Tag Archives: M20

I like cars. I like driving them even more. The workings of the internal combustion engine are a complete mystery to me though. As with DIY, engines are beyond me. I know where to put the fuel, the oil, coolant and screen wash. I can change a wheel but that’s the limit of my expertise.

I think I may have mentioned before that my first ever car was a 1973 MGB GT.

It had a 1.8 litre engine with overhead valves. Nope. No idea what that means but it was a nice car and I travelled many miles and it was a blast driving it. Girls liked it too which was the best reason ever to own it.

The next car I owned was a Rover P5.

It was like driving around in a gentleman’s club with all the old leather in it. It had a bloody great 3.5 litre V8 engine. Ever since then I have loved the burble of a V8 car engine. A lovely sound. With the price of petrol at 55p per gallon it wasn’t particularly expensive to drive either despite a lousy M.P.G.. When fuel prices started to shoot up, I got rid of it. Shame really because they’re worth a fortune now.

There then followed quite a few years of dull and bland company cars. Some were ok but nothing more and some were just crap. There were exceptions. For a few months my company car was a Ford Sierra Sapphire Cosworth 4×4. Brilliant car that looked like a normal saloon car but went like stink.

Unfortunately, I wrote it off when a tyre blew out at speed and it rolled over. I hasten to add that the speed I was travelling at was the national speed limit. Maybe just a little bit above it but not much. Really. Then it was back to boring and unexciting cars. It was the same for PIL. Our cars did the job they were supposed to do but nothing more. Then in 1994, we bought ourselves a car which started a love affair with the marque that has continued to this day. So much so that we have two now. We bought a Land Rover Discovery.

What a brilliant car! Over the years we have had a couple of Range Rovers and a Land Rover Defender

but we keep coming back to Discoverys. We’ve probably had 8 or 9 in total and currently own a couple of Discovery 4s.

For us they are the perfect car. We live in the country and during winter the roads are rarely gritted, snow drifts form quickly that block the roads to all but 4x4s or  the roads flood and our village and others nearby get cut off unless you have a 4×4 that can wade through fairly deep water. One of the other advantages is that Discoverys come with 7 seats. Our kids are very sporty and are always playing matches in one sport or another and of course, PIL and I go to see as many matches as we can and this means that we often return to their school with half a football/hockey/rugby/netball or swimming team in the car plus all the kit that goes with the sport. So for us, it was ideal. Land Rovers are also tough as old boots. Google “land rover defender falls off cliff” and read the stories that appear. You can read about the blokes who survived when their Land Rover Defender rolled 600 feet down a slope or the Scottish bloke who survived after driving his Discovery off a 150 foot cliff. Or the woman who survived after driving her blue Discovery off another cliff. I’m not sure if the fact it was blue made any difference and I can’t really say why so many Land Rover owners seem to enjoy driving off cliffs but they survived the experience. I can confirm the toughness of these vehicles from personal experience. On one occasion, I was returning home after dropping the children at school. I was driving our Defender. I stopped as the car in front of me was turning right. Just as it turned, a van being taken for a test drive by a mechanic drove into the back of me. The Defender which is not the lightest of vehicles, was thrown 30 or 40 feet forward by the impact. I got out of the car completely uninjured. The van was a write off with the whole front end completely demolished. My Defender had a couple of broken rear lights, a bent tow bar, the rear windows were smashed and that was it. I drove it to the nearby Land Rover garage and arranged for the van to be picked up by the breakdown people.

On another occasion, PIL was going to a work function in central London. She took my Range Rover. She phoned me just after midnight to say she was stuck in a traffic jam on the M20 caused by road works. Ten minutes later she rang again to say she had been involved in an accident. She was fine but the car wasn’t. An articulated lorry had driven into the back of it. The lorrys brakes had failed. If PIL had been in a normal car, the lorry would have gone straight over the top of it and killed her! That was the opinion of the Traffic cop who attended the accident.

A few years ago, PIL and CJ were on their way to LegoLand and were travelling along the M25 in PILs Discovery 3 when a German articulated lorry decided to move out of the inside lane of the motorway without indicating and obviously without looking in his mirrors because he moved out onto a car travelling in the next lane and shoved it straight into the path of PIL in the outside lane and overtaking both these vehicles. PIL hit the central reservation at about 70 mph. The impact spun the car and it finally came to a halt on the hard shoulder, jammed up tight against the armco crash barrier facing the wrong way. All the air bags had deployed filling the car with smoke to the extent PIL was convinced the car was on fire. Thankfully, it wasn’t and she and CJ were completely unharmed. Shaken yes but unhurt.

They really are brilliant cars and if money were no object I know exactly what car I would buy. This car really is the dogs bollocks.

 

I’d buy a 1969 Boss 429 Mustang.

But I’d also have a Land Rover Discovery as my daily drive. Probably the only car you will ever need or want.

Have a great day.

More Dick soon.