Thank Frankel it's Friday: Time for one of my cars to go

First, I cleaned the old Series III Land Rover and put it to bed. It always works hard over the winter, carrying wood, taking stuff to the tip and so on, but this winter it’s really earned its keep, making sure the Frankel family remained mobile whatever the weather. I live fairly remotely in the Welsh borders, but in the 20 years we’ve been in this part of the world, nothing has stopped it. This year we had snow a foot deep in places and with proper tyres and ground clearance to spare it often left the only tracks on what was otherwise a pristine snowscape.

But now it’s earned a few months off while the other members of my small accumulation of cheap and unimportant cars have snoozed away the winter months, so now was the time to wake them from their slumbers.

To my mild surprise, everything in the shed started first time so job one was to get them all outside. I then attacked the interior with a broom, re-organised all my shelves and generally displayed levels of anal retentiveness few who know me would credit. Then I had to contrive excuses to go and drive everything. My younger daughter needed collecting from a friend’s house so that was clearly a job for the Porsche 968 Sport she loves even more I do. It performed perfectly and so I should bloody well hope so – it’s a Porsche. 

Then the other daughter needed delivering to a train station and she considers a Dacia Sandero to be an ostentatious wealth statement, clearly this was a job for the 2CV. I still find it odd and incongruous that the one car I know I’ll never sell is by a clear margin the slowest I’ve ever owned, but such is the charm of the early Deux Cheveux. I’d challenge anyone to drive one and not be smitten for life there and then.

I was struggling for an excuse to drive the Peugeot 205GTI until my wife kindly realised she’d forgotten some vital component of Sunday lunch, so I was dispatched to town to procure, and there was no better weapon for it. Light, nimble, quick and lucid as it is, a 20-mile blast on the roads around here in a 205GTI reminds me why the one I owned 32 years ago helped convince me I needed to find a way of earning a living driving interesting cars. 

I couldn’t find an excuse for the old Fiat 500 but I thought I’d go and drive it regardless. Lack of space means it currently lives on its own in an old barn which I don’t like because it’s not as dry as the shed, but it’s the only car I own small enough to negotiate its way past the table tennis table and my drum-kit. But it wouldn’t start. The battery was fine but the starter motor just clicked pathetically and then stopped altogether. Is it a coincidence that while all the cars went to bed healthy, only the one that lived in damper conditions played up? I’ll never know, but I doubt it. I know people who are very robust with their old cars and just accept rot and rebuild as part of the cycle of motoring life, but I don’t like it at all.

So much so that I’ve decided something has to go. It should probably be the Fiat because even I can see I don’t need two ancient air-cooled two-cylinder cars in my life, but Mrs F loves it, so it stays. The Land Rover can’t go because it’s too useful and I passed my test in it and, as mentioned, the Citroen is not going anywhere, ever. So it’s the Peugeot or the Porsche. I should sell the Peugeot because the Porsche is rare and special, but really a 968 Sport is a long distance car and when I do long distances and almost without exception, work means I need to be in something else. Truth is that while I love the car enough to have kept it for two years when I only bought it so I could drive a 918 Spyder for a day (long story, but essentially the deal was I had to turn up in a Porsche I actually owned), it’s the one I use least. So if you know someone who might want a well known 968 Sport, do get in touch.