield vital organs for my Caterham’s rear end.

What struck me in that moment is just what a time capsule my garage is – a shrine to projects and ideas long forgotten and charting the relative affluence or poverty of my life at the time.

From the earliest treasure, an engine mount from my Talbot Samba. JYB 214Y is by now propping up a building but her engine mount lives on.

A clutch cover from my first MG, my skills by this stage honed through necessity. Then the austerity years – first job and my second MG pressed into long distance commuting. A corroded water pipe from my friend’s Passat MKI still lies in a box, a reminder that I ran my cars largely on favours owed.

Dusty and still dribbling, the third (and current) MG’S front shocks hiding on a shelf. There were the welding experiments, then there was the Caterham. Half of the original build kit is still in various boxes as upgrades made redundant the original diff, suspension, oil system, wheels.

The garage is more than a place where metal is bashed and oil is spilled. It’s a microcosm of your life, past and present. Now, where’s my No 2 shock absorber oil? I knew it was there in 1995. Robin Cohen, Bucks