One thing the cars I have owned share is colour — of the seven I’ve bought in 32 years of motoring four have been red.
The very first on my illustrious list was a red 1964 Opel Kadett, bought for R250 in 1973 with money I borrowed from my brother.
The Opel served me proudly for more than a year until some pernickety traffic cop decided to check the brakes and lights, and then confiscated the licence disc when he foolishly assumed it didn’t have any. It actually did — you just had to know which wires to connect under the dash, and how many pumps it took on the pedal to build up pressure in the brake system.
This, incidentally, was the only car I ever fell off of. One memorable night at Cape St Francis a friend was behind the wheel while I perched on the bonnet shining a torch on the road and wiping the windscreen with a towel — I haven’t mentioned the wiper problem, have I?
We arrived at an unexpected T-Junction in a bit of a rush late at night and Barry suddenly discovered the absence of stoppers. The car made it around the corner, but I didn’t.
The old Opel had served me well though, and I got back R100 when I sold it to a backyard mechanic as scrap.
Next came a 1969 Mini, which consumed more oil than petrol, but gave no trouble in the short time I owned it. I paid R250 for this in September 1973, but had to hock it between Christmas and New Year when I found I’d blown all of January’s money on Part One of the festive season.
In those days I always contrived to have a little month left over at the end of the money, but the first month of 1974 looked like being worse than normal. I got back R225 on that one. The slimy dealer I sold it to wrote the agreed amount — R250 — in numerals, but put ”two hundred rand” in the text portion of the cheque.
Because of all the public holidays it took me a week to catch the bastard back at work, he having had a more blessed New Year than me, and when I did catch up with him he told me the car was only worth R225. I was so desperate I accepted it!
For the next year I got around quite happily on my Yamaha RD 350, but then Cupid reared his ugly head and I needed four wheels again. I bought a 1972 Toyota Corona Mk II bakkie for R900 and kept it until 1979, when my girlfriend at the time — now my wife — decided that it was time to replace it with something better.
She mentioned this over supper one night and, not really listening, I replied with the standard ”Uh -huh.” The next day she sold it to one of her co-workers for R250 and then phoned me to pick her up on my bike. Then she used the money as a deposit on a ’75 VW Beetle for herself. Suddenly I was without a car again, and couldn’t help feeling like I’d been mugged.
It took me a long time to take my next plunge into car ownership. When my first child arrived in 1985 I had three motorcycles and my wife still had her Beetle. It was clearly time to ”get responsible”, so I sold two of the bikes and picked up a rusty 1978 Chevair (for an unbelievable R1 300).
Body parts for the Chevair were dirt cheap so I bought four new doors and had the car resprayed at a cost of about R2 000. The Chev did well as everyday transport until one day in 1991 when the auto transmission exploded all over the highway near Scottburgh.
Three weeks after I got the car back on the road it burst into flames outside my garage when I turned the key after repairing the carburettor, and by the time the fire brigade arrived there wasn’t much left to salvage. Strangely enough I made a profit on this one — my insurance paid out R3 500.
The next car to suffer my attentions was a Ford Bantam Leisure bakkie that set me back a whopping R12 500 — I was desperate for wheels after the spontaneous combustion of the Chevair, so I couldn’t fully apply my mind to looking for a bargain.
The Ford lasted me a good five years until I decided to replace it — with a motorcycle! I got R10 500 back on the bakkie and bought an ancient and battered BMW R100 RS with the proceeds.
My penultimate tilt at car ownership involved a red 1988 Audi 500E that set me back R14 500 — the most I’ve ever spent on a car — and gave me endless trouble.
Nothing big, but niggly things like electric windows that stopped working, an aircon that kept losing its gas, and power steering that steadily leaked its life blood all over the engine bay.
Since this was the only car I’ve ever owned with electric windows, aircon and power steering I took these failures very personally, so the Audi went off to a new owner, putting R12 500 back in my kitty. I hate to admit it, but I still think that Audi was the finest car I have ever owned.
My final four-wheeled acquisition was a battered 1987 VW Jetta — red, of course — with 237 000km on the clock, that I scooped up in 2001 for R8 500 and then spent another R2 000 on getting into roadworthy shape.
Because I was by then getting test cars every week I hardly used the Jetta, and when a friend’s car was stolen I lent it to him. After six months, when it seemed obvious that the VW wasn’t coming home any time soon, I sold it to him for what I had paid.
So just how reliable have my various heaps of scrap been? Amazingly so, in fact. The Corona went through a clutch, an alternator, a water pump and a starter motor in five years, and all I can remember replacing in my Chevair during six years of ownership was an exhaust silencer, a gearbox, a crankshaft main bearing oil seal and an alternator.
The Bantam devoured a couple of sets of wheel bearings and a starter motor. Other than that there were the usual tyres and batteries.
At the risk of being called a cheapskate I have to admit feeling rather proud of my track record. In 34 years of driving I’ve spent R40 200 in total on cars, and got R35 575 back, leaving a nett loss of R4 625.
Of course, in the same period I’ve bought 15 motorcycles (seven of them brand new), and the PGO scooter I’ve just acquired as a city runabout retails at R17 995 — more than the most expensive car I’ve ever splashed out on.