The L-plates are off and it’s time to hit the road. Everyone remembers their first car, so James Fisher asked Country Life staff and friends to tell us about theirs.
Tom Parker Bowles, food writer and critic
My first car was a fifth-hand 1985 white Nissan Cherry, in about 1993. Although it may have lacked somewhat in elegance, it could sleep two in comfort, had a decent tape player (bolstered by a cheap bass bin I bought in a Halford’s sale), a working cigarette lighter and, joy of joys, electric windows. Sadly, however, only one worked. It could also reach 71mph (if you started at the top of a big hill) and had a sunroof. That didn’t open. But, like any first car, I loved it like a best friend. And shed a tear when it was finally consigned to the great junkyard in the sky.
Mark Hedges, Country Life Editor
My first car was a Mini. Its brown colour made it look like a mobile cowpat, but it hid the rust as best it could. It was a gift from a maiden aunt, who pottered around Oxfordshire in it. She wasn’t one for modish things such as a radio, so my six-hour journeys to Durham University were spent staring at the mile counter waiting for round numbers or parts of the Fibonacci sequence to appear. I used to go everywhere in it with my border terrier and to horse events (and the pub) with my great friend, Rachel. The car had some magic — 40 years later, Rachel became my wife.
Top tip for those driving old bangers: go for brown or red paint to hide the rust.
Levison Wood, explorer, writer and photographer
Ah, my first car — a trusty old silver Audi A4 1.9 TDi, the quintessential ride for young officers in the British Army in about 2005. At 23, I finally felt like a grown-up after years of globetrotting and zipping around Stoke in my mum’s Fiat Punto. The Audi was a charming beast, complete with torn leather seats, questionable radio reception and an unparalleled ability to guzzle diesel. I cherished those two years, navigating the back roads of Camberley and Essex with a mix of pride and mild embarrassment. Alas, she met her fate in the Colchester Parachute Regiment car park, abandoned when I deployed to Afghanistan. A bittersweet farewell to my warrior’s chariot.
Tiff Needell, racing driver and television presenter
My first car was a classic example of how not to buy a car. It was exactly the car I wanted to buy, a Morris 1000 Traveller, just like my big brother’s, and it appeared in the Exchange & Mart classifieds for the exact £75 that my budget could make — this was 1970 by the way. After work on a dark, rainy night, I headed for the seller’s address and found it was also the dark-green colour I fancied. Engine started, gears worked, wipers worked. Quick drive around the block, cash handed over and I was on my way. Love is blind. I hadn’t looked around to notice the rotting moss in the woodwork or, even worse, the rusting chassis beneath. I still loved it, however — right up until the front suspension collapsed under the strain of towing my first racing car.
A classic Morris Minor 1000 Traveller, enough to bring a tear to the eye of Tiff Needell — particularly as it fell to pieces thanks to rot.
Paula Lester, Managing and Features Editor
My first car was a metallic denim-blue VW Golf, in which I used to whizz about the lanes of east Devon — with my first black labrador, Boot, in the boot, funnily enough — when doing my rounds as a reporter on the Sidmouth Herald newspaper. The mileometer only worked when it was cold and, although it was much loved and well cared for, it frequently broke down — usually when asked to go above a certain speed on the motorway — but kept going doggedly, even after I moved to south London (when the radio was stolen on an almost weekly basis). I only reluctantly traded it in for a smart, nearly-new black VW Polo when Horse & Hound promoted me to racing editor. Fortunately for me, it was frosty on the day I dropped it off at the garage in Stockwell, so the staff failed to notice it had done very little mileage in the three years I’d owned it — phew!
Victoria Marston, Deputy Features Editor
My first chariot was a bright-red Peugeot 106. She was immaculate, with one careful lady owner on her books and no power steering — it was love at first sight and I christened her Lovebug. Many a happy hour was spent driving country lanes with no destination, screeching along to Kylie Minogue’s Greatest Hits (the first iteration) on CD. The day someone parked a shopping trolley on her bonnet in Waitrose car park, leaving an unsightly scratch, I wept bitter tears. A few weeks later, the scratch was forgotten when I bounced her off a fence and shot through a hedge. ‘Victoria’s hole in the hedge’, as it came to be known, is still there. RIP, Lovebug.
Many a hedge has served as unintended parking place for many a first car.
Andrew Robson, professional bridge player and teacher
I spent my twenties hitch-hiking to bridge tournaments and was 28 when I passed my driving test, buying a small, black Fiat Uno — surprisingly spacious for a 6ft 6in chap (I’ve shrunk an inch or so since then). I loved it, but it was a bit of a box and when I went only slightly too quickly around a roundabout one time, I lost control of it somewhat. I decided an upgrade was best and bought a Golf.
Rosie Paterson, Travel and Lifestyle Editor
My first car was Marni, a Peugeot 107 — in a particularly shocking shade of blue. The cars in our family are girls and given faintly ridiculous names such as Fifi, Trixie and Dirty Jess (the less said about her the better). She was a present from my parents for my 17th birthday… mine for a glorious 17 months until my younger brother became road legal and I realised that I had to share her. Despite Marni’s stature — nickname: ‘The Lawnmower’ — she survived being forced to do doughnuts on a waterlogged field, the time I spilled a lake’s worth of water on the back seats and grew an entirely new ecosystem, people being pulled behind her on skis and a return trip to Northumberland with the driver’s-side wing mirror attached with duct tape.
Lucy Ford, Picture Editor
My first car was a navy-blue Austin Metro that I used to borrow from my Nana. It had four gears and a choke that I probably relied on far too heavily, as I bunny-hopped down the road. The seats were covered in a checked material and trimmed with wide panels of faux leather (plastic), the latter to be avoided by bare legs in hot weather.
In the days before power steering came as standard, it took some force to turn the bizarrely oversized steering wheel around a corner and made the dreaded parallel parking a manoeuvre to be avoided at all costs. Three doors, four-star petrol, two wind-down windows, MW radio, a pull-up (and push-down) aerial, cigarette lighter, two ashtrays and a key for the door (no central locking) — it was the ticket to my independence, to go wherever I wanted… well, anywhere that avoided roads with more than two lanes, anyway. I loved it.
Sophia Money-Coutts, journalist and author
Mine was a Fiat 500, the old type, which I was besotted with — until someone drove into the back of me at a roundabout, I didn’t get their insurance details and, 10 minutes down the road, it transpired that the radiator was cracked and I had to sell it to cover the costs of patching it up again. All very tragic.
Kate Green, Deputy Editor
My first car was a red Renault 4, Gertie, with one of those fiddly right-angled gear sticks that protruded awkwardly from the dashboard — it came away in my hand one day. On another occasion, the accelerator jammed and we flew around roundabouts at alarming speed. I also managed to ground her in heather on Exmoor when going out at night to listen to stags roaring. However, Gertie did get me safely to a job in Ireland — my first trip on a motorway — where the cowman kindly fitted her up with a radio. It was somewhat crackly, but managed to play the hit of the time, Come on Eileen.
