Smart Cars

Driving ambition

February 14, 2008 – 8:17 am

The muddy estate car with a hound mascot on its bonnet and a labrador in the boot is as much a part of country life as waxed jackets and green wellingtons. At least it is in remoter areas. Like the red squirrel being pushed northwards by an interloper who has replaced it in the south, the `people carrier’, as this successful immigrant is called, was first seen in Fulham and Stockwell, and that’s where I hoped it would stay. However, before you could say `baby number four’ or `Fred’s school friends’ people carriers were blocking the view on sports day and parking in our drive.Friends who arrived for the weekend in people carriers would refer to them fondly as `the flower van’ and I’d smile, as if we were discussing a hideous but blameless child. Recently, however, Peter became seized by a longing for one of these machines and persuaded me to go and look at the Mercedes version. He knows I have a soft spot for Mercedes which dates back to our first estate car. It was boxy, blue and had 100,000 miles on the clock. It had always annoyed me that a very ordinary car costs the same as a very nice picture and has the temerity to lose value. Mercedes at least used to last for ever. Ours did sterling work carrying half a ton of baby-support equipment on our Christmas progresses from grandparents to grandparents.But things started to go wrong when we went a cliche too far and bought a mascot from Swaine Adeney. It was a British white boar, just like the pigs we had at homeUnfortunately, after it had been screwed onto the bonnet, I realised we would now be facing a large pair of silver testicles every time we went for a drive. Worse, poor Peter was stoned whenever he drove through the Muslim quarter of Leicester. When the exhaust pipe fell off the car on the motorway, Peter decided he had had enough. The Mercedes was sold and the mascot hidden away. As the newer, sleeker Mercedes had introduced complex electronics at the expense of its reputation for longevity, we bought a second-hand Ford Mondeo estate.

I know that Labour ministers maintain that they are far too grand to drive Mondeos, but I always thought ours smart as well as practical. There was plenty of room for two school trunks, and its dark-green paintwork wore mud well - the only drawback being that you had to put your hand on all that filth to close the boot. However, by last week the children were as keen as their father to see the back of it. When the man from Mercedes offered to take it in part exchange, they cheered, saying the Mondeo stank because they’d all been sick in it several times. I was more circumspect. The estate car might or might not stink, but it did its job and that Mercedes was no country-people carrier.

Awe-struck parents from the boys’ prep school had told me the Mercedes has a fridge. It does. The trouble is it doesn’t have room for anything else. The car looks like a burglar’s transit van, but even without half the seats, there’s no space for a dog or a trunk or even a fully reclined wellington boot. I rejected it.

But Peter and the children got their way in the end over a new car. We are poised to drive up to Scotland in a brand new Chrysler Voyager. It can take three children, drink, rods, suitcases and boots, but I suspect its popularity with country parents is, more than anything, based on a desire for change. Not that I don’t understand that. When we get home, I’m going to trade in my diesel hatchback for a nice twoseater sports car. I hope Peter won’t mind.