Last week I cancelled my dad’s motor insurance policy on his behalf. I’ll also be getting in touch with the DVLA soon to inform them that he wishes to surrender his driving licence.
My dad is 87 years old, suffers from poor health, and is resigned to the fact that he’ll never drive again. He’s also solely responsible for both triggering and nurturing my enduring passion for all things automotive.
To witness the end of his driving days is incredibly sad. Sad for him – although in fairness he’s got far more pressing things to worry about right now – and sad for me. Although ditto. Yet without my dad, you wouldn’t be reading this.
What’s more, I wouldn’t have enjoyed a borderline obsession with vehicles which has seen me experience more examples than the cumulative number of years since I passed my driving test. That was 1989, FYI.
My dad is better than your dad
My dad and I are like chalk and cheese. He’s a former helicopter engineer who served on the decks of the Royal Navy’s most imperious aircraft carriers, and circumnavigated the globe more times in the 1950s and ’60s than Frannie Drake and Jimmy Cook combined. He has the (albeit faded) hula girl tattoo to prove it too. I, on the other hand, went to art school and wear my hair up in a man bun.
However, for all our differences, the one thing we always came together on from the get-go was cars; although rarely would he approve of my defining choices.
Hark the Triumph Herald groans
It started with an otherwise nondescript Triumph Vitesse. Like the one Thora Hird drove appallingly in Last of the Summer Wine. And me, perched on my dad’s lap as we worked together on reversing it up the driveway of the family home. Little me on steering duties. My dad on foot pedals and handbrake. The hedge was left to fend for itself.
Not long afterwards I was allowed to accompany my dad on his weekend overnighters to Duxford in his oil tanker. As an HGV driver for Shell, this was part of his regular run, and I loved bunking with him in the cab of his Seddon Atkinson 400. With the promise of staying up late to watch TV on his portable black-and-white set, while also frequenting proper transport cafés where my tipple of choice was vending-machine hot chocolate.
All of which probably explains why I had far more copies of American Trucker and Overdrive magazine than Smash Hits and Shoot! in my childhood bookcase. And why my school textbooks were interspersed with crude sketches of Peterbilt and Kenworth rigs, along with the occasional appearance by Adam Ant.
Like Father, like Datsun
Other vehicular-based childhood memories include attending new-model launches at my dad’s favourite local Datsun dealership, Hoylake Motor Company (as was). A place where dad made a biennial habit of acquiring the latest demonstrator versions of the Bluebird, Cherry, Sunny and Patrol during my formative years.
Which was progress when you consider that before the thought of me became a stark reality, my dad somehow managed to convince my mum that a three-cylinder, two-stroke Wartburg estate was aspirational family motoring.
Of course, some of the Datsuns were second cars – more specifically for mum to use on her 1980s school and shopping expeditions – so were significantly more ‘used’ than dad’s mainstay Datsun of the day. Which is why I’d often spend more time walking to school than being given a lift in an arthritic Cherry that was heroically held together by nothing more than Araldite and hope.
Straight to the punch
Fast-forward a few years and I was fortunate enough to be able to learn to drive in my mum’s 2.0-litre Nissan Bluebird DLX fastback, with my dad sat in the passenger seat affording me extracurricular lessons.
Despite the occasional difference of opinion, this was still preferable to being punched in the left thigh every time I accidentally rode the clutch in my official driving instructor’s Datsun Sunny 1.3LX. A ‘move’ which I’m pretty sure would be classed as illegal these days.
I vividly remember my dad drumming into me the rudiments of parallel parking in a supermarket car park in my hometown. Repeatedly practised until near-perfection was achieved, minus any physical bruises or lasting legacy.
My dad was also actively involved when it came to me purchasing (and subsequently parting company with) many of my own cars. One car in particular readily springs to mind. One which, typically, my dad was dead set against, yet for all his vocally expressed reservations, insisted on being instrumental in the acquisition of.
Macclesfield-bound
Which is why he drove me to a damp Macclesfield one weekend so that I could exchange a sizeable amount of legal tender for a 1990 Ford Escort RS Turbo in Mercury Grey metallic. Which would have cost another grand had I been able to stretch to a Pioneer sound system complete with more subwoofers than even Crufts could muster.
That day my dad was privy to the sort of unbridled joy that only a Morette twin-headlamp conversion and TSW Stealth rims could generate.
Two years later he made up 50 per cent of a two-car convoy which plotted coordinates for Corley Services, southbound on the M6 just past Birmingham’s city limits. Where the buyer of my aforementioned Series II RS Turbo was set to meet me at a sort of halfway-point rendezvous. That day my dad witnessed me cry as a grown man.
As we stood on the carriageway-spanning services bridge and watched my beloved RS head off in the general direction of its new home in South Wales – and to its imminent death at the hands of a young mechanic.
Legally touching up
In between UK-wide car jaunts – and largely unknowingly to me – my dad would often take it upon himself to apply touch-up paint to any blemishes he noticed on my cars. As a sort of nice surprise when I returned from somewhere I’d been without my car.
Such surprises would have been a lot nicer had my dad actually gone to the trouble of sourcing the exact manufacturer colour-matched touch-up paint, as opposed to a shade which he believed was ‘close enough’ to the original.
But it was the thought that counted. At least it was once the dust had settled a few days later, and our historically fragile relationship had been patched up in a way not too dissimilar to his paint correction technique.
Full black circle of life
The thing is, my dad – like me – was always thinking about cars. And clearly about my flourishing relationship with the ones that were dear to me at the time. Notwithstanding his abject despair at my choices of mechanical steed, I think he was simply relieved that we shared an understanding and a passion, if not a vision.
Which was neither football- nor pub-derived. A relationship with four wheels which survives to this very day. And the point at which he now relies solely on me to drive him to his myriad clinical appointments and from his latest hospital discharges. With my remit being the operation of steering and foot pedals.
In the last of my dad’s own prized – and ever-changing – fleet of vehicles. Yes, he finally gave up on Nissan (née Datsun) when he was distracted by the sudden presence of Škoda. There followed a succession of Octavias and Yetis, the benefits of both of which he now preaches to all and sundry.
Footnote
None of the cars I’ve touched on are particularly Petrolbloggy, but I’m hoping the sentiments and stories will resonate with the readership all the same. And I hope my dad recovers enough from his latest health setback so that we can regale ourselves with these – and other automotive stories – for a while longer yet.
