A is for awakening: the A-Z of Petrolblog begins

I won’t reveal its identity at this stage – you’ll need to be a Club Petrolblog member or wait for the YouTube video to get the lowdown – but I will tell you that it’s the first purchase of the A-Z of Petrolblog series.

The premise is simple enough: Matt, my partner-in-tat, and I will buy a car for every letter of the alphabet, based on either its make or model. Not all at the same time. That would be a logistical nightmare and a financial headache. We’ll start with A, move on to B and continue until we reach Z. Petrolbloggy cars. Cheap cars. Mundane cars. Nothing too fancy.

Which is why you shouldn’t get too excited about our first purchase. Matt and I were prepared to spend no more than a couple of hundred quid each on the letter A. It’s undesirable, low on frills and lacking in thrills. In other words, it’s incredibly Petrolbloggy.

It’s also ripe for a bit of fettling, making it ideal for the A-Z series. If we can sell each car for a modest profit, we’ll have a little extra cash for the next letter. By the end of the alphabet, we may have enough for a Zonda, although a pristine ZX is more likely – and actually preferable.

The evening before the collection, I emailed Club Petrolblog members, asking them to guess the make and model of the car in question. Everybody gave a different answer. The reasoning behind each one was dripping in Petrolbloggyness. Rather brilliantly, one response would have been devastatingly accurate – had we bought our first choice.

More worryingly, every car mentioned was more desirable than the one we actually bought.

Oh dear.

I hardly slept a wink the night before the collection. My phone told me I’d managed three hours of shut-eye before clambering out of bed at silly o’clock for the journey up the M5 and along the M4 in Matt’s Mk1 Twingo.

The journey to Faringdon involved one coffee stop and several bouts of questioning the wisdom of driving this far on the hottest day of the year so far to look at a car that was just one big bill away from the scrapyard.

But perhaps buoyed by the success of our trip to the Isle of Man, we pressed on, figuring that we could grab a good breakfast at Mollie’s Diner and drive home empty-handed if the car failed to live up to our already low expectations.

And actually, first impressions weren’t great. There were more dents in the bodywork than the Facebook Marketplace photos had suggested, prompting one overwhelming thought: Are we really going to kick-start a new YouTube series with this?

Should we have splashed more cash on something Petrolbloggy and desirable, like an Avantime, an Autobianchi Y10 or an AX?

But the more we scratched beneath the surface and spoke to the owner, the more we warmed to the car. For something so apparently soulless, it had soul. For something dismissed in period for having no charm, it had character. Crucially, it drove surprisingly well, with no nasty knocks or suspect smells.

Leaving without it would have been like visiting a dogs’ home, spending an hour with an unwanted mutt and then going home alone. We settled on a price that worked for everyone and set off into the unknown.

Well, onto the A420.

Immediately, there was a problem. Turning right into queuing traffic, I seemingly forgot how to use a clutch and gave the impression that I was about to pull out in front of a Mitsubishi. I wasn’t, but its driver responded with a prolonged blast of the horn and – I’m guessing here, because I didn’t dare look – an unfriendly hand gesture.

No drama. A lorry driver took pity on the hapless bloke in the tatty car and allowed me to join the queue in front of him, leaving Matt to take his chances in the Twingo behind me. The fuel gauge was hovering just above empty, the stop-start traffic was doing nothing for my attempts to gel with the car, and the outside temperature was approaching record levels.

Oh dear. Again.

In just a couple of miles of congestion, I experienced all the emotions associated with buying a cheap old car: regret, guilt, embarrassment, delirium and shame. While other people might have escaped the office to spend time on a beach or in the garden, we had chosen instead to collect something tatty from Oxfordshire.

Filling the tank achieved two things: it allayed my fear of running out of fuel and allowed me to see whether it would restart after filling up and pass the vital ‘across-the-forecourt’ test.

Reader, it did. That was a good sign.

We decided – or rather, I insisted – that we should drive home via Marlborough and join the A303, rather than return via the motorways. That meant less time at sustained motorway speeds and, more importantly, more opportunities to stop should things go horribly wrong.

I needn’t have worried. What followed was a hugely enjoyable drive in the most unlikely of cars. It felt like an endurance test for both man and machine, with all the windows open to compensate for the lack of air-con and frequent use of all five forward gears to maintain momentum.

The route between Marlborough and Durrington, where we would join the A303, is one of my favourites, but this particular drive will live long in my memory. I spent most of it in third gear, dropping into second for corners and hills, while Matt’s Mk1 Twingo remained a reassuring presence in my rear-view mirror. I was having fun in a car that, just an hour earlier, had left me wondering: what have I done?

Admittedly, the A303 was less enjoyable. Being intimidated by SUVs while the wind attacks your right eardrum is the sort of thing that makes you reconsider your life choices, but closing the windows simply turns the cabin into a four-wheeled microwave.

Approaching the godawful Podimore services on the A303, I gestured to Matt to see if he fancied a brief respite from the torture. He did, and when we met in the car park, I saw a broken man.

“Don’t worry, we’re 85 or so miles into a 170-mile journey,” I told him.

I’m not sure whether that was a help or a hindrance.

Before returning to the cars, Matt turned to me.

“Do you know what word I’d use to describe the car after following it all the way from Faringdon?”

He swallowed the last mouthful of his full-fat Coke and allowed the question to hang in the hot air.

“Plucky.”

It was perfect. The onward journey was largely uneventful, but something unexpected was happening: I was falling in love with the plucky underdog.

But it was more than that. I was remembering why I love cheap motors, past and present: the £30 Daihatsu Charade, the Honda Accord Type-Shed and the Tatty Camry. I’ve driven faster, more expensive and more desirable cars, but I’m not entirely sure they deliver any more joy than something cheap and cheerful.

This felt like a return to my roots. Something had been reawakened. A for awakening, if you like.

The new arrival won’t break the internet when it’s unveiled on YouTube. It may even result in several clicks on the ‘unsubscribe’ button and a few Club Petrolblog members questioning the wisdom of renewing their membership.

But for the first time in a while, I went beyond the usual tap on the dashboard at the end of a long journey. Before going to bed, I actually went outside to check on it.

Yes, really.

Rihanna found love in a hopeless place. I found mine on Facebook Marketplace.

Photo by Pearse O'Halloran on Unsplash