Our esteemed Group Editor recently published a blog about his wife's modern car – a Hyundai that was acquired (importantly) without any cash changing hands. Well, a free car is a free car.
This led me to reminisce about the time I bought a new car. Yes, bought (as in gave money for) a new (as in brand new, straight out of the factory) car. Shocking isn’t it? Well, it got worse...
In my defence, I was swayed by my choice of classic steed at the time. You see I figured that a brand new MG would be the ideal stablemate for my '67 MGB GT and my wife seemed to agree. And so it was that we trotted down to our local Rover dealer to test-drive an MG ZR 120+ – essentially a rebadged Rover 25.
As it happened, we were both impressed with the result. The suspension was stiff (in a good way), the steering nicely reactive and the vivid Trophy Blue paintwork made the merest of nods in the direction of the extremely successful early incarnation of Subaru's Impreza WRC.
We returned to the dealer, signed lots of pieces of paper and trotted off home again, safe in the knowledge that although we had just signed a fairly sizeable direct debit form, we would be returning in several weeks to collect our brand new car.
Of course, what we didn’t pay too much attention to was that we drove the 1.8 litre 120+ putting out 115bhp, with modified brakes and a top speed of 119mph. What we decided we could ‘afford’was the 105, complete with a 1.4 K series engine, 102bhp and inadequate brakes.
