What a carry on!
I WATCHED A LOT of movies during lockdown. It’s always fun to recognise a place you know, and one building that turns up regularly is my local town hall in Maidenhead, which featured in many Carry On films. I also spotted it in a TV biography about the racer Ronnie Peterson. He got married there and the archive footage showed some of the biggest names in Formula 1 gathering outside, back in 1975. I popped over the other day to snap the Baur there (below).
I got a little carried away myself thinking about improvements to the car during lockdown. I’d been toying with fitting more modern wheels to it instead of the 13in turbine wheels that were optional when new, so I called my chief tyre advisor, Dougal Cawley at Longstone Tyres (longstonetyres. co.uk), after I saw a new set of E21 OZ Alpina wheels for sale on eBay. He was pretty vocal about fitting the wrong-size wheels to cars – ‘If Baur thought that car would be better on 15-inch wheels, they would have specified them!’ – but by then it was too late. I had already hit ‘Buy it Now’.
Reluctantly, Dougal said that if I had to fit these boy-racer wheels, then at least I should wrap them in Pirelli Cinturato P7s. I have to say, they look absolutely amazing.
Now that the car was back up and running and looking gorgeous, my thoughts turned to security. The Baur has had a lot of cash (I mean love!) thrown at it and was looking, well, very stealable. Some time ago, I was contacted by a company called Valkyrie (valkyrie.co.uk). Their new, state-of-the-art tracking device makes your car visible to them at all times so they can pinpoint its location to a few metres. They are involved in managing security at government and intelligence organisations, including the military, which is some endorsement. The car is now protected by Valkyrie – let’s just hope I never have to use it.
My next upgrade will be to the audio system. Its period Clarion cassette player looks authentic – but I don’t own any cassettes and my weekly journey to see my dad is a 120-mile round trip. So I was delighted to hear that Blaupunkt has just launched a retro-style unit that looks exactly like its ’80s Bremen deck but offers all the convenience of modern ICE, including DAB, Bluetooth, USB and smartphone connections. Soon I hope I’ll be able to Carry
On Cruising with decent sound.