Personally, I feel like I am failing at all three of the above somedays of the week!

Out of boredom and to cheer my family and I up, one night I started to look for another classic car.  Since my days at University, I have always had a classic car.  Most were around £500 or less.  My fleet included alot of BMC Austin and Morris cars, as they were pretty straight forward and easy to maintain, including; 1100, 1300, A35, Allegro, Maxi, Mini and Wolseley.  I bought one Allegro (arguably not a classic) for £40 off a driveway gathering moss.  It had been parked for almost three years, following the death of it’s owner and the widow was only just in the right frame of mind to dispose of the car.  I drove her straight to an MOT testing station and she passed with flying colours.  Talking of colours, she was that mustard yellow colour that would put you off your breakfast, dinner and tea (or if you are Southern, breakfast, lunch and dinner).  One Austin Maxi I bought after seeing an advertisement on ebay.  And for £110, I didn’t rush around to inspect. The seller said “don’t worry, it drives, but I will drop it off outside your house”.  I was quite nervous driving home from work that evening to see what my £110 had bought.  As promised by the seller, the car was outside my home and the keys where on the drivers side front wheel.  When I turned her over, she was as sweet as a nut and in great condition.  I cherished her for many years.  She had five gears, she was the talk of the street, or would have been in the 1970’s.

I had great success with a Mark II Ford Cortina.  Another £500 buy.  A friend at ITV asked if she could hire her for a 1970’s pilot show.  At the time I was an impoverished Estates Surveying student at the Nottingham Trent University, so I agreed to her £50 a day fee with glee.  Three weeks into filming, I received a phone call advising me that there were delays and I was asked if they could continue to use the car (albeit parked up on a set) for another two weeks.  Three weeks later she was returned with an extra fourteen miles on the clock, a cheque for £2,100 and about 200 polystyrene coffee cups in the footwell that I imagined cameramen had left behind.  Now, £2,100 return for six weeks work, was not a bad return on my investment.  However, she caused me a little bit of grief.  If I ever took her over sixty miles per hour, the clutch fluid used to disappear, rendering the cluch inoperable and coupled with the fact that I needed to blip the accelerator when breaking to stop her from stalling, she gave me skills I never wanted or have needed ever again.  I have fond memories driving through the busy rush hour streets of Manchester to a Victoria Wood gig with no working clutch.  Also down at the MOT station, apparently using a housebrick as a footrest next to the accelerator was not a automatic pass!  I also needed to rummage through scrap yards looking for parts on a regular basis, including a petrol tank and track rod ends!

Back to my recent purchase, I had always admired the Citroen DS.  When attending classic car shows, I would always make a beeline to them (and Jaguar Mark II’s and Ford Zephyrs and TVR’s).  The distinctive style of a DS and the “state of the art” additions attracted me.

All of a sudden there was Clementine being advertised, almost winking at me.  She had been purchased for a film, which was now in the can (look at me with my TV and filming knowledge?!).  She was a 1974 DS Super for just short of £20,000.  Now I despair at those house buyers on “Homes under the Hammer” who are filmed at the property being asked by Dion Dublin, “so what did you think of the property when you saw it before the auction?”.  And the new buyer sheepishly replying “Err, I didn’t see it before the auction”.