Nixta Rolls

Buy Honda.

I’ll treat you to a brief description of my experience of patriotic car purchasing.

My very English father’s first and only new-car purchase was British. It was a disaster. I don’t recall if I’m combining journeys now, but it felt like our first journey to Slovenia (then of course it was Yugoslavia and the country hadn’t torn itself to shreds) involved the air-conditioning unit, wiring problems, condensation leaks, problems with the automatic gearbox itself, and a surprise I’ll mention later.

I think that the first thing that went wrong was that our air conditioning unit fell off its mountings as we approached Salzburg, landing heavily on the gearbox. We found a friendly mechanic who agreed to help us out. He clambered around under the car. He burnt himself but refused to complain. I recall him as a displaced Norse Hero with his blonde hair and aerodynamic moustache, although I might have been reading a lot of Asterix at the time. But he showed his true passion in the way he looked at the car: I’m still certain that he took on the work because he wanted to get under the hood of our band-new Jaguar.

He loved cars. This was the last car Jaguar made without computer control - it had computerised monitoring to give us fuel economy figures in the “trip computer” which took up a space the size of the radio in the walnut dashboard - so there was nothing on the car he couldn’t repair. It was a beautiful machine, and in theory it was a very advanced car at the time. Sadly it had been built by weak-wristed overweight unionised clockwatching tobacco addicts in Coventry.

Our Gallo-Nordic saviour worked hard and repaired the car. We may even have had to stay overnight (I now wonder if this was our visit to Salzburg when I discovered the zoo and the myriad music shops on cobbled streets).

As we drove away from the garage and closed our electric windows, having waved good-bye out of them, my mother’s dropped off its mountings and back into the door with a triplex-laminated clunk.

I still remember the look of fear on the Viking’s face as we pulled up in his forecourt once more. The heroic Scandinavian steel had been replaced by my first insight into what adult mental illness looks like. I’ve never been able to put all my faith in a square-shouldered and jawed hero since.

Ironically, given my opening advice of buying Honda, Jaguar’s manufacturing processes didn’t improve until Ford bought them. Apparently it still never turned a profit for the legendary and now troubled auto giant who sold them earlier this year.