How a journey from Greece to Devon in a knackered old Citroen proved that cars have souls
Cars are more than just metal, more than just machines, more than just memories. Simon de Burton reckons with deus ex machina on a long drive home.
Among my mother’s multiple eccentricities was an unwavering belief that cars have souls.
In the days of proper British winters, she would deliberately set out in a blizzard to confirm her Bentley R-Type’s ability to crest snow-covered hills using a combination of cross-ply tyres, its 4.6-litre engine and the invisible force of automotive spiritualism. As an enthusiastic drink-driver of the 1970s, she would attempt to banish the fear from my innocent, schoolboy eyes as we powered around west London’s Hangar Lane ‘gyratory system’ in her rag-top Triumph Vitesse by saying ‘she’ (the car) ‘will always get us home……’
And, despite the unappetising cocktail of martini, brandy and Guinness coursing through the maternal veins, somehow ‘she’ invariably did return us unscathed — even on the occasion when mother was forced to invoke the full, 105bhp of the Vitesse’s six cylinders to out-run a pursuing Ford Escort sporting a whirling blue light.
To suggest that lumps of metal knocked-out from a production line could possibly have ‘souls’ is to invite ridicule — but, I’m slightly embarrassed to admit, I’ve often been forced to think that my mother might have known something that other people don’t. It’s because of my habit of only buying old cars and motorcycles, despite knowing that one of my favourite things to do is to travel long distances around Europe by road.
'Are you sure this is a good idea? She is an old car and is maybe only good for the island these days....'
While more intelligent types accuse me of ‘asking for trouble’ by setting-off from Devon to Greece in my 20-year-old Vauxhall van with 204,000 miles on the clock, or that I’m ‘foolish’ driving to Switzerland in my 44-year Porsche without having a ‘full service’ (whatever that means), I relish the frisson of jeopardy that turns such trips from ‘journeys’ into ‘adventures’. And (truly tempting fate here) I’ve successfully completed so many long drives that should have ended in mechanical disaster that I can only conclude that the ‘souls’ of the cars concerned are what got us through
'Are you sure this is a good idea?' asked Andreas, my 77-year-old neighbour in Corfu as we hugged our goodbyes a few weeks ago before I set-off in the family’s 32-year-old Citroen AX diesel, bound for England. 'She is an old car and is maybe only good for the island these days…..'
I assumed he was referring to the possibility/likelihood of breakdown somewhere along the 1,200 miles of road which, on reflection, was not unreasonable. The car has received no real maintenance for more than 15 years.
To explain, I’ll need to engage reverse gear and back-up to 2002, when this not-so-mighty machine came into our lives.
Although still in the early stages of our relationship, my now wife and I had begun ‘co-habiting’ in my south London home, leading her to exchange her nearby flat for a weekend retreat in Devon, 200 miles away. Initial visits were made in either my 20-year-old Mercedes 230TE estate car or herself’s relatively new (1989) Saab 900 convertible — both of which proved to be such gas-guzzlers that monthly petrol bills were more than the mortgage payments on our damp, wind-blasted, and featureless quarryman’s house in the middle of Dartmoor.
The answer would be to buy a small, unremarkable car with a fuel-sipping diesel engine, thereby slashing travelling costs and giving us one less reason to question our wisdom in buying a house that, we discovered, no one else had wanted.
A linage advert in the Western Morning News seemed to describe the perfect vehicle: ‘1993 Citroen AX 1.4 diesel. ‘Jive’ special edition. One elderly, lady owner, 30,000 miles, tax, MOT, £1,400’. After a short haggle, £1,200 was handed over and we were heading back to the Smoke in what seemed to be both the slowest car ever created and the first to run largely on air — by the end of the journey, the fuel gauge had barely moved.
I subsequently discovered that the AX was the most economical small car on the market ‘in period’ and, with its lack of turbo, no power steering, cable-operated clutch and complete absence of creature comforts it proved to be among the cheapest to maintain and the most reliable, too. The Jive plied the M3/A303 taking us to and from Dartmoor without complaint and with remarkable frugality for the next five years. Then our son arrived.
To further complicate matters, I had made an impulse purchase of another property that no one else wanted, this time a convenient 650 miles away in Limoux, south west France, home of ‘Blanquette de Limoux,’ the original sparkling wine.
Obviously we would need a car there so, when ‘the baby’ turned two-and-a-half in the summer of 2009, he and I set-off in the suitably French Jive on a boys-only road trip to what proved to be our home — and the Jive’s — for the next 11 years.
But in 2019 someone made an offer for the house that couldn’t be refused, opening-up the opportunity to exchange the cloying bureaucracy of France for the more admin light environment of Corfu — where, of course, the Jive would prove itself even more essential.
Which explains how it came to be that, having spent five years being coaxed up and down tracks to remote beaches, loyally serving as people carrier, rubbish cart, removal van and, on one occasion, ambulance, the time came for the Jive to return to Devon and take-on a new role as the car in which my 17-year-old daughter will learn to drive.
'More disturbing, however, was the arrival of a mysterious fluid leak that appeared to be coming from the diesel pump leading to, I have to confess, a moment of mild panic'
Before setting-off I took the precaution of reconnecting the windscreen washer pipe (dangling limply in the engine compartment since 2019), re-attaching one of the rubber ‘doughnuts’ preventing the silencer from banging against the chassis and coaxing some life out of the cigarette lighter socket in order to power ‘Google Maps’ on my telephone.
Despite all that it did, on reflection, seem like a big ask to expect the Jive — with its rust-ravaged bonnet and at least one knackered wheel bearing — to cross the whole of Italy and France without a hitch. The only answer, I supposed, was to do what mother would have done and invoke its soul. Not least since the official AX toolkit was still back in England, the wheel brace was broken and the jack had gone missing.
The six-mile drive to catch the ferry to the mainland proved promisingly uneventful, and at 1AM the following morning we were all aboard the Igoumenitsa to Brindisi boat for the eight-hour crossing to Italy. As dawn broke I looked down on the AX parked on the car deck, and realised for the first time how truly minuscule it is compared with modern ‘hatchbacks’, its toy-like form dwarfed by today’s Nissan Micras and VW Polos.
Ordinarily I would eschew motorways on such a trip, but time constraints meant the additional day or two needed to get to Normandy using only small roads wasn’t available — so it was Autostrada for us, tackled at a speed so slow that I was twice passed by lorries going uphill in the ‘crawler lane'. That first driving day proved, in fact, painfully tedious, with the night spent in Pescara a feeble 250 miles from where we had got off the boat.
Determined to make better progress on day two, an early start and a solid 14 hours behind the wheel saw us at my regular stopping-off point before crossing into France — the excellent Camping Gran Bosco in Salbertrand, 50 miles west of Turin and an easy drive over the Cottian Alps.
With more than 700 miles under the Jive’s belt and with around 500 to go, it seemed prudent to check its oil the following morning. It proved to have run dangerously low but (more by luck than good management) a five-litre can found in the boot enabled a top-up. More disturbing, however, was the arrival of a mysterious fluid leak that appeared to be coming from the diesel pump leading to, I have to confess, a moment of mild panic about the impending alpine crossing.
It was a bitterly cold morning which, as it turned out, had caused a water pipe to shrink — but it was sufficient to make me momentarily question just how ‘soulful’ the Jive really was…..
But with the leak self-fixed and everything back to normal, I was soon berating myself for being a Doubting Thomas and hunkered down for the final big push — a near 600-mile day to an obscure French village near Alencon called Rouperroux. The home of a car-mad friend and a convenient hour from the Caen ferry back to England, this was to be the temporary end of the Jive’s European drive.
Although it was (ostensibly) insured for foreign roads, its 16-year absence from the UK meant it couldn’t be driven there before passing an MOT test and being taxed — so I arranged to leave it in safe hands and return a couple of weeks later to collect using a borrowed transporter. And now its back home where, it seems, the Citroen AX has become something of a ‘classic’, with good examples selling for many times more than they were 20 years ago.
Ours can’t be described as a ‘good example’ — but that won’t stop me from driving it back to Greece once my daughter has passed her test.
And I know it will get there, because it’s almost certainly got a soul…..
How to drive an old car a long way in Europe
1 Check consumable items such as tyres, brake pads/shoes, wiper blades and so on before leaving
2 Ideally, change oils and filters.
3 Take tools — even the simplest problem can be hard to fix without a screwdriver, spanner etc.
4 Take basic spares (radiator hoses, alternator belts, bulbs).
5 Carry the driver’s manual for your exact vehicle. Don’t rely purely on looking-up details online
6 Take tyre sealant — temporary and not always successful , but considerably reduces the chance of being stranded in the dark in the middle of nowhere
7 Avoid motorways if possible. Breaking down on smaller roads allows more breathing space and it's usually easier to find parts and help.
8 Always take physical maps to complement GPS — they make orientation far easier than it is on a screen, and help with finding stopping points.
9 Be prepared to take your time, find your old car/motorcycles natural rhythm and comfortable speed.
10 If you don’t think it has a soul — get breakdown insurance……
