Lancia Motor Club

It didn't go any faster, but a friend and I had great fun in messing with my Dad's Metro.

Sadly, no pictures remain of the completed work, but aside from the flames from the wheels, it sported yellow smiley face hubcaps, a giant Van Halen logo on the bonnet (complete with the stripes continuing along the side and up and over to join on the roof) and was re-christened "GT Death" in bold colours on the tailgate. Plans to fit a fake nitrous bottle on the parcel shelf never came to fruition, and likewise the helicopter pad on the roof.

Many a boy racer or middle manager in a company car "tested" themselves against me at traffic lights. I think the irony was lost on them.

The thing that makes me laugh now is the vision of my Dad pootling around town in it. It was his car, after all and I only got to borrow it. He was a great sport.

Despite being an early model, it did make it all the way to 1994 before expiring in a spray of rust when someone back-ended me at a roundabout. This was just before I went travelling in South America, so it was a blessing as it saved me the cost of scrapping it. When I came back, my first car (that I owned) was a Mk1 Golf 1.3CL, and after a year I progressed to my fondly-remembered HFie.

Happy days.

If you'd have come to the WSM Easter show this year there was a Metro that was not a million miles away from that ! No orange flames but orange strips down the side (being applied as the show started!)

We never got as far as recreating one of the MFP Interceptors as we got distracted by a MkII Cortina. That has a whole host of stories attached, too.

I have cherished memories of care-free times when I had spare time and spare cash.

I want to hear more stories of frivolous messing around with cars.

Funniest memory I have of my first car was a trip to Oxford one Winters night, came off the motorway onto the A34 roundabout and the back came out, overcompensated but caught it perfectly on the swing back, we ended up going round the roundabout with full opposite lock. The first time the copper gave me a nasty look, the second time he was laughing his head off! All at about 5mph in a little white (camoufaged in the snow!) Fiat 126!

Bliss! Daren't try that with the Stratos replica!

Guy

You kids know nothing. I was sixteen and working in a pub in Ewell, Surrey, I think it was called The Green Man. The landlord threw me the keys to his 3.8 MK11 Jaguar one afternoon and said to take it to the garage for new tyres. It was raining and I spun the car braking hard into the second roundabout on the Epsom road where you turn left towards the college (is it still there) but hit nothing. I arrived back at opening time a much wiser man.

My first car was a hand painted (Dulux Misty Buff) Dolomite that I put a hole straight through the floor with a misplaced bottle jack :-(

My second, a Fiat 127 Sport, had a drivers seat base supported by two strips of 2 x 2 timber as all the springs had gone. If you weren't careful and jumped in a bit quick it didn't half come keen. I accidentally drove that into the wall of a cottage the day after an all night foray into the Welsh hills to watch the RAC in about 1984. I was going a bit quick, can't remember who I was attempting to impersonate.

Then there was my mates Sunbeam Stilletto that following a night out lost all it's coolant in the middle of nowhere in the early hours. As a last resort we all had to pee into the radiator (very carefully) to limp the car home. He didn't use his heater for weeks......

This is starting to sound like Simon Mayo's true confessions !

I did manage to drive my Dad's Nissan Stanza into a Mk1 Golf ... it was parked by a church and was owned a visiting vicar who had three other vicar passengers. They were all very nice to me when the came out o the church after the service!

Meanwhile the three ladies that came out to see what all the noise was about were three white witches having a coven meeting. They invited me in and gave me a cup of tea whilst I waited for my Dad.

As strange nights go that was up there with the best of them !