What? another new illness? Yes, well, maybe.
Tell me more!
Its something that plagues a huge number of the worlds population, in a variety of guises. Its been around a long time, but I’ve yet to find its true name, so let me discribe it to you and ask yourself if you possibly have it too.
It probably started for me when I was about 6 years old. My father allowed me to steer the car on a private road. I don’t know if it was an airborne illness or something that resulted after touching the cars controls, but that was when it began.
The next batch of symptoms were not noticed by family as anything abnormal. Posters began to appear on the walls of my room, mostly of Italian exotica. Toys were replaced with scale models. The tv shows I watched began to change from regular cartoons to ones with cars, examples such as Transformers & MASK, to anything that featured an engine – Night Rider, Steet Hawk, Magnum P.I, Airwolf, Automan, Hardcastle & McCormick, Miami Vice(although the parents didn’t know!) Dukes of Hazzard and the A-Team. There were more but I can’t remember the names.
Then it got worse. I started to go to local Rally events. My parents must have simply not wanted to admit I had this sickness, because the signs had become obvious. The sound of the neighbour starting his Sierra Cosworth. It drove all the other locals crazy, but I couldn’t get enough. Lying in bed at night as the same car would return from a night out, I could hear it approach from miles away. Each downshift, the gentle increase and decrease of revs while cornering, to the roar on the straights.
Sunday sports tv was replaced with F1. The collection of mags left in the house by my uncle we raided. I hit the jackpot…. mountains of issues of CAR magazine.
I started to watch, actually study, my Dad as he drove. I wanted to as good as he was. I listened to any conversation that had the slightest hint of petrol, hoping for tips or just cool car stories.
I would identify the make and model of every car I would see, thankfully all this was kept in my mind as I’m sure those around me would have had me committed. Instead of being angry when I spotted a car I didn’t know, I was delighted. It meant I had to go researching! All this in the days before the interwebs, it meant visiting the library, the newsagent and actually talking to people, face to face.
But things took a turn for the worse when a certain red beast, with “2 roundy triangles” under the bonnet, arrived from the land of the rising sun. Then the sickness turned into its most destructive form. Financial stage 3 sickness. First it was the initial cost of the car. Then the shipping and freight insurance. Then the flights to the UK to collect it and ferry back. The duty, the VRT, the insurance, the fuel. The large bill for the rebuild, the various bits and pieces it needed along the way. Then came the mods.
Oh the mods…… its by now that if you aren’t nodding with me, you are probably safe and disease free. So go away. If on the other hand, your smiling, knowing what its like to suffer, read on.
I find myself turning on the pc and immediately checking car sales sites & parts sites. Not just in Ireland, no, that would be too easy and probably not cost enough. Nope, the internet is a global market place, so I must use it to the full, along with my ever dwindling bank account. But its ok, I have an understanding woman in my life. She knows I have inner demons, which torment me, daily, hourly. She can read my body language from the other side of the room. She knows, really knows, when I have located the NEXT car. Or worse, when I have located that rare part, for the rare car, that I DON’T own….yet. Oh yes, B, you are a truly understanding woman and I am blessed to have you in my life.
What she doesn’t realise, is that I have slowly, over many years, been trying to nuture this disease in her also. Wicked? Wrong? Disgusting? Evil? yes, probably. But I know that if we both suffer the same sickness that it will ultimately bring us even closer together. When will I stop? When the day comes that she wakes me up, saying “I’ve just changed the injectors on my car and fitted the uprated fuel pump. Want to go for a spin to test it out?”
Any day now!
Thank you Dad for this sickness, and to my Mum for understanding, it has come to define me and is a part of my soul now, I’ll forever be grateful.
Diesel is for tractors 