With the exception of my wife’s new Honda Fit, the only non-German car I have ever owned was a 1961 Ford Falcon. Painted in delightful puke-green, it was a sight to behold.

I started to feel the urge a few years ago when I realized that German cars don’t give me a lot of room for interesting road trips. Unknowingly buoyed by a friend of mine who had an amazing broken-down-Chrysler adventure in Northern Alberta, I decided that my fourteen years of staid German reliability needed to come to an end.

And yesterday, I found myself at a local British car show, looking around with some rather serious intent to purchase.

British cars are the antithesis of German cars. With a German car, you get in it and go. You know that a bevy of engineering doctorates have poured over every square centimetre of the car, and you know it’s going to work regardless of the weather. You pay for the privilege, but it has its long-term benefits. With just over 70,000 miles (~112,000 km) on the clock, my Mercedes doesn’t even squeak when it goes over a bump. The only repair I can recall is having the radio replaced because one of the volume buttons would occasionally stick.

In a British car, we’re rather pleased that it works at all. German cars don’t drip oil. English cars don’t believe in keeping oil for much longer than a few hours. When I was pulling out of the show yesterday, I noticed one fellow in a Lotus who was waiting to check in. There was green antifreeze streaming out from under his car. I jogged over to tell him; he brushed this off as a regular thing, and said they always travel with a few extra gallons of antifreeze in the trunk.

So why on Earth would I want to induce this kind of unreliability that would give most German car owners seizures? The answer is simple: British cars are just charming.

True, most of them have engines with the engineering deftness of a prewar John Deere. True, most of them rust profusely. True, most of them have poorer acceleration than my old Volkswagen diesel. True, most of them have convertible tops that are baffled by even a few meager rain drops. And true that the electrical systems in most British cars are considered a fire risk (there’s some truth to the old saying: “If Lucas Electric made guns, we wouldn’t have wars.”)

But who can resist the charm of an MGB?

The truth is, the owners I met at the show yesterday displayed one marvelous trait lacking in German car owners: they were incredibly relaxed. That they made it to the show in one piece was itself a cause for celebration, and there seemed to be an unspoken understanding that with a British car, you’ll get there when God intends for you to arrive. If you make it, you’ll arrive in tremendous style (as the gentleman in the Rolls Royce Silver Cloud demonstrated), and if you don’t make it, people will understand why.

I have a serious hankering for an early model MGB - the ones with the chrome bumpers. I also get weak in the knees when I see the original Triumph Spitfires. Of course, the Jaguar 120’s that were there were enough to cause spontaneous marriage infidelity, but I’m not quite ready for that.

3 comments
Posted in Blog
Written on Sun, 20 May 2007 at 8:43 am
Tags: British, cars, Honda Fit
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