MOTOR-BLOG from Coventry

Consumerism. You could argue that the act of purchasing items is simply the side effect of an unhappy and uninspired population - I am unsatisfied with my lot, therefore I will crave and will purchase items that I don’t really need, with money I do not have, to make me feel more fulfilled and give my life a little meaning for a short period of time.

The high experienced after ‘improving’ your life with another piece of overpriced consumer tat unfortunately does not last long - and within a very short space of time the hardened consumer will again find themselves in their local Currys - credit agreement in one hand, and £1200 worth of Smeg fridge freezer being bungee strapped to the roofrack of the Cayenne Turbo by spotty, squeaky voiced, slightly smelly teenage boys wearing bright red Curry T-shirts, that are ever-so-slightly too large for them.

The reason for this unplanned and uneeded purchase? Well it was on offer and was a pastelly shade that would look good in the kitchen, and although the current fridge freezer was bought only 18 months ago, holds more food, is more energy effcient and still has a good 12 years of life left in it - it is white, and not a fancy pastelly shade, so it is destined for the tip - after all, that’s why we need a Porsche 4×4 for jobs like this isn’t it? Couldn’t have done this in the old 5 series, oh isn’t life good? Aren’t we great?…

By the time said consumer has got home, the high will be already wearing off. Within a week, the unhappy soul will already be on the vodka by midday again, surrounded by beautiful, expensive, pointless things, with the faint whiff of despair in the air again, and a tear in the eye - so out comes the Freemans catalogue - oo! Buy now pay next year! - just sign up for a ‘Loyalty’ card - and it’s only 39.8% interest, it’s so simple, and we DO need a new widescreen TV - that 42 inch LCD TV we bought last year is so, well it’s so last year don’t you think,? Besides, our ‘old’ TV one doesn’t have a built in Blue-ray player like this one, does it? We must keep up with technology… And so it goes on.

Thank goodness for consumersism, without it over the last twenty years or so, our nation would have fallen to its knees, as we now has very little in the way of manufacturing industry to prop up the economy. Yes factories pollute. Yes they don’t look very pretty (well I think they do but I know I’m in the minority). What factories do, and do well is to provide people with good honest work, and keep our economy bouyant. Call centres do not do this. 

So what the hell am I going on about? Well I’ve just been up to Canley Classics to buy a new power steering belt for my project triumph 2000 estate - and guess what? It appears I’m one of about 3 people in the Coventry area who have a power steeringed 2000 (if you see what I mean). The other two are Dave (the owner of Canley’s) and his wife. Subsequently, they don’t hold them in stock - preferring to order them in as and when required. Oh well, so I bought a new oil filter and some new oil for the Vitesse instead.

Then I got talking to Dave and the question came up about what cars I’d like to own. It’s no secret that I’d like to own a prototype Triumph (many of which survive), and especially one from the experimental department (commission numbers start with an X). My ultimate goal would be to find a Herald Coupe prototype. That would be great. Dave is quite an X car man and has plenty of prototype vehicles as well as first and last cars. He owns the earliest known Herald for example. I’d like an early Herald too, and a Courier van.

I always thought that Couriers were rare, but apparently there are plenty still about - but most are incomplete projects. Canley Classics currently have five Couriers, four of which are in bits and were found that way. However, Dave has been restoring one of them and it’s due for an MoT next week. It’s lovely. I still want one. There are currently two on eBay. Yikes. Watch this space…

I then bought four 14″ Stag steel wheels off him for my 2000. The tyres are shagged, but they were only £50. That may sound steep, especially as I have a set of five waiting for me in Preston - price? Free. But get this - with the price of petrol as it is, and the fact I’d take the M6 Toll road to get there (£4.50 each way), I’d probably be spending about that to get them anyway - plus the best part of a day. So these wheels made financial sense. But the best part about these steel wheels is this - they’ve already been blasted, powder coated, and lacquered. This is exactly what I would have done to the free wheels anyway, only at a cost of at least £50 per wheel.

So I pop into my local specialist to buy a sundry item costing a couple of quid, and end up leaving almost £70 lighter, without the item i went to buy in the first place and my head full of Courier ideas and an itchy eBay bidding finger. Isn’t consumerism great???ÂÂ

We’re building a Westfield kit/sports/whatever-you’d-like-to-call-it-car at work and guess who’s been landed with finishing it? Yep it’s me. Well actually, this happened a while ago and I’d been trying to ignore it. This poor little car has been shoved from pillar to post for a couple of years now, but now the time has come - it has to be finished.

It’s your typical unfinshed project - it’s been through loads of hands and everyone has had a bash at it. This is not a good situation really as I’m left not knowing what needs doing, and some things have been done to it that I’m not happy with, yet other tasks have been completed with amazing skill and care. There are two ways to go about dealing with unfinshed projects as far as I can see - strip it all back down and start again from the beginning, or soldier on regardless.

I’m soldiering on. Despite my loud protestations about how much I detest this car, I’m secretly warming to it, especially since I’ve fitted (ie placed) the seats into it. Actually sitting in it gives you a whole new perspective of what these cars are really about. It weighs about as much as an armchair yet it has an 150BHP 2 litre Ford Pinto engine. Hmm. I guess now that I’m charged with finishing it, I should be charged with ‘running it in’ for a short while - just to test it out and make sure there are no teething problems you understand…

Pass me the spanners…

Did anyone see the programme on Channel 5 last night about the bloke who loves his VW Beetle? I love cars all right, but not like that…

Hooray for the truckers! (except the one who was overtaking that other one on the A14 tonight for about 4 miles and held me up of course…) but what can we really do about fuel prices? OK, so driving a few lorries into central London, will balls things up a little bit, but I say MORE, MORE MORE!

The Government has made it ILLEGAL to blockade the petrol depots like happened last time (democracy in action for you) but there must be something else we can do. You may have received the around robin email as I have, which suggests that boycotting certain brands of petrol will help - I think it was BP and Shell, but I may be wrong.

This of course is ridiculous - all this will do is put individual petrol stations out of business (which are run on the whole by individual franchisees making only about 2p profit on each litre of fuel sold), and if they go bust all we’ll be left with is less filling stations and more overpriced flats built on their sites. The email also suggested that we get our fuel from supermarkets instead - madness especially with the amount of profit these organisations make.

So what can we do? Well we can demand that the Government doesn’t charge VAT on top of the tax they already put on fuel. Why don’t they charge VAT on the unit price of fuel and then levy the extra fuel tax on top? OK so it won’t reduce the price massively but it would help. But of course they don’t want that, as high fuel prices are a GREEN measure aren’t they? But that’s rubbish as we all know - despite high fuel prices, demand has not faltered putting pay to the ‘make it expensive and people will find alternative ways of travel’ strain of thought.

I’ve just looked up a standard day return from Coventry to London on the train and it’s £107 (unless you want to leave at stupid times) Rubbish. What’s the cheap green alternative? There isn’t one. All that high fuel prices are doing is making my Nan find it difficult to buy food and pay the bills, rather than stopping people using their cars. Poor people are suffering - people who can afford to buy Porsche Cayenne Turbo’s and other pointless vehicles can afford to pay the extra cost of fuel - poor people cannot.

We must do something about climate change I agree, but we also must do something about racketeering and profiteering Governments too. I’m not suggesting that any other party would do anything differently but we must do something about this situation. When I was in Spain, the petrol cost about as much per litre in Euros as we pay in pounds - so why should we pay as much as we do?

I wouldn’t mind paying more if public transport wasn’t privatised and the extra money went to provide cheap reliable public transport, but of course this is not the case. In Spain the maximum we paid on a bus was 1 Euro, and the train from the airport to Malaga City centre only cost 1 Euro 20 cents. If they can provide cheap, clean, reliable public transport and still charge 30% less for a litre of fuel - then why the hell can’t we?