Buckley’s market matters
I’ve just returned from a trip to Turin, Italy, landing back at Heathrow just in time to escape the quarantine rules.
I was feeling quite chilled out until the semi-bogus meet-andgreet service turned up two hours late and then compounded the insult by not paying for the ticket that lets you out at the barrier.
As I took my blind but impotent fury out on the throttle pedal of my wife’s Mercedes CLK, I was reminded of a previous airport car park run-in at Birmingham when I failed to notice the £50 charge incurred in the pick-up zone if you stayed more than 20 minutes. The offside rear door of the poor old Merc W124 wagon still bears the scars of my frustration.
Given that I don’t like airports and I don’t much like flying, my recurring fantasy of driving something back from Turin one day looks increasingly tempting. My friend Andrea usually has a 124 Coupé floating around and this time there was a smart BC 1600 from 1972 and a timewarp AC coupé that I would have loved and, in the great scheme of things, was not a dear car at €8000.
He very kindly loaned me his Rover 75 to drive around for the week, not an ‘auntie’ P4 but the 1990s/2000s type that, in my view, is still a good-looking car and felt solid and well made. I was almost impressed.
I managed to slip in a trip to the Museo Nazionale dell’automobile di Torino, which was truly bereft of other visitors and a good hour’s entertainment – the highlight being the 70th anniversary of the Aurelia exhibition. Apart from the mysteriously ‘cash only’ bookshop (which actually had some good books, amazingly) and the usual self-flagellating, dystopian ecowarrior cars-are-killing-the-world finale, it was worth the trip.
Even better was the Friday visit to Andrea’s trimmer, a true artist of his craft with a penchant for making exquisite fitted luggage and a passion for old films: his window display was a Goldfinger tribute with a naked, gold-painted mannequin surrounded by cardboard bullion.
For lunch we made our way to a truck-drivers’ café where the local delicacy of raw mincemeat was recommended; not wishing to spoil the atmosphere, I agreed to join my hosts in the obscene pink flesh of the ‘young cow.’ It all felt a bit League of Gentlemen but, with some balsamic and extra virgin to remove the cannibalistic overtones, it was delicious. And I didn’t get a nosebleed.
Blimey, I almost forgot: we bought a Fiat 500. Or we might have done, as long as we can work out a way of getting it over to the UK that is not as expensive as buying the car twice…