[Dartskipper]

You may have started something here Neville, and I don't mean a car! By coincidence I was recently thinking of all the vehicles I have owned (or driven) over the years. Growing up on the borders of Essex and the London suburbs, I could get anywhere fairly conveniently by public transport and so never felt the need to get a driving licence. When the family moved to Devon in 1970, the Devon General Omnibus Company and Western National got me anywhere I needed to be, and so I didn't learn to drive until I arrived in the USA in 1975. The procedure to secure a driving licence where I settled consisted of a full ("Bend over, cough!") medical examination and eyesight test, followed by questions on the State Highway Code, and negotiating an obstacle course in the State Police barracks. So what follows are what I owned or drove over the next 8 years.

1968 Chevrolet walk-in van, body by Grumman. Petrol engine, two speed automatic transmission.

1969 Pontiac GTO convertible. V8 400 Cu.Ins. petrol, automatic transmission. Great fun, very quick, hated corners.

1972 GMC Walk-in van. V8 350 Cu. Ins. petrol, 3 speed automatic.

1965 Buick Riviera. 401 Cu.Ins petrol, 3 speed automatic. Remarkably quiet and smooth. I actually had two, one with a very good body but misfiring engine, the other had an excellent engine but rotted out body. Swapped engines, scrapped the bad one and enjoyed the other until an enthusiast made me a nice offer.

1975 Chrysler Cordoba. V8 400 Cu.Ins. 3 speed automatic. A one owner car from new. It had a slightly noisy differential, but many Chryslers of this era had the same trouble. Very good car on the Interstate, but mpg figures didn't really help the fuel crisis at that time.

1982 Grumman/ Olsen bodied Chevrolet walk - in van.V8 350 cu ins., 3 speed auto. Built to order, excellent workhorse.

During my years in the States I also drove the following. Various station wagons (estates); Ford LTD, Ford Torino, Oldsmobile 98, plus cars such as Buick Skylark, Oldsmobile Cutlass, '73 Chevrolet Corvette (not a very good one), '72 Pontiac Firebird ( a bit short on headroom, I'm over 6ft tall.) Honda Civic, VW Scirocco, an MG Midget, as well as various farm tractors on my friend's farm.

I returned home in 1983 after selling up my business and everything else to start all over again. Settling back home in Torquay I bought a licensed fishing and passenger boat and needed something to carry the gear in. My brother in Lincolnshire told me that his employer was selling some vehicles including a Renault 12 estate. This proved to be an interesting vehicle, being typically French having a soft suspension but great carrying capacity. Sadly the rear suspension mountings had corroded beyond repair so it was scrapped after about 9 months use and replaced with a very nice Triumph 1300 front wheel drive. I sold this after moving to Seaton having sold the boat and house in Torquay. Then I drove the following, the first two related to my Off-Licence business.

VW Passat 1800 petrol estate. 4 speed manual. Excellent vehicle.
Ford Cortina MkIV Estate, 2.0 Litre Pinto engine, automatic. Great workhorse.

After selling the business following the Black Wednesday stock market crash, I found employment selling industrial chemicals with the use of a company car.

Ford Escort Mk IV, diesel, manual. Absolutely horrible car. Noisy, dreadful understeer, and on cold mornings if the engine didn't fire (even after deploying the glow plugs) the battery wasn't strong enough for a second attempt at starting. I got my manager to exchange it for something else.
Vauxhall Astra, 1.8 petrol, manual. Very good and a joy after the Escort. On the road it felt like a larger car than it actually was.

The job didn't work out as I expected so resigned and went to work in food production. My next car was a Mini Clubman Automatic. Interesting. I shall leave it at that!
Vauxhall Cavalier MKII 1.8 petrol. Very easy car to drive, and easy to see why it was such a popular car for sales reps.

1984 Jaguar Series III XJ6 4.2 Sovereign. A keeper. In fact I kept it for 27 years, selling it when I retired. I believe a gentleman in Scotland is enjoying it now.

In 1995 I saw a job advertised that looked interesting so applied for an interview that was successful, and found myself back in the world of selling industrial chemicals, this time for a really good employer. What follows are the company cars that went with the job.

1994 Rover 420 diesel. Rebadged Honda, nice car to drive but a noisier engine than I would have liked. It was a "hand me down" from another rep. so probably not what I would have chosen for myself.

1996 Rover 418 petrol. From the era when Rover cars were in deep trouble financially. The car was another rebadged Honda Civic, but with the Rover developed 4 cylinder petrol motor. When everything was in good order, it was great. But there always seemed to be something breaking or leaking (cylinder head seals, air conditioning hose) electrical gremlins, and a large appetite for headlamp bulbs. In fact, on the journey home from collecting it at the office in Bridgwater I had to stop at the first sevices at Sedgmoor on the M5 to tighten up the battery connections.This car also chewed through front tyres like no other car I ever drove, despite regularly checking the alignment..

1999 Peugeot 406 1.8 petrol. Manual 5 speed. A really excellent workhorse, comfortable, reliable and enjoyable to drive. Doing over 30,000 miles per year, the only thing that needed fixing was a component in the fuel system that developed a fault which made the engine stall when approaching a roundabout or junction.

2002 Peugeot 406 2.0 TDI diesel. A run out model with most of the top gizmos. If anything it was livelier than my previous petrol 406.
The company was being prepared for selling off and downsizing the workforce and so I was offered a very nice redundancy package. My car was assigned to a colleague who needed a newer car. He had also driven a 406 so was quite happy.
(I met him at a reunion gathering a couple of years later and he told me that the 406 was no more but it had saved his life. He had been heading North on the M6 early one morning and got side swiped by a lorry he was overtaking. His 406 was punted right across the centre barrier and opposite carriageway, ending up down a bank in the brambles. The only damage to himself were some scratches on his hands and wrists when he tried getting out of the wreck!)

After redundancy I bought a 1983 Mercedes 180 SL petrol automatic to tide me over until my next job. Here follows a list of company supplied cars over the next 17 years.

VW 1.8 Corrado. Ugghhhh. No headroom, no legroom, just "no."

Toyota 2.0 Avensis. Really nice comfortable car, but had a noisy issue in the transmission, especially in first gear.

Mazda 6 petrol Automatic. Enjoyable to drive, comfortable and quiet, but not terribly economical.

Renault Laguna Extreme. (I think.) Anyway, it was extremely horrible. Suspension so hard it might just as well not had any. I was driving to a customer in High Wycombe and hit a small pothole and the CD player jumped a track. The only time that it has ever happened to me. I'm not a fan of Renault cars or engineering I'm afraid.

After complaining continuously about the Laguna, my Manager offered me the car of a rep who was leaving the company, and so I got to enjoy for two years an......

Alfa Romeo 156 1.8 Lusso Twin Spark. Yaaayyyyy!!!! Loved it!

Then the company took the government's advice and went diesel.

Vauxhall Vectra 1.9 TDI. Run out model before the Insignia. The Vectra was reliable, not even a couple of bad snow storms could stop it. Very comfortable and roomy, it was really an SRI in all but name.

Vauxhall Insignia 1.9 TD A little more basic than the Vectra, but still a very good car. Racked up 100,000 miles without any fuss.

2016 Vauxhall Insignia Elite TDI Nav. The best of the bunch. When I retired my boss offered it to me at a very attractive price and it's sitting on my driveway.

Thinking about my retirement about 18 months before it happened, I found a 2001 Jaguar X Type SE, the 2.5 V6 model developed when Jaguar was owned by Ford. Built on the Mondeo platform, it had 4 wheel drive and the sporty automatic 5 speed transmission. It needed the usual repair to both sills, but with very low mileage it drove extremely well. I sold it after I bought my former company Insignia.

My favourite cars? The Jaguar XJ6 Sovereign, Alfa Romeo 156, Peugeot 406, the Insignia on my driveway, and that Pontiac GTO convertible.