If you are going to uni, and NOT taking the car with you; forget it!
You'll have FAR more important demands on your spare time and spare cash.....
BEER!
Women!
BEER!
and maybe a few other things, like BEER!
I mean, theres SO many of them to sample!
My father, lazy, good for blugger all cheap-scate that he is, had just bought a new house, a brand new Saab, and taken a year off work to write a book, said he'd buy me a car if I got to uni.....
I already HAD a car, a Morris minor pick-up truck that I DESPERATELY wanted to customise as a propa 50's hot-rod.... it was just BEGGING for it, but no, wouldn't give me ANY money towards me 'messing' with 'that old wreck' he'd buy me a car, but it would be 'something sensible for a student'.... and lazy bugger that he is, he told my uncle to go find something that met his criteria.....
I ended up with a Citreon (French for Lemon innit?) LNA II RE, which was six years old, one careful lady owner, 30,000miles on the clock, fully rust-proofed, and was the 'top of the range model', which meant that it got an 'economy guage'... to compliment the otherwise spartan interior.
It looked like a propper car, some-one had swan in three, robbed the middle section of and then welded back together.... you know like a stretch limo job done backwards! Had about enough space in the boot for two shopping bags and passengers as long as they didn't have legs!
It was apparently supposed to be the car that replaced the old 2CV, which APPARENTLY was what my Dad had had in his mind as the 'ideal' students car, when he told my uncle to go find something and he asked 'like what', so this thing was sold to me as like the 'modern' 2cv, withouit any-one EVER stopping to consider that the appeal of a REAL 2cv, IF one appealed to me in the first place was that it WASN'T modern!
anyway, it was designed to have the 2CV's air cooled twin cylinder motorbike motor in it, but I was saved that ones woeful performance but laudible reliability by having an all aluminium Overhead Cam water cooled four pot in it, displacing 1071cc.... but suffering never being driven outside birmingham, at more than 30mph, or in top gear! Those 30,000 miles were VERY hard ones, and the engine was firred up and the transmission knackered, but true, there wasn't a speck of rust on it!
Drive shaft snapped in the first week of having it..... Dad WOULDN'T pay to get that fixed, 'Shouldn't've been thrashing it' So, dealer only part, and £300 of my grant cheque later, and within another week the OTHER one went! Followed by the engine mountings! Followed by the cylinder head gasket.....
My First Christmas holiday at uni, was spent, closeted in the kitchen of the shared house I lived in, every-one else gone home to mums, girlfreinds, turkey, and alchohol..... rebuilding a bloomin engine!
By Easter, the thing was DEAD, after a second engine rebuild, and the bank-manager called a halt on my now £1000 overdraft NOT run up doing things that were WORTH £1000 like getting drunk, or laid!
so I did something VERY unsensible, the EXACT thing my dad had been trying to STOP me doing and bought a motorbike..... a BRAND NEW motorbike, on credit, becouse I couldn't afford ANY motorbike, and barely affort the credit.... but hey, it pigged the old bustud off and was a LOT of fun!
Was stolen three times in the next two years, and I learned a lot about how insurance companies work in that time; but I got it back and fixed it up, and carried on, mainly becouse I couldn't afford to payt off the HP deal!
Ultimately, it was nicked and crashed and there was no way it could be fixed, and luckily HP was paid off by then, and I had enough experience to wrangle a decent settlement out of the bludgers, which they handed me with a wry smile, which I later discovered meant 'and dont come back'.... becouse looking for another bike to replace it, soon as I called for quotes, basically every-one I spoke to wanted that insurance settlement back off me, in full JUST for a years insurance.... even if I onlyt wanted a MOPED!
So I went looking for another car, for which I had, since I had 'sort' of kept the citron on a SORN policy, for two years, hacking it about when I was back home, after messing with it to make it work, had full NCB.
This, surprisingly, becouse at the time, they didn't ask about claims in the last five years, they just looked at you rNCB, meant that at 21, I could afford to insure something on one of the higher insurance brackets, where most of my mates who'd been running around on mummies policies were suffering not beinga able to afford to insure ANY car in thier own name.....
At the time, Porshe 924's were REDICULOUSELY cheap, you could pick up a tatty one for about £750, a tidy one for about a grand, and a good one for as little as £1500, and the 2.0l versions were actually JUST inside the insurance grouping that would let me as a 21yrold get a policy on one....
I had £1300 in my hand, and the possibility of stretching that another £700 with my following years student loan, which I no longer needed to preserve to pay the HP installments on the bike.......
It was Soooooooooooooo tempting!
I mean, at the time, it was still 'trendy' to hang your golf keys on a porshe keyring..... and as the indi-punk I was, thought it would be a brilliant bit of antithasis to actually HAVE the porshe all the tredy kids really wanted.... not becouse I wanted one..... but becouse they did!
And, I ACTUALLY thought it was a lot better car than its critics gave it credit for; OK, so it said Porshe on the front, but VW under the bonnet, and no, it didn't have the performance of a lamboughini or a ferari, but then WHY would you expect it to, just becouse of the badge on the front?
what it DID have was a darn site more performance and INFINITELY better handling than a Ford Capri, or MGB, which were the closest real rivals as a 'sports car'..... and for all they were a porshe, on a student budget, that VW engine made a lot of sense when it came time to change the oil and filters......
And, I STILL wish that, while I was young enough for it to have been something 'remarkable', and I could have enjoyed it, and afforded NOT having to rely on it, I had bought one.....
As it was a slightly more perverse madness overcame me, and I bought a Metro, instead.... you know, something 'ordinary', sensible, cheap, ecconomical.... all that kind of stuff......
Well..... not QUITE! What I bought was the MG model. Not the turbo, just ordinary MG.... exactly the same as the Vanderplas, and twenty other metro models with teh same engine, but becouse it had red seat-belts and an MG badge two insurance groups higher, and consequently, five hundred quid cheaper!
which, reminding people I could afford, becouse of my full NCB, made it a 'bargain'.......
But, what it actually was, was the basis for a rather potent 'Q-car' street racer!
I pulled the thing to bits over the summer holidays; the rot (on a six year old car!) was all chopped out, and new sections welded in, then the rest of teh shell was seam welded like a rally car for rigidity.
The rest of it was built up with mainly the original bits, but put back together 'fettled' to the Metro Challenge build book for the saloon car series, and incorporated quite a few subtle mods, that were to be added to over the next couple of years; main ones though were that the engine was NOT a 65bhp tappet clatterer; built to blue-print specs, it was a verty sweet little thing that knocked out just about 90bhp, which was pretty impressive for a 1275 a-series, and as much as the Turbo version, except unlike the turbo version, mine had some chance of not blowing up, didn;t suffer turbo lag and had a brilliantly useable power cuve. The suspension robbed some bits off the turbo, and added a few bits from the avon-bar catalogue, and the thing was finished off, with a set of MG MEastro wheels machined to fit inside the arches, giving a wider tyre and more common 13" tre size, with lower profile side wall, while still looking like the original fit alloys; resprayed in original metalic blue, rather then boy racer red, black or white, and detailed with the concervative original MG decals, rather then the trendy all over the car MG badges or turbvo stripes of anything..... basically it LOOKED on first, second, and a long THIRD glance like it might have sat in the show room..... and to complete the stealth appeal, was detailed out with a complete valet, making sure that everything down to the original push button radio looked like it was kept clean and tidy by a blue rince aunty.... an image completed by placing a colour matched cusion on the back seat and a tartan travel rug on the rear parcel shelf!
It was a perverse kind of insanity that car; but the idea was, I could turn up at the Navy or Top town, where the 'lads' gathered to talk cars asnd set up an impromptu time trial, looking like teh collegde kid who's borrowed mummies mota..... of course the lads with thier own cars had things like 1100 escorts covered in rally sprort stickers, and modeded by cutting a couple of couls out the suspension springs..... they thought I'd be 'easy meat' cos college kid ent gonna risk wrekin mumi's mota, izee!
Until I put it into action, and on the twisty sprint run between the Navigation and the Waterman, or on the 'locks run' from the Black-boy, where the roads were litterally hair-pin agfter hair pin and never a bit of road straighter than a quarter mile, this thing FLEW!
Used to grip the road like it had claws! One lad had a hillclimb mini, 1400 motor, cage and running on bump stops, and cam storming over to me demanding to know what I'd done to this car, after I'd rained him in on one run and we'd run the last five miles through the twisties, bumper to bumper!
Another lad ran a caterham, and again, was rather taken by surprise that a 'tin top' worse, a 'standard' tin top, worse still, a BLUDY METRO could stay with him on 'his turf'.... A LOT of engineering went into that car, and it was just amazing!
Best of it was though, it was just so unsupposing; looking so standard, and so tidy, no-one thought it anything 'special' so didn't 'scare' daddies when I went to pick girls up; didn't scare them, when they got in it, and they were often pleasantly surprised I had a 'nice' car.....
And, had enough space to cram 14 people in it..... YES! in true student style.....
Let me see, there were seven accross the back seat; four crammed on the seat itself, and three sat on thier laps; three in the passenger seat, well, two ON the seat, one on the floor between thier legs, TWO sat on the parcel shelf, holding ONE unwilling birthday boy INSIDE the boot, tied up, naked, kicking and screaming, other wise we could probably have got another in there with him! About to be tied to a fountain in the middle of the town square! Oh, and me driving! 14?
Very mad, and in comparison, the porshe PROBABLY would have been a LOT more sensible, as the darn thing cost an effing FORTUNE to keep serviced, it needed an oil change and the tappets, ignition and everythuing else adjusting almost weekly, and bits of the suspension were so hard loaded it needed about four sets of ball joints a year, and thats before the super soft Eagle tyres or mintex brake pads come into the equation!
But, its all pretty irrelevant; as a student its about doing all the stuff you cant get away with as a 'grown up' becouse you have responsibilities and commitments to worry about, and you cant do as a 'kid' cos mummy would have an eppi and kick you out.....
Its about huoses where washing up piles up on the side and merely has the fag ash knocked off it before the slices of taost are put on top ready for the beans, heated in the dirty pan, that's ok, cos its only EVA had beans in it.....
Its about, waking up with a hang over and drinking it off...
About waking up in the middle of a lecture and wondering how the heck you got there....
About walking eight miles to the nearest motorway and sticking your thumb out, 'cos your girlfreind is at uni 200 miles away, and you've blown the last of your grant cheque, and she'll feed you.... and you've just realised that you haven't eaten anything more filling than a pot noodle for ten days, and are tyring to work out the calorific value of newcastle brown ale from the information on the label thats stuck to your jeand over the hole in them!
Its about borrowing your dads estate car to go to a concert three hundred miles away, for which you haven't got a ticket, but by charging each of the nine mates you have managed to pile in the car a fiver each towards petrol, you hope to hope to have enough to get one off a tout.....
Its about having the bright idea at three o clock in the morning, to go camping to get close to nature and purge your body of toxins, obliviouse of the fact that it is February, or that you have a test in the morning.... and waking up, stark naked, your girlfreind, who put the idea in your head, huddled up in your coat on a park bench, while you realise you are lying in the middle of the college rugby pitch.... and every-one is looking out of the windows at you!
Its about...... being wreckless!
And to be honest, come september, when you actually GET to uni, there will be so much to get into, and so much laid on druing freshers week, and all arranged around the idea that yu should be able to do everything and not rely on a car, you wont need it, and I doubt you'll miss it, especially if it was left at home any way.
I mean, if you dont have the car at college, and you doint use it to get home from college, only thing you are going to use it for is pottering round to your mates when you go home for the week-end.... and for that you want to pay £180 a year in road tax, and gawd knows hoe much in insurance? Take a taxi! Borrow Dads car; do what you did before you had a driving licence; ride a bike, or take a bus!
Use the money to do 'stuff' and have fun, instead!
But, if you ARE going to get a car, whether a P38 or not, take it to college with you and use the darn thing!
Alternatives to a P38?
Well, for Uni, and a Rugby player..... get an old 109 SIII commercial.
They are cheap as chips, you can probably cram the entire rugby team in one, and all thier beer; and it dont matter if any-one thows up in it! You aren't going to get anywhere in a hurry, but it'll be fun wherever you go! And IF you turn up to a party and they wont let you in; get back in the 109, turn up the radio and have one in there instead!
Also some-where to sleep, when you loose your house keys, or cant remember where you live!
A shed on wheels, with an engine...... perfect!
Maybe a cool box in the cubby to keep the beers cool!
