V is for Vehicles

I have always had a love of classic American cars.

My favourite is the pink Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. There’s something I love about retro-Americana that the pink Cadillac feeds into nicely, and I could probably even afford to buy one – classic cars over here are surprisingly inexpensive to buy and insure. Unfortunately they also guzzle gas like there’s no tomorrow, and I have no idea where I would park it – unless money was no object, in which case it would go in my hypothetical car garage along with my Thunderbird and classic Chevy.

I also love Alfa Romeos. At one point in my life my dream car was a silver Alfa 147; a fairly attainable dream, since I ultimately bought one. I took great pleasure in watching people walk past, stop and come back to stare at the front end, with its huge badge and sideways licence plate. Sadly, Alfas cost a fortune to insure, so I had to downgrade to a Seat Leon, which was equally pretty but not quite so in-your-face.

My husband is the one who knows cars in our house. He knows that when I buy a new car I have to love the look. (Reliability is vital, of course, but a lot of cars are reliable. I want reliable and funky-looking.) My current car is a Kia Soul Burner, black with silver dragon decals down the sides, and is rare enough that when I pass another one on the motorway we wave to each other. It also has almost caused several accidents when people gawp at it, including one bloke who nearly ran his car into a petrol pump and promptly got clobbered by his girlfriend in the passenger seat.

And I’m now in the market for a new car, which will probably be a dark red Nissan Juke. Unless someone pops up in the interim with an idea for a cooler car?