Nothing evokes the twists and turns of life’s journey more vividly than the cars we drive
As he hangs up his car keys after 57 years, HUNTER DAVIES says . . .
REALLY, I hate motor cars. I hate driving. And I hate being driven even more. What a silly thing to say. Save hate for something worth hating.
Let’s just say I have no interest in cars, never have done, get no pleasure out of them — and yet, and yet... now I have decided to give up driving for ever (57 years was quite long enough), I find myself lying awake at night going over all the cars I have owned in my long-legged life.
I count them instead of sheep to get me to sleep, trying to remember the precise models, in order, and their names and colours, then I turn over and smell them, for even at this distance several retain their aroma. Then I smile and go to sleep.
The first car I bought was in 1960, when we got married — a 1947 2.5-litre Riley. It looked beautiful and smelt wonderful, of leather and wood. It cost £100. I did not have £100 at the time and the sods at the Midland Bank in King’s Cross wouldn’t lend it to me. Fortunately, I got a car loan from work.
It was all thanks to Mike, the so-called best man at our wedding. There were only two people at our wedding, apart from us, so he was the
only man, not just best man. I went to school with Mike in Carlisle and he had gone on to Balliol, Oxford, and appeared to know about such exotic things as cars. No one in my family had ever had one. He had persuaded me to buy the Riley, saying how classy it was.
The day before the wedding I failed my driving test, so Mike had to drive us in my car on the first day of our honeymoon.
I loved the look of the Riley and my little heart leapt when I got into it, then I started shouting and moaning as it was hell to drive and always breaking down. The roof was sort of soft hard top, and some kid in the street had taken a slash at it with a knife which I repaired with gaffer tape, very badly.
Today it would probably be classed as a valuable vintage car. Not top of the range, more the Preston North End of vintage motors.
In 1961, I bought a brand new car — a Morris Mini Minor. The Mini had not long been launched, the first ones appearing at the end of 1959, so it was still a novelty on the road. When I went back to Carlisle with it and took my mother or my wife’s parents to the seaside at Silloth, people in the villages on the way came out to look at it.
I felt quite important. Someone clearly from London, at the cutting edge, or whatever cliche we used in those days.
I did meet the inventor of the Mini, Alec Issigonis. He came from a Greek background but was a British citizen, educated at Battersea Poly, where he failed his maths exams three times but managed to get a job as a motor engineer.
WHAT I remember about him was his pockmarked face. I wondered if he’d had terrible spots as a teenager, as I had.
His Mini was a little miracle. The wheels were only 10in high and looked like toy wheels. It had front-wheel drive and loads of other amazing innovations I didn’t understand.
I suppose the most surprising thing was the enormous amount of space inside. Everything was pared to the bone, such as having a sort of pull-wire instead of a door handle, which broke after too many tugs. You slid the windows open by hand.
I had one of the early models, so I was told at the garage, which was why it was hard to start on damp mornings. I had to open the bonnet, dry everything in sight, then try again.
But the Mini went on to become the most popular British car of all time, selling over five million.
When I eventually started going abroad, on hols or jobs, I always felt quite proud when I saw a Mini in the street, pleased it had become so popular outside Britain, too.
My Mini cost £500 and was blue. My wife said it was green. We had an awful row about it one evening and stormed out in the dark to check. She was right. That was when I first realised I was colour blind.
I once gave the novelist Aldous Huxley a lift across London in my Mini, taking him to his publisher. At a traffic light, the wheels of a double-decker bus suddenly towered over us and he tried to jump out, scared he was going to be crushed to death. He was very tall and at the time going blind.
Luckily he couldn’t work out how to operate the wire dooropener, so I could drive off before he leapt out and killed himself.
We used to go up to Carlisle in the Mini for Christmas each year, to see the folks, which back then took all day, driving up the A1 through little towns with massive traffic jams such as Baldock and Grantham, then Doncaster, hoping you wouldn’t hit it on a race-day. Then, oh joy, turning left at Scotch Corner and heading for Cumbria.
One snowy, freezing cold Christmas, going up to see our parents, I wasn’t concentrating when we turned and didn’t spot a sign on the A66 saying: NO ENTRY ROAD BLOCKED.
As we trundled on, delighted by the lack of traffic, I began to realise I was driving in ruts, with huge banks of snow on either side. The Mini, being so very small, was soon totally hidden. God knows how we ever got to Penrith.
When the M1 and M6 arrived, hurrah, it cut the journey time to Cumbria by half. Even with two stops we could do it in under six hours.
Then I had a Mini Traveller — a long version of the Mini, with wooden battens down the side. I never cleaned it and eventually it started growing grass.
I had a Citroen, forgotten why, and it would never start. Then a white Triumph Herald convertible — rather snazzy, but I sold it almost as soon as I bought it, as we went abroad for a year.
The only sports car I had was an MGB GT. By then we had two children and a cottage in Wardington, Oxfordshire, whizzing up the M1 at weekends. It didn’t have proper back seats, just a low bench. When I realised the children were growing up with flat heads, I decided to change to a Volvo.
For about ten years I drove a series of Ford Granada Scorpios, which were excellent, never let me down, automatic, black leather. They were rather looked down upon, sort of middle executive cars. As if I cared, as long as they worked.
THE first was stolen from outside my house. Then the second one, at the same time on a Sunday afternoon, when I was watching football. Made me realise how popular Granadas must be. ‘Good choice, Hunter,’ the salesman probably said when I bought a third one. The insurance paid up each time, no bother.
For another ten years I had Jaguars, which were lovely. It was like gliding, not driving. They reminded me of my Riley, with walnut veneer.
I think those Jags were the nicest cars I ever had. I gave them up because spares were starting to cost a fortune — and they were so big. Driving them into my garage was getting increasingly awkward.
At present I have a Golf, bought five years ago, one year old, OK but totally boring. And this will be my last ever car.
Why, you may cry, when I have almost been waxing lyrical about my long-gone motors?
My wife died last year and I have sold our Lakeland house where we spent half the year for 30 years. I needed a car, to get up and down the country.
But now, where do I go? The answer is: once a month to Morrisons for my shopping, which means two miles there and another two miles back. And that’s it. Total annual mileage, about 100 miles.
Last month, I was sent details of my car insurance annual renewal from LV. It was £685. I renewed it without thinking, as
they said I need do nothing, they would renew it automatically. How kind.
But then I woke up to my own stu-pidity. The previous year it was only £567. So they had put up the pre-mium by nearly £120, yet the car is a year older and I’m doing so few miles. That is far more than the aver-age increase of 8 per cent that car insurers are charging everyone, according to the Association of British Insurers.
So I will not renew it, ever again. At the age of 81, I have done driving and will save myself a fortune — £1,000 a year on insurance, tax and servicing, and at least £1,000 a year in depreciation.
Then there’s parking and fines, such as £80 for turning left the other week when I shouldn’t have done, not my fault, your honour, I couldn’t see the sign because a bus blocked my view.
I will probably give the car to one of my three children and get them to drive me back from Morrisons — going there by bus, of course, with my pensioner Freedom pass.
Meanwhile, I’m not sure what to do with my collection of all my tax discs. Each year, I liked seeing how the colour shades marginally differed. Also, these scraps of paper had cost me a lot of money, so it seemed wasteful to throw them away at the end of the year.
Then there’s my personalised numberplate. What should I do with that? Friends can’t believe I actually have one — the sort of thing I would normally mock.
About ten years ago, I received a letter from a dealer offering me the numberplate M2 EHD for £400.
I couldn’t see the significance at first, then realised that it was my initials — for my full name is Edward Hunter Davies, something I usually keep secret. My wife was called Margaret. Margaret, too. Gerrit?
I couldn’t work out how they knew all this, so I rang the dealer. Apparently he had analysed the electoral register and made a list of people whose initials were EHD and who had a wife or husband whose Christian name began with an M. Then he consulted a list of postcodes, arranged socioeconomically, showing areas of the UK where people might have more money than sense.
He identified five people in the end, one of whom was me.
I was so intrigued by his cunning that I wrote an article about him, giving him a plug. I got him down to £300 for the numberplate — and sold the story to a magazine for £500. Good, eh?
I wonder how much I’ll get for it now. Must have gone up, as there are even more dopey people today who like personal car numbers.
The big attraction for me was that for nearly all those 57 years I could never remember my own car number, so having one with my initials on made it so much easier.
How will I remember my own name now, when I am car-less?
The next volume of hunter Davies’s memoirs, Life In The Day, which covers the death of his wife Margaret, is published on July 13 by Simon & Schuster.