Motoring
Leave it to instinct
Alan Judd
Motoring correspondents also get it wrong. I've just emerged (I hope) from a glut of car-buying and money-losing, acquiring, in the process, cars number 56, 57 and 58. As usual, no new lessons were learned; just the old ones, again and again.
Before Christmas, I sold Old Smokey, my diesel Land-Rover, because I was advised that it would be very costly to get through the next MOT. I hankered after a Range Rover (the emotional scar-tissue left by my previous one has taken 16 years to heal) but was nevertheless ambivalent about selling, and so advertised the Land- Rover hoping no one would ring. Car sell- ing and buying is for many a purely rational matter, a calculation of figures and conve- nience, but for me it's an area of life in which there is no possibility of a purely rational decision. I like to think that instinct plays a part, though I'm not sure what instinct is and suspect it's more ratio- nally — or pragmatically — based than we think. It does seem, however, that the auto- motive decisions I've most regretted have been those where I've overruled or ignored my instinct.
My first instinct was not to sell the Land- Rover and there was a satisfactory dearth of calls until a fisherman offered me £2,000 cash, which was £500 less than I was asking and £500 more than a dealer had offered. The sight of a wad of notes works power- fully upon a seller; combined with a cold wind, a restless baby in my arms and my cousin and his girlfriend inside awaiting a long-promised cup of tea, it meant that I nodded my head instead of shaking it, as I might have done an hour earlier or later.
My second instinct was to buy the £2,000 Range Rover down the road. The interior was tatty but I knew it to be sound under- neath and in good running order. I prevari- cated, wanting some better reason than just fancying a Range Rover again, and lost it. It was by then Friday, and I had to have a car by Monday. The 1984 Land-Rover 110 sounded good at £2,700 and it certainly went better than Old Smokey, but it had a short MOT, I saw it only in the dark and it had spent most of its life in the rust-breed- ing climate of northern Scotland. It was not only instinct that said don't, yet I found myself offering £2,000 as it was and agree- ing to £2,500 if the owner could get a full MOT the next day. He did, at a reputable garage, but I should have heeded that stomach-sinking feeling I had when he told me.
It continued to run well, although 12-13 mpg on the hills round here without the compensation of a big beefy engine to get you up them is hard to forgive. Then it emerged that the chassis was worse than Old Smokey's, and that it should never have got within a spanner's throw of an MOT. I sold it a fortnight later to a dealer for £2,000.
The next weekend scramble resulted in a very pretty red and cream Land-Rover Series III County with cloth seats and other luxuries. The asking price was £2,950 and we settled on £2,500 cash. The test drive around city streets was fine yet although I knew even then that for some reason I could never love it, I went ahead. The 50- mile drive home showed me one reason why: backache. Those cloth seats were higher and firmer than the old sort, forcing me to bend to see beyond even that blunt nose.
By now marital harmony and my pocket money were suffering in about equal mea- sure and my confidence was shaken: was I losing my touch? As a rule, I used to get away with it where cars were concerned. Time for desperate measures. I rang the seller: if I brought it back the next day would he repay £2,400 cash and keep £100 for his trouble? That trouble included a registration document already made out to me and a formerly spotless vehicle now covered in mud, snow and slush. He was a gent and I was very lucky.
Three days later, I handed over £2,700 for what I really wanted, a 1983 automatic Range Rover with a documented low mileage. It is a delight to drive and a plea- sure to behold and it powers me up these hills in effortless armchair'd ease at who- knows-what to the gallon. Naturally, unex- pected work on steering and suspension will prove expensive and now the water pump's gone. Unlike the other vehicles, which were going to be expensive because they were bad, this will be expensive because it's good and worth, I am told, keeping it so. And because I like it I've for- given it in advance, which is why none of my motoring decisions has a hope of being purely rational.
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