We’ve been a two car family for as long as we’ve been a family (and since we were a couple actually). I bought my bright yellow SEAT Ibiza to the mix, and wifey at that point had a funky Renault 5. But my car does next to no mileage now, under 2,000 miles a year and has actually been sat with a flat battery since late August of last year until the low loader came and took it away for the princely sum of £209 a month or so ago. Although I had it from new so there were no HP or loan payments on it, the cost of ownership, MOT’ing,car tax, negotiating the car insurance minefield and fixing whatever goes wrong with an eleven year old car, was increasingly making me wonder why it was there. The best answer I could come up with is I give people directions to our house and say, ours is the one with the bright yellow car on the drive.
Part of my reluctance to get rid of the thing, despite the £500 odd worth of work it really needed to get it roadworthy (since you’ve asked, the cambelt needed changing and the driver side electric window hadn’t worked for about 6 years), is on occasion it’s incredibly useful to have a second car. Like when the boy and I went to Camp Bestival last summer, leaving wifey and Fifi to it for a long weekend. Would I have met Jo Wiley and had a nice chat with her if I’d not had my own set of wheels?
Fortunately I was lucky enough to win a Nissan LEAF in Nissan’s Big Turn On campaign, and I’ll be taking delivery of that next week at some point. It was exceedingly well timed, especially since they’ve just finished installing 4 charge points in St Albans!
I have always a hankering for a chrome bumpered MG Midget- in red of course… so who knows whether I’ll have one of those in the future.