Round the world in seven and a half cars

Misadventures at the wheel, part 1: From Austin Morris to Land Rover

Abstract Speed – The Car has Passed (Velocità astratta - l'auto è passata), 1913. Giacomo Balla (1871–1958). Tate Gallery.

My family and friends all know that cars don’t interest me. I know little about them and have no curiosity about their inner workings.

I’ll be honest: I don’t like them. And perhaps this dislike comes from the fact that they have often brought out the worst in me. Or got me into situations I’d rather not be in. Often both at the same time.

However, having a car was, for some parts of my life, a necessity. For instance, it was hard to get by without one in the Devon countryside, where, as I was growing up, public transport was no more than a distant rumour. Or, later, living in the vastness of Mexico City with two small children.

At other times, having a car was less a necessity and more the result of caprice.

So cars are not something I’m driven to write about much. But I thought: among the many ways to mark the trajectory of an international life – homes lived in, languages learnt (or not learnt), places visited – why not include the cars that have taken me from one unlikely place in the world to another?

*

The first car I (kind of) owned was a beige Austin Morris.¹ I drove it when, at the age of 17, I was forced to commute weekly to complete my schooling in one town after my parents had decamped to another town on the coast 30 miles away.

The key distinguishing feature of this Austin was its dodgy clutch. ²

The problem was especially apparent when climbing the long and steep incline known as Telegraph Hill, just outside Exeter. Rising away from the Exe valley to wooded hills from which you could look across at Dartmoor, this stretch of road is something that most cars now speed up with hardly a change of gear.

But this 1960s Austin had to be nursed up the hill at an excruciatingly low speed and with infinite care in second gear if it wasn’t to end up on the verge of the busy road, its burnt-out clutch filling the air with the smells and smoke of combustion.

As a novice driver, I found this defect highly frustrating. But eventually I realised that the car was teaching me to drive “gently,” without too much acceleration, much as my father did.

Decades later, a few weeks before she died, I drove my mother on what turned out to be her last ever road trip. After we got home, she complimented me on my smooth driving. This comment made me, at the age of 60, boyishly proud.

And it was due to that dodgy clutch.

*

My first wholly owned automobile was a dark blue Renault 5. It was 1986, and I was living in Tenerife, one of the Canary Islands. For some reason (and looking back, my life of car ownership is full of such rashness), I thought it a perfectly reasonable idea to spend my money on a new car while living on an island that you could drive across in an afternoon.

After I’d made a substantial downpayment, the monthly payment did not seem onerous, even on my modest teacher's salary. Or maybe I just got mixed up with the zeros in the peseta amount I was shown at the car showroom.

Anyway, I began to feel it was worth it when the car allowed me to hop from beach to beach with my girlfriend, C. I’d load up the cool box with Danone drinkable yoghurt, and we’d find places to sit in the warm Canarian breeze, gazing at the sea of shuddering greens and blues before splashing around in the pulsating surf.

We also explored the mountainous interior of the island, and it was there that I learnt to negotiate twisting and narrow mountain roads, an experience that would prove useful later on.

We spent so much time together in that car that when the time came for my departure from Tenerife, I began to feel it was C’s as much as mine. She’d just learnt to drive, so before I left, I signed over the ownership of the car to her, and she readily took on the few remaining payments.

She drove me to the airport in the car on my last day. I took out my bags and then watched her drive the Renault out of the airport back towards the city. I don't know how long she kept the car.

*

In 1988, I took a one-way ticket to Quito, where I had found work as a teacher for the British Council. I felt the joy of exploring the beauty of the country by bus, boat, plane or “ranchero” (a passenger vehicle made of wooden seats attached to the chassis of a middle-sized truck). There seemed to be no need to buy a car.

But in my second year, I came across an ancient Land Rover for sale and decided – one of those odd decisions again – that it would be a good idea to buy it.³ It was about 15 years old, venerable but not quite an antique. Battleship grey and indeed almost as heavy as a frigate, it felt sluggish and underpowered while trundling through Quito’s streets at the altitude of 2,800 metres (9,000 feet). But its robust frame seemed in keeping with the Andean landscape.

I used to leave it parked in the street, as my flat had no parking spaces. For six months or so, I experienced no problems. But then I had a business trip that took me away from the city for a couple of weeks.

When I arrived home and I went to check on the Land Rover, it was missing. I initially thought I’d just forgotten where I’d left it. But after a day of searching, I concluded that it must have been stolen.

I was as surprised as I was annoyed. Why would anyone want to steal such an old tub? Anyway, I went down to the police station to report the theft. It was at that moment that a bewildering series of dealings with the Quito police began.

Inside the police station, every statement was processed very slowly by perhaps the one person in the world who typed more slowly and clumsily than me. Tap tap tap.

It was an excruciatingly drawn-out process, and as I stood there in that bare-walled office with files strewn all over the tables and desks, the unpleasant smell of mouldy paper added to my discomfort. Tap tap tap.

But that was just the beginning. After an hour or two of to-ing and fro-ing between us, a surprise began to emerge from the scrappy paperwork that the desk sergeant consulted with a desultory air.

It seemed (nothing was stated clearly) that the police themselves had perhaps taken – or rather “impounded” – my car. Now eyeing me with disapproval, the sergeant said this happened with vehicles left for a suspiciously long time in the street.

I bristled. How was it that I was suddenly the wrongdoer?

But at least, I reflected, the car was safe, and I would now be able to collect it.

However, the car pound where the car “might have been taken” was some distance from the police station. And I’d need to bring my full ID and complete some paperwork to get it back.

At that point, I became well acquainted with the word “trámite” in Spanish – the term for a bureaucratic procedure.

I felt relieved that I might soon be reunited with the car but still frustrated at the whole situation. In any case, the next morning, papers expectantly in hand, I jumped in a taxi and headed for the pound, a vast enclosure on the edge of the city.

From the entrance I looked to see if I could spot the Land Rover. But it was not there, among the rows of battered relics reluctantly lined up under the sharp Andean sun.

When I went in, the leather-jacketed guardians of the place, whose exact affiliation to the police force I was never quite sure of, looked grimly at my paperwork and tutted loudly.

There was a stamp missing. Or was it a signature? Was this really the right form? And anyway, was I sure my car was there?

I asked to take a look around, but no, I couldn’t do that for “security reasons.”

Feeling that I was being toyed with, my patience ended; I shouted that the only reason why I was in this wretched place was because the city police had told me to come. “Carajo!” I added with a feeble flourish, trying to show off my newly learnt swear word. ⁴

Needless to say, this outburst got me nowhere.

That encounter set the tone for the game that played out over the next two days. I’d shuttle between the police station and the pound. At the station, I’d try to clarify the state of their investigations; there didn’t seem to be any. I’d then check which papers I needed to have or whose signature was required. But whatever I took to the pound, it was never quite right.

The guys at the pound professed themselves sorry, in their gruff way, but they couldn’t help it if the police didn’t get their paperwork in order.

And was I absolutely sure my car had been impounded?

Of course I wasn’t sure. I only knew what I’d been told, which increasingly seemed like a fable.

I began to doubt my memory, even my grasp on reality. Was the car in the pound? Maybe it had really been stolen? Or perhaps I’d just left it in a very remote spot which I’d then forgotten?

This seemed set to continue for eternity, and the question of the whereabouts, even the existence, of my car shifted its shape into a shimmering mystery.

*

By the third day, I was ready to write off the car altogether. That morning, though, as I was on my way to the vast car pound by a different route, I was surprised to pass an elevated spot from which I could see into the far side of the enclosure for the first time.

I asked the taxi driver to let me off there. I peered through the wire fence to look at the vehicles in this remote corner. And there, at the back, unmistakably bulky and boxy and grey, was the Land Rover...

With the relief came shock. It was now clear the gatekeepers at the pound had been playing with me all this time. And the police had simply towed my car away and were in no hurry to give it back.

The reason for all this became obvious as I rushed in to yell at the pound-keepers, who showed no surprise at all. When I demanded to be allowed to drive my car away without delay, the guardians of the place just smiled.

Now we all knew where my car was, another game had begun.

It turned out that this new game was about how generous I was willing to be. If I would just give a little something “para la cola” (to pay for a soft drink, in the euphemism of the day), then it would all be sorted out. ⁵

I pondered my options. In my exhaustion, I couldn’t think of many.

So later that day, I made my way resentfully to the police station to give them a furred and greasy wad of sucre notes⁶ with which to pay the “multa” (“fine”) they said I’d incurred. I then returned to the pound to offer the guardians money for libations.

I was then promptly and politely handed the key to the Land Rover.

Numbed by what had happened over the previous three days, I couldn’t think of anything to say but turned and hurried to my car with as much dignity as I could summon.

I was worried about the possibility of a last-minute hitch or that the Land Rover wouldn’t start and foil my desire to leave immediately. To my relief, its engine burst into life at the second attempt, as if it were also desperate to escape.

I switched on the lights and steered out of the compound as nimbly as the old crate could manage, rumbling off into the darkening Andean night, somewhat poorer, scarcely wiser and scorched with embarrassment and shame.

1. The exact ownership was a detail I didn’t delve into, but my best guess is that it was officially in my mother’s name.

2. Manual (or stick-shift) transmission is still the norm in the UK, though automatics now make up about a third of the market.

3. Some readers might recognise the vehicle from this earlier post.

4. A mild translation would be “dammit!”

5. This kind of thing could have happened in several of the countries I’ve lived in. And in the rest of my time in Quito, nothing similar occurred. For the record, despite this incident, I found it a great city to live in.

6. Ecuador changed its currency to the US dollar in 2000. The previous currency, the Sucre, was named after the Latin American revolutionary Antonio José de Sucre.