Cars I've owned
Cars
I love driving, not as much as I used to but I still like it and wouldn't be without a car. I passed my test as soon as I could and couldn't wait to get my first car which was a Fiat Strada. My dad bought it for me and it was the worst money he ever spent on a car, well almost but that's another story! I couldn't wait to get on the road and dad got me this car on the day I passed my test. It was alright for a week or so and then it all started to go wrong, I won't bore you with all that but lets just say that in the six months I had it, it spent more time off the road being repaired (mechanically!) than it spent on the road being driven.
My second vehicle was a Suzuki Jeep SJ410 4x4. I loved that little jeep, dad put two different seats in the front to make the driving less bumpy and with its bull bars on the front and a big wheel on the back, it stopped me from damaging it when I had any little bumps!! We all do it when we first pass our tests...don't we?!
Well after a while I got bored of not being able to take my turn at driving when my friends and I went out as my little jeep didn't have any back seats in it. So I persuaded dad to help me exchange it and get a car. This was the Rover 216SE. Mum said that it drove like a tank, because it didn't have power steering. I didn't know what she was talking about, after all I'd not yet had a car with power steering so to me my car drove alright. What did I know! Nothing happened to this car except I saw the next car that I wanted more than I'd wanted anything!
So along came the Subaru 1800 Injection coupe. I fell in love with this car from the moment I saw it, it was a little out of my price range but that didn't stop me and within a week the Rover was gone and along came my little baby. This car had power steering and it was a dream to drive, it was comfortable and very good looking, well I thought so anyway. They don't make them anymore and there aren't that many left in this country, that's what I was told at the time.
I was twenty when I got this car and really pleased with myself, the only thing is I swear that the car was jinxed! Six months after I had it I had a collision with a Sierra, not too much damage but I was really upset that my little car had had a knock. That wasn't the end of it though, about a year after that I was in the local pub one night and when I went back to my car I found that I couldn't open my door. When I took a step back I found that somebody had put a nice big dent in the door! The car park had been fairly empty that night and the only car I saw go anywhere near my car was one containing a driver who also contained a vast amount of alcohol! He was never caught and now my car had really got the hump and so had I.
It still didn't end there though, another six months after that I had parked my car at work just to go and clock in before putting my car in the proper car park. When I came back there were people standing around the car and a lorry driver looking rather sheepish, he had got his lorry parked up and then without getting out and looking to see whether anything had come up behind him he had reversed his lorry straight into my car moving it about ten feet back! The company offered to pay for damage but to me there didn't look as though there was any damage so I let it go.
My dad kept telling me to get rid of the car so I could get a newer model but I loved my car and wouldn't part with it. I had the car for four years in all and only a week before I was due to take it back to the garage to get my "new" car I got sandwiched between two other cars on my way home from work one night. Again there didn't look to be any damage and the car that drove into the back of me was definitely worse off. So a few days later I took my car back to the garage to exchange for the "new" one with a few tears welling up. It had to go though, I had it for four years and had driven it almost into the ground, it would have cost too much to make it like new again. But if anyone else out there has had one of these cars then let me know.
My next car was the Peugeot 405SRI. It had a 1.9L Injection and by now I liked my cars with a bit of go in them as well as looking smart. Mum and dad had owned this car before me, they had found one in the garage that they liked so we swapped my Subaru for their new one and I took on the Peugeot. The car was okay to drive, not as nice as the other one but you can't have everything all the time! This car wasn't jinxed, well not until I'd had it for two years anyway.
This was the result of some black ice at 7am on a cold January morning two years ago on a long bend leading up to a bridge. Luckily for myself and my brother we didn't get as far as the bridge before the car went off the road, but somersaulting sideways in a car isn't my idea of fun and that's when I stopped enjoying driving so much. Mum came to pick us up, we only lived about a mile down the road but it took her an hour to get to us! You couldn't see the car from the road if you drove by and we'd gone back down to the car to get our stuff out of it and mum had driven by while we were doing that, she went about fourteen miles before realising that she'd missed us and came back again to find us standing freezing on the side of the road. We could have walked home in that time! We got away with only cuts and bruises and stiffness from being chucked around, as for the car, it had to be sold for scrap!
I needed another car quick because there was no other way I could get to work living out in the middle of nowhere. So I got my money and for the very first time I went on my own to choose my next car.....what a mistake! I decided that I wanted another Jeep and promptly went and bought the Suzuki Santana from somebody I knew was selling one. It was ten times worse to drive than my little green one had been and the steering wasn't right anyway.
I hated driving in any wet weather or ice and most of the time where I was able to I "stole" my boyfriends car, who I had moved in with by this time. My mum and dad didn't like me driving the jeep, Simon didn't like me driving it and I didn't like driving it so it had to go! It looked good and it was posy but I was past the posing stage and wanted a "tank" to drive so that I felt safe whatever the weather was doing. So off Simon went vowing that never again would I be allowed the final say in what car I had, not on my own anyway and found me my present car.
A Volvo 440 Special Edition, there's nothing special about it though not that I can see anyway. It's got a 1700cc engine and is comfortable to drive and volvos have a "cage" don't they? So I think I've finally got my tank to drive in and I feel safe. I lost a wheel trim off the drivers side the other week on my way home from work, which really pissed me off because I never found it and now it looks odd. This may be MY last car though, I've just changed my job and don't really need a car now because my work is so close to home. So by the end of the year WE will only have the one car, it will feel like a little part of me has gone but then again he'll have to have a car that I like as much as him!!
Maybe I should have had this car as my car for the road! I did a little spot of banger racing a few years ago and this was my car and what happened to me in my first race. I only raced for one season and it was the lady bangers that I raced in. Believe me there are some women drivers out there as well as men that could do with having a go at this rather than taking their frustrations out on the road and other road users. On the track everyone is in a bad mood and you can really bash those cars without having to worry about how many years no claims you're going to lose!!
