Second-hand gang
Iain Duncan Smith
Iknow,’ Boris mumbled to me in the voting lobby late one night, ‘write a piece for us on a motor car.’ He ruffled his hair and grinned, ‘Any car will do.’ Before I could answer he continued, ‘Good, excellent!’ One more ruffle of the hair, ‘Gosh, look, do you know what we’re voting on tonight?’ But I had already turned away, my mind on test-driving some smart new car at The Spectator’s expense.
A week later I sat down to figure out what car to test-drive. I closed my eyes and a BMW Z4 swam into sight; next came a Ferrari, red of course. That’s when the Riviera filled the sloping windscreen, the corniche beneath my wheels, tyres screeching, I could almost smell the sea and feel the warm wind on my face — all was as it should be. I glanced to my left, a blonde reclined in the passenger seat — ‘a blonde’. I sighed and I turned away, a satisfied smile on my face. A blonde? I turned back and to my horror Boris Johnson was staring back, grinning, his hair ruffling in the wind under a ludicrous bandana. I awoke with a jolt.
I flipped through some motoring magazines. What new car would be of interest to a Spectator reader? Perhaps I should testdrive a new Audi or a Mercedes estate or the new BMW. No, I thought. The Spectator is a great British institution, the car ought to be British. But then I remembered Tony Blair’s dance of death during the election as he sought to string out Rover’s demise beyond the election. Ford? No, I thought: aren’t they manufactured all over the world and assembled here? This, I began to realise, was going to be tough. Was there a British car? In desperation, I turned to Classic Car and spotted an article on Aston Martins, the DB2, the MK111, DBS 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and a Volante, top down of course. What pure heaven, and they are wonderfully British. Surely what every selfrespecting Spectator reader drives.
Then I looked out of the window. In front of the house sat a sun-faded, cherry-red, Pregistered Saab, complete with a few dents and scratches. It had over 70,000 miles on the clock and the internal trim was a dirty grey cloth (velour, I think they call it), you know, the kind that gives you an electric shock if you slide out of your seat and then touch the door handle too quickly. Reality struck when I remembered that the Saab was the car I drove. Worse, I also realised that, try as I might, I didn’t know anyone who owned a new car. I mean a smart brand-new car, bought from the showroom. Everyone of my age with children seems to drive a second-hand car. It may not be as old or as battered as mine but second-hand nonetheless. When buying a car, brake horsepower isn’t an issue for them; the important thing is: does it brake at all? And when you are haggling over price, colour is way down the pecking order of requirements — why else would someone buy a cherry-red car? No, out there in Spectatorland I am sure life is different from Top Gear. Out there, the inside of a car is a parallel universe. It’s where your family gathers to eat, sleep and settle scores violently, while re-upholstering it in dog hairs, curledup sandwich crusts, used crisp packets and sweetie wrappers.
It all starts with the buying experience. No cappuccino, as you sit contemplating which gleaming car to test-drive in an air conditioned showroom. Instead, it’s out on the street as you listen to a fast-flowing stream of unique but incredible information about the car on sale. The man funny, it’s almost always a man — begins in a worryingly frank and friendly manner by telling you it’s his wife’s car he’s selling, not his own. Nonetheless, he continues, it is the best car he has ever driven. When you ask why a car so old should have done so few miles, he answers smoothly, without a trace of hesitation, ‘In the garage, hardly ever taken out.’ In vain you look up and down the street for such a garage. It goes on and on. The car has clearly been valeted and its tyres painted. It looks suspiciously clean. You say to yourself that you would never attempt so blatantly to bump up the price by such obvious means. Your head full of doubts (but it is such a good deal), you buy it and justify it to yourself the whole way home. However, when your friends first see it and it becomes obvious you were conned, you mutter that you bought it for the school run. You know that when two or more men are gathered together, this explanation brings a collective nod and a shiver of fear, as they conjure up an 8.30 a.m. vision of swerving cars full of bouncing unseatbelted kids, driven by harassed, multi-tasking mums looking backwards for at least half the journey.
Then there’s the first visit to the garage. The sharp intake of breath through the mechanic’s teeth as he shakes his head. ‘How much did you say you paid?’ You lie unconvincingly. ‘I don’t know.’ He looks disdainfully at you and then back at the car before continuing, in a low voice, ‘There’s one born every minute.’ After some years of temperamental driving (perhaps this has something to do with the array of cheap garages used to service the car), it’s time to sell. That’s when you take your first serious look at it since you bought it. You notice the ingrained dirt on the dashboard how many times did you tell the children to get their feet down? You see the puppy they ‘had to have’ has torn a hole in the back of the seat and then you try to count the vast number of little dents around the car that neither you nor your wife can remember. It all adds up to a serious reduction in value. At that moment the second-hand experience comes full circle. You have the car valeted and patched up and when a prospective buyer arrives you say, without a trace of embarrassment, ‘That mileage is nothing ... best car I’ve ever owned.’ Middle England’s search is for the practical family-friendly economical and cheap second-hand motor car. However, a couple of years ago my son asked me an important question. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘do we have to drive boring family cars, Dad?’ That’s the sort of question which strikes right to the heart of family life. I smiled smugly as I started to explain about priorities, costs and comfort, when he stopped me dead in my tracks. ‘But they’re boring,’ he repeated.
So, with his words ringing in my ears, I bought another second-hand car. ‘A standby for the school run,’ I told my wife. That’s when the British racing green Morgan appeared behind the Saab. No, you can’t fit in more than one passenger, the heater roasts your legs while your top freezes, the suspension is incredibly hard and it hates large queues of traffic. But it is British and when the sun shines, with the top down, as an open country road beckons, it is possibly the second-best sensation in the world.
You know what, Boris, you should try it.
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