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Old cars !!
I've got a 1995 XJ6 Jaguar 4.0 Stuck with it now until I'm dead. Engine size makes it unsellable, and even if I took the £2k trade in, I can't afford another car.
I have cut my costs by going with Aviva (Norwich) for insurance, as they do a 'mileage' deal, and as my car has only been off the drive 4 times in the last 5 months it cut my insurance premium by 45%. I declared 5,000 miles or under, but I've gone so far under that I may go for a 3,000 mile option.
New drivers
I will now appear to be an 'old fart' but I was driving what used to probably be the the fastest road car in the UK when I was 19, a Mk 2 manual gear change 3.8 Jaguar. The difference in my opinion, was that it was built to withstand a crash (if you had one)and most of the other normal cars couldn't get to 85 m.p.h. Todays new drivers get cars that are capable of well over 100 m.p.h. and they all want to drive like a Formula 1 champion, and drive too fast (just like I did at at that age) but I was only racing against a clock from A to B, not another new driver in his fast car. I took my cars over east Londons docklands and threw them all over the place to get the 'feel' of them. Braking, handling, steering, skids,what it did in each gear, everything I could think of. Some of my mates thought I was mad, but here I am, a hell of a lot of years later and have never had an accident.
And I still drive fast when conditions allow it. I did a timed run from Yalding in Kent to East Ham Town Hall in my old Jag when I was young. No car ever got anywhere near my time, and that old car didn't have power steering or ABS sytems. And these days, due to the volume of traffic on the roads, that time can never be beaten, unless the driver wants a stack of tickets from speed cameras.
We had it easy back in those days. No speed cameras, police 'Panda' cars were Morris 1000s or Austin 1100s, 0-60 in 20 minutes, with a top speed of about 75.
Happy days. |
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