As we polish off the remnants of the turkey curry and contemplate our final evening of over-indulgence ahead, I’ve been mulling over my old-car plans for 2013. And do you know what, for once in my classic life I find myself curiously content.
So the key New Year’s resolution is to try to give up my tendency for amateur wheeler-dealing and not to buy anything this year.
No, my cars aren’t very exotic – I never thought I’d be a two-MG man, for a start – and there are always areas one could improve (the below would be a perfect set, but it’s a wee bit out of reach). For example, I still have to scratch the American-car itch properly – my affair with a ’67 Cougar was all too brief and I need to own another 289 V8 one day – and I’ve never owned a vintageant or a straight-six, both huge gaps in my motoring career.
Yet I somehow feel very comfortable with owning the three classics I do, and a big part of that is down to the familiarity and relative simplicity of the cars I own. Hell, two even share (almost) the same engine – MGs Magnette and BGT. The other, my everlasting resto project Suzuki SC100, is the fourth I’ve owned over the past dozen years.
The ‘fleet’ as it is today covers plenty of bases – and I’m fairly confident that I can fix all of them when they go wrong (ahem, with a little help from my friends). The very fact that the fast-ageing modern is blocked in and gathering cobwebs says it all.
