LET’S GO FOR A DRIVE

Everett recalls the days when driving was far more enjoyable

IT’S OFFICIAL. I HATE

DRIVING. I really do. Like many of you, I started driving in the mid ‘Eighties and back then there was about 14 million cars on the road from a population of around 55 million. Speed cameras didn’t exist and so you were at the mercy of the bobbies with mobile ‘hairdryer’ speed cameras. Not that you saw that many – but plenty of police patrol cars though.

Driving was actually a pleasure as well. Back then I lived either in Newbury or Oxford and a good Sunday would be a drive out somewhere quite far away like Somerset or North Devon where I grew up. My first trip would have been in 1986 in a beige MkII Mini 850, BVF 688J. Full of filler with paint that appeared to have been applied with a Hoover, it was mechanically good and so with trepidation, I set off from Newbury one sunny Sunday morning.

Down the A34, onto the A303 and marking off landmarks as I went – Andover, Amesbury, Mere, Stonehenge when you could go up to it and actually touch the stones, Wyle, Wincanton, Sparkford, all in a car with 34bhp and a set of points. But it was epic fun. Fill the tank for eight quid and that would get you around 200 miles with a plastic five litre can in the boot just in case.

The 850 would hammer along at an indicated 75 and as long as it had clean oil, it would take it like a trooper. Later trips in cars ranging from early Sierras, MkIII Escorts and even an XJS or a 928S could be taken on a different route but this time from Oxfordshire – Swindon, Avebury, Devizes, Warminster and so on. A trip to Louth in Lincolnshire to buy some Renault 8 bits from a bloke called Simon was a pleasure in a 1979 Granada 2.3 Ghia and it got me my first three points while steaming along the A46 towards Lincoln doing about 85. Ho Hum.

Not just that but new cars back then were actually worth having. If you have a TV (I don’t) you’ll see adverts for all kinds of crap today – three dreadful Ford SUV type heaps, three equally awful Renaults (one is called a Craptur) and some Merc hatchback that looks like an Astra for just ten quid and a Mars Bar per month.

If we take 1988 as a sample year, we’ve got really good saloons like the first Peugeot 405, an BMW E30 325i, odd but good stuff like the Saab 900S and Porsche only made sportscars, not that you saw many. On that first 1986 road trip, a black 911 Turbo cruised by and it was such a rare sight to behold. You could do the Oxford to Somerset and back trip in an early 1.0 Metro and really drive it, meaning you could overtake at will with lots of prior planning and you wouldn’t get the mock outrage you do now.

Now of course, there are over twice as many cars on the roads and that means twice as many idiots. Build motorways with as many lanes as you want because you’ll still get the legions of the clueless drifting along in the middle lanes at 68mph oblivious, apart from the fist shaking outrage when you cruise past them on the inside lanes at 70 something. Driving almost anywhere now is a chore that I try to avoid whenever I can.

One trip springs to mind when I was coming back from Banbury to Sheffield about three or four months ago at about 4pm on a mid- week day. Traffic was getting pretty heavy on the M40 and by the time I got to the M42 junction, it was looking like a scene from a disaster movie. The M42 crawled along at a miserable 30 in bad weather, eyes on stalks waiting for the inevitable sea of brake lights signifying the whole sorry shower grinding to a halt, again. I tried coming off at the A41 in an attempt to go into Birmingham and cut though to the A38.

Not a chance, everything was blocked solid with Insignias, 320d’s and other repmobiles as well as frustrated Mokkas all just trying get somewhere. So I gave up, got back onto the M42 and in a split second decision, got onto the M6 toll and realised what I’d been missing. From here, I could sail along at the speed limit; listen to the radio whilst the odd car went by and gradually regaining my sanity. It was probably the best six quid I’d ever spent and from here, it’s a decent fast road up to Burton and then on to Derby along the A38 (always a traffic disaster) and then onto the M1 at junction 28 to finally get home.

And that’s why modern cars are so dull. They’re just tools for a job now, designed to reduce the misery of driving as much as possible. Yes, they’re generally reliable, some of them look quite nice and some are as good on diesel as a Perkins powered Austin Montego was 25 years ago. None, however, are as sharp or involving to drive as that 405 was and none of them sound as good as a BMW 535i when you change down to third, drop the hammer and nail it past three cars at once.

None of them have the elegance of a W126 500SEC Mercedes and why is a current 911 so much bigger than the fast but handy air- cooled model from 1988? We all know that the world has fallen out of love with the car which is why breakers yards on a Sunday are no longer a second home for youths removing bits from a better version of the old banger they hooned around in. My nephew is 19 and couldn’t give a toss about cars, a real pity when you think of the opportunities of freedom that I had back in 1986.