The Breakfast Show

I glare balefully at my “Breakfast Bundle”. It had seemed such a good idea at eleven thirty last night when I was offered it on arrival, cornflakes and milk, a croissant, an orange juice, perfect, just the thing for a 5:30am start. The reality, however, isn’t quite living up to expectations. A soggy limp piece of pastry about the size of my little finger, no butter just a tiny pot of jam, a plastic tub of unidentifiable cereal with UHT milk, and a small carton of orange juice. The only thing remotely palatable is the orange juice. I crack open the top and take a swig. No, not even the orange juice. I set it down on the side next to the rest of the abandoned “Breakfast Bundle”, take a last glance around the clean but spartan room that reminds me of a Swiss prison cell (no idea why, I’ve never seen a Swiss prison cell), and head for the door, the corridor, the stairs, and finally the cool crisp damp morning air of the car park.

I love very early mornings, although ironically I really hate getting up early, which means I rarely get to see them. There’s a stillness and a sense that you’re all alone and getting a head start on the slumbering world that I find invigorating. I make my way to the fly splattered Fiesta Zetec, plip the central locking, dump my bag in the boot and drop into the driving seat. 30 seconds later I’m nosing out of the car park and urging the sat nav to get a fix so I know which way takes me to the motorway. John Cleese is as sleepy as me so I take a guess and swing right, out onto the main road, and call up all of my trusty Fords rampant 96 horsepowers, I’ll soon find out if I’m wrong. Two minutes later I spot a sign telling me to take the next left for the motorway, at that very moment John Cleese bursts into life “take the left left in 300 yards” he intones. Perhaps he saw the sign too.

I love motorways when they’re quiet, almost as much as I hate them when they’re busy. Hence the five o’clock kick off this morning. The Fiesta is far from the fastest car I’ve ever driven, but it settles into a comfortable 80+mph cruise and is recording 40mpg on the trip computer, figures I’ll hopefully be living with for the next 300 miles and four hours. As the sun rises and the countryside flicks by I ruminate on the past week and the reason for my double length of the country trek.

With the pressures of the new job on both time and energy, to my shame The Boychild hadn’t visited Croker Towers for almost a year. I’d (we’d) been to see him of course, but that’s never the same. So with school holidays looming The Blonde and I had managed to synchronise holidays and the school timetable and arrange to pick him up and run him back for a few days R&R chez moi.

We’d combined the run to get him with a visit to Bristol where we’d stayed in the excellent Bristol Hotel and spent a pleasant day catching up with an old friend of The Blonde for lunch and exploring the dockside. What they’ve created is very impressive, most cities with a river running through talk of regenerated docklands, vibrant cafe culture and living the urban dream, but in Bristol there’s a real sense that they’ve actually achieved it. The Blonde and I liked it there very much. That evening we dined in the excellent restaurant of the hotel, had a good nights sleep and then hit the road again. Boychild duly collected it was a late evening run back home sharing the driving.

Rekindling fatherhood each time The Boychild arrives is never easy. Each visit brings fresh challenges. In the early days he’d awake late at night crying hysterically for his mother until the early hours, refusing to be placated until he wore himself out, only to awake the following morning to a frazzled me without a care in the world. Once we were over that hurdle we went through the needing to be constantly stimulated and entertained stage, every activity spurned within half an hour in a constant quest for fresh endeavours.

Now we’ve hit teenage years he’s better able to keep himself amused, but the new challenge is connecting with him at all, as everything becomes “boring” and all he really wants to do is to immerse himself in Facespace and Mybook. I have to tempt him outside into the fresh air with a combination of blackmail and bribery. The first couple of days he was down it was abundantly clear he wanted to be anywhere but, counting off the hours till he could return home. Heartbreaking. Half way through the week, aided and abetted in no small part by The Blonde and her sons The Two Non Blondes, we had a bit of a breakthrough and fun was clearly seen to be being had. We even coaxed him into a long walk home after a fun afternoon out, a new world record in Boychild mileage.

The Blonde couldn’t make the return trip due to other commitments, hence my late evening run and overnight in the Swiss Travelprison, and my painfully early start.

It was paying off though, fiesty Fiesta hoovering up the motorway network as the traffic slowly begins to build. I just had to get through the madly busy sections before 8am and I’d be home dry. I keep the pressure on, dodging down lane three past dawdling middle lane hoggers, signalling left and cutting back into the empty lane one immediately ahead of them, they never get the message though.

Just as it seems that I’m through the worst and about to enter the last easy couple of hours disaster strikes, an overturned lorry on my side 100 miles hence. Only one lane open according to the traffic news, police on the scene, recovery in progress. Time to start thumbing through the options in my mind, ease off and hope it clears or keep the speed up and hope to get in among the inevitable traffic queue before it gets too long? Stick with the motorway and inevitable delay or try and cut off round hoping the time lost in diversion will be less than the time stuck? I keep the speed up, getting closer and closer, playing exit roulette. Do I swing off at the next one or hope to make it further down the far more direct and faster motorway before taking another exit?

I try and figure exactly where it is and how long the queue is by the traffic reports, one more junction, one more junction. I’m bearing down fast, maybe 30 miles away, when the news comes through, obstruction removed, three lanes open again, traffic moving but still big delays. Good work guys! I stick with it a bit further, services coming up, I must be nearly on it but is it clear yet? The radio has gone very quiet on the subject.

I take the slip road up to the roundabout and off into the services for a comfort stop, a break and a think. I don’t have to rejoin here, I can take a different route off the roundabout and attempt to head round it. My GPS has a route block avoidance program, I can use that. But am I going to drive miles at low speed to miss something that isn’t there? Decisions decisions. As I leave the services I spy a couple of big screens showing the Highways Agencies web site detailing all hold ups. I check the motorway I’m on, no delays. Decision made I’m back in the car, round the roundabout and straight down the sliproad and back up to speed. For about three minutes until it all comes to a complete standstill. Bugger. Wrong choice.

I stop start crawl for forty five minutes, cursing the Highways Agencies and their stupid map all the way. Traffic reports are filtering through again, apparently there’s a hold up about where I am. Really? Eventually I break through and the rest of the trip proves uneventful. I slide the Fiesta back onto the drive next to my pretty little MX5 and climb out. Job done till next time, now for a proper breakfast…

Kicking aRSe

It was in the car park when I arrived at work, all hunkered down, fat wheels barely contained by swollen arches., exaggerated wings, scoops, vents and spoilers leaving no question as to the seriousness of its intent. The intent to cover ground absolutely as fast as anything this side of a Porsche 911. The Ford Focus RS is no shrinking violet, it’s unashamedly a wolf in wolf’s clothing. I walked around it twice before making my way into the showroom.

Turns out the sales manager had got it in for a customer, we had it for a couple of days, “want to give it a run up the road” he enquired airily? Are bears Catholic? The only thing potentially faster than an RS that morning was the whilrwind of me scooping the keys from his desk and making a beeline for the Performance Blue beast outside.

I plipped it unlocked and swung open the door to be greeted by a full race style Recaro bucket seat, the sort of thing that’s actually painful if you don’t quite land squarely in the middle of it. I lowered myself gingerly in, this thing was properly serious. Taking in my surroundings, the first thing that struck me was just how incongruous the slightly cheap grey Focus dash looked in such weapons grade machinery, almost as though something amazing had been built, A Team style, out of bits of an ordinary car. Which I suppose wasn’t that far from the truth. I dropped the keys into the cup holder in the centre console (you don’t need them for starting, one of them just has to be in the car), racheted the all embracing seat into a position that suited, dipped the clutch and thumbed the Power Button that kicks the motor into life.

A few stats for you, dear reader. The Polite Hatchback produces a healthy and more than adiquete 105hp from its 1.9 litre turbo diesel. My lean, lithe, and really rather rapid little MX5 roadster punts out about 160hp. This most focussed of all Foci offers up over 300 horsepowers. That’s The Blonde’s car, my Mazda, oh, and half a Ford Fiesta worth. All in one medium sized hatchback. Which is why it’ll pass sixty miles an hour from a standing start in five and a bit seconds, on it’s way to a horizon headbutting 163mph. Twice the UK speed limit. Plus a bonus 23mph for good measure.

Which is why I wasn’t too sure what to expect from the two up-swept large bore tailpipes that jutt aggressively from the rear diffuser of the car. Probably a noise that might indicate (or maybe cause) seismic activity, Norse Gods gargling nails, that kind of thing. What I got was something rather polite, yet with a distantly menacing undertone, kind of like an SAS soldier in top hat and tails at a wedding, unassuming, but potentially deadly. I pointed the nose out past the showroom and down to the main road, turned right and headed out of town.

Second impressions were pretty much what you might expect from a shopping trolley turned interstellar hot rod. Direct steering, hard ride, grumbly tires, and a feeling of serious potential under the right foot. I picked my way out toward the dual carriageway feeling my way about the car, noticing the fluids were already warm from its recent delivery to our garage. Good.

Turning onto the beginning of the ring road I found myself on a long uphill straight melding into dual carriageway in the far distance, no junctions, dry clear conditions, couple of cars half a mile up the slope ahead of me. I did the only right and proper thing I could do in the circumstances, I short shifted into second, gripped the steering wheel firmly, and floored it. It’d have been rude not to.

Having trodden firmly on the lion’s tail I hung on grimly, half a widening eye on the rev counter, the rest scanning the road ahead. The lion roared, the Recaro seat made a determined effort to pass straight through me, the steering wheel made less effort to escape my grasp than I had expected, and what felt like half a second later I was grabbing third and doing it again. The cars ahead reversed sharply toward me and I discovered the middle pedal fortunately echoed the kind of performance the right-hand one had. My speed fell swiftly back below three figures (kilometres an hour, obviously. Ahem…) cars ahead stopped reversing and hung a sensible gap ahead, and the road fed us smoothly onto dual carriageway. I moved out and pressed the hyperspace pedal again and the cars in lane one reversed smartly past my passenger door and disappeared over the horizon behind me. The car was fast. Properly, radically, insanely fast.

At the top of the hill I turned off and punted it round a couple of roundabouts before zig zagging off down a B road or two, the car performing fairground ride sensations, physics suspended for the moment. That experiment over, I brought the car back up to the dual carriageway further along and hyper-spaced back toward the dealership, arriving possibly slightly before I left. It’s timewarpingly fast the RS.

Back at base I sat in the now inert vehicle, silent save for the ticking of cooling metals, trying to make sense of the previous half hour, make sense of this ultimate hot rod of a car. But I couldn’t. The problem is that, hugely deeply impressive though the performance is, the car asks for too many compromises to be made. It costs nearly thirty thousand pounds but you’re surrounded by the interior of a car half that price. I’m not sure the seats would be comfortable over long distances, the ride is way too fidgety, and it’s too overt, it’s an idiot magnet for every pre pubescent Kev’d up Saxo driver within a five mile radius. Yes it’s face re-shapingly fast, but how often can you, dare you use that level of performance? As an every day car, is it worth the cost, both financially and practically? So as a car to cover all the angles it fails. As a fairly spectacular Boy’s Toy, on the other hand, it’s epic. But if that’s all you want from it, why buy a hatchback, why not a TVR or a Lotus Exige or a Vauxhall VX220 Turbo or a Mitsubishi Turbo Nutter IV, all serious performance machines but without the compromises of being a front wheel drive Ford Focus hatchback?

Ultimately this ultimate Ford makes a great halo product, a great showcase of what Uncle Henry is capable of building, but as a purchase proposition it misses the mark as clearly as the lesser ST version I reviewed in March hits the bullseye. If you’re paying as well as playing, that’s the real steal of a deal.

Scribe

Great news. You may recall the article that I’d been working on some little while ago for The Editor. Well after a lot of work it’s finally been accepted for publication and is going to be a six page spread in the magazine. Very exciting!

Not only that, we’re already discussing my next assignment!

It’s still very early days on the writing front and I’m far from counting any chickens, but this feels like a little progress at last and I’m desperate to get stuck into another article to try and keep the momentum going. The way I figure it, it’s potentially much easier to further a writing career as a published writer, rather than just an aspiring writer. If I can get a few decent articles published I may just be able to refer to myself as the former, which I hope will help.

I’m not sure yet when the article is set to be published, but I can’t wait to see it in print!

Bentley Boys

Look at that! Look. At. THAT!! I bounce excitedly from cheek to cheek in my seat jabbing a finger at the screen. The Blonde wanders across from the kitchen where she’s preparing dinner to the dining room where the computer lives at Blonde Towers to indulge this weeks obsession. Squeezing my shoulder affectionately she gracefully feigns interest as I excitedly reel off the stats. “Royal Ebony Metallic with contrasting magnolia leather with black piping, six and three quarter litre turbocharged engine, full service history, and only 75,000 miles”. I flick through the photographs of the immaculate looking Bentley Turbo R, “that is so much car for eighteen grand” I enthuse as I lust after the thick Connolly leather and imposing walnut dashboard. The Blonde leans down and kisses me gently on the cheek “you don’t have a spare eighteen grand” she murmurs in my ear “and it won’t fit on your drive”. She has a point, to be fair, but I’m already gone, driving that Bentley across the Europe of my mind, The Blonde by my side, matching luggage in the boot, heading for an expensive hotel in Portofino where the doorman will nod appreciatively at my motor before reverently taking the key as The Blonde and I alight relaxed and fresh from several hundred miles of high speed transcontinental travel, Grand Touring the old fashioned way. I slip a fifty into his hand (I’m very generous with imaginary cash), “park the old girl somewhere safe” I tell him.

The Blonde is getting used to the flitting butterfly of my automotive obsessions. Only a month ago she was reading a text sent direct from the last Ford Capri ever made, parked inside the Henry Ford College last time I was there. As I sat in the car it instantly transported me to the bright yellow Capri 2.0S of my teenage years and that text confirmed that I had to have another. The Capri followed swiftly on the heels of a burning desire for an MX5, the ultimate in hassle free top down summer pleasure, eventually discarded for being too digital, I want something with more soul.

There was the Saab Aero Convertible that never was, and more recently a Volvo C70 Convertible that came closer to reality than you’ll ever know. A month of agonising over a near perfect low mileage one owner example that potentially came my way via a contact in the motor trade. GT spec it had everything I wanted, Pro logic hi fi, full leather, air conditioning, heated seats, cruise control, and on and on. Head fought heart and heart battled head, it was a cheap car, a good car, a well historied car. A car that could have provided wonderful summer cruising, top down, stereo on, chewing up the miles and transporting The Blonde and I to fresh adventures and nice hotels across the country. Eventually I had to concede that the timing was wrong, it was too soon, too risky. Buying it wasn’t the issue, potential expensive problems were, with a commission based income I’m just not reliably earning the kind of cash to shrug off any costly issues that crop up. Yet.

Of course now I’m middle aged a rich vein of dream cars of my youth swing dangerously into focus. The very first properly fast car I ever went in was courtesy of my parents next door neighbour, a BMW dealer at the time. Mid grey 635CSi, all shark nosed, delicately pillared and perfectly proportioned. They don’t make ‘em like they used to. The honey smooth savagely insistent urge of the 3.5 litre straight six engine and the incredible feeling of being firmly squashed back into the soft leather upholstery as the speedometer needle raced around the dial was one of the first experiences that really turned me on to cars in my formative years. Now that impossible dream of my youth teases me from the Pistonheads Classifieds with a full service history and BBS alloys, all for under ten grand.

A Porsche 928S, the ultimate Croker childhood fantasy, winks at me at £10K also. Spaceship styling, German build quality, 5.0 V8 performance and That Badge, how can anyone with petrol running through their veins possibly resist? But for all the reasons that apply to the Volvo, times ten, the Porsche stays securely on the pages of Pistonheads. A gorgeous Mercedes 500SL holds similar stock.

Yet I’ll never stop dreaming, and one day it will have to become a reality. Life’s too short and far too interesting to be sensible all the time. One day I’ll crack and The Blonde and I will move off the highways of my mind and onto real ones, heading south in search of open roads, warm sunshine, and fine hotels. As a very close friend and mentor has been known to opine, you’ve got to waste a little money sometimes. With a Ferrari F355, Porsche 911 Carrera 4, and Jaguar E Type (amongst others) tucked quietly away, he really ought to know.

In the meantime the trusty Fiesta rattles me happily (and financially painlessly) back and forth, The Blonde continues to indulge this weeks latest pash, and the current edition of Classic Car provides inspiration on my coffee table.

I’ll keep my powder dry for now, but the radar continues to turn…

Managing expectations

My new manager has pulled a bit of a blinder on my company car front. Well aware of my displeasure in recent Fusion motoring he was gently “encouraged” to steer acquisition of my new steed firmly in the direction of a Fiesta, ideally with a decent (read Zetec) spec, bigger engine if poss, and the Bluetooth handsfree phone connection would be a bonus. Wrap it up in a nice shade and he can colour me happy.

It took a few weeks but he did it. It sat outside, dark smokey metallic grey, the more powerful (that’s more powerful, not actually powerful) 1.4 engine, Zetec spec giving air con, alloys, computer thingummy, interior lighting pack (footwells, submarine lighting and so forth), bits of chrome trim and whatnot. And it came fitted with the all important Bluetooth, which automatically adds a much nicer central dash display, rear stereo speakers, and voice activation and dialling (touch the button on the indicator stalk and say “phone”, “dial number”, “Blonde” and I’m talking to herself in moments). Seems recent sales success hasn’t gone unnoticed, or unrewarded (quite apart from the increased commission payments).

The irony of it all is that barely two years ago I was cruising a beautiful Audi A4 convertible, midnight blue, Bose hi fi, heated seats, the works. Had anyone suggested then that a Ford Mondeo would be the order of the day I’d have been distraught. Now I’m eying up my new Fiesta and it feels ok.

Partly it’s down to changed circumstances. Back then I was using my car to go places for work, and had to look the part when I got there. Now I use the Fiesta to drive ten minutes to work in the morning and it sits round the back till it’s time to drive ten minutes home again, or fifteen minutes to Blonde Towers.

But it’s more than that, it’s all to do with expectations. Back then I was dealing with some financial heavyweights, most of those customers drove cars four times the price of that Audi, and often had something even more expensive tucked away for high days and holidays. It’s funny how the cars of those around you go toward setting levels of aspiration. Now I’m surrounded by new and used Fords and have customers rolling up in £200 scrappers in the forlorn hope of cashing in on the end of the scrappage scheme (now ended). Against that backdrop a new mid range Fiesta feels a perfectly reasonable steer.

It’s not just a matter of prestige however. That Audi was a seriously high quality piece of kit and, all questions of value, worth, or prestige aside, it was something I took great pleasure in running. It was a car I’d drive when I had no where to go just for the sake of enjoying the drive, and trips became as much about the journey as the destination.

But times have changed as have, for the moment, aspirations and expectations. And to that end the Fiesta is fine. It’s a looker (far nicer than any mainstream shopping trolley has any right to be), it’s a decent drive, goes ok, and has just about enough toys to keep my interest. In these new times of austerity it more than does the job, and to my own surprise I’m happier with it that I ever thought I could be.

Condition stable.

I was doing probably close to 50mph in the dark grey Ford Focus estate when I came upon the obstruction maybe four or five car lengths in front of me. Even if the surface had been dry (it wasn’t) I knew I had absolutely no chance of stopping within the distance. I hit the brake pedal with everything I had and with the car virtually standing on its nose, anti lock braking system pulsing furiously, I wrenched the wheel hard to the right, missing it by what felt like millimetres. With no time to think I hurled the car back to the left, tyres screaming in protest, in a bid to avoid another impact. The whole thing was over in moments, car stationary, a sudden quiet descending.

Quiet apart from the uproarious laughter of my colleague and I, “go round again” he urged, wiping the tears of mirth from his cheeks, “faster this time!”.

It was the culmination of a two day introduction to Ford course for all new employees and we were in the midst of a hands on session to demonstrate some of the technology in the cars. We’d done a road drive in various models and were now at Donnington racetrack to learn about the benefits of Electronic Stability Program. Finally it was getting interesting.

How Electronic Stability Program works is basically this. A series of sensors monitor things like road speed, tyre rotation, steering angle, lateral forces and yaw forces. They determine from this what you’re trying to achieve, and what the car is actually doing. And if they sense the car getting out of shape it can reduce engine power and apply the brakes to any given wheel to keep the car pointing the way you want it to go and reduce or even stop a slide or spin. So, imagine you’re coming off a motorway at speed, down a slip road and round a left-hand bend. You’re doing 50mph when you hit a patch of oil that causes the car to start to slide. If (for example) the car starts to understeer (where the front tyres are losing grip and the car is sliding forwards toward the outside of the curve) the system will reduce power and brake the nearside (left) rear wheel in order to gently pivot the car back on course. It cannot overcome the ultimate laws of physics (try turning sharp right at traffic lights whilst doing ninety and you’ll crash regardless) but it will provide an excellent safety net that will help to keep the car stable and on line, and you out of hospital.

And it works, it really does work. The course they set us was on a wide open tarmac session with plenty of room to get it wrong or lose control. It started with a series of cones to slalom through which suddenly narrowed toward the end. Normally this would de-stabilise the car but ESP stops that happening with gentle tweaks to the brakes of individual wheels. Then a long right-hand bend to attack, another slalom and then a set of cones to create a roundabout. The advice here was to tip the car into the roundabout at speed and then simply floor the accelerator. Yup, give it everything. This is where the system really proves its mettle. As the car starts to slide the system simply backs off the power and refuses to let you go faster and you simply circle the roundabout at a faintly sickening speed with the car completely smooth and balanced. Out of the roundabout, a straight and then the section where we came in, a set of cones designed to simulate a sudden obstruction (such as someone pulling out of a side turning straight in front of you), with another offset section of cones to avoid immediately afterward.

Now imagine a group of car sales guys, all going round one after the other, all trying to outdo one another, and all getting faster and more confident with every try. On a wet surface. At a temperature just above freezing.

The fact that (despite our best, or maybe worst, efforts) not one of us spun a car says it all.

Brilliant system, and one that should be standard fit on every car sold (and I believe there are moves to make this so in the future).

Jagwhar

A recent panic regarding a pressing need for a tax disc for an ex motability car (hence unable to be taxed locally) and our driver snowbound saw me beetling up the dual carriageway to the nearby city one morning to visit the DVLA office and obtain said tax disc for a car which was due out later that day. The DVLA office is situated in the middle of a huge retail estate that also houses what must be almost every car marque currently available. Our group has four different franchises there alone!

Tax disc obtained it was time to leave, but a dicey combination of the bitter cold and middle aged plumbing left me in need of what I believe our American cousins refer to as a “comfort stop”. Unfortunately the only public facilities were a couple of miles in the wrong direction, but no matter, I had a cunning plan. I’d simply pop into a nearby car dealership on the auspices of picking up a brochure, and nip into the gents whilst I was there. Of course since brochures are free I had the run of pretty much any car make in existence to choose from so decided to go for a combination of nearness (I’m not getting any younger and pressing needs become ever more pressing with age) and prestige.

Just across the road I spied a Jaguar dealership. That’d do nicely.

Jaguar have come a long way even in the last few years. This once great marque was seen as close to the pinnacle of prestige many years ago, the chairman’s car, the prime ministers personal transport. But a combination of British Leyland influence (and build quality) in the eighties and bad product planning in the nineties (who on earth believed the X Type was a good idea) saw Jaguar limp bleeding into the noughties with an image that was more Arfur Daley and golf club wannabe than boardroom chic. Yes the prime minister still uses one, but Trousers Down Brown is hardly the ad exec’s dream brand ambassador.

Non the less I’ve always had a soft spot for dear old Jag, and I delight in their recent return to form with the cool and delightfully detailed XF and the Aston Martinesque XK. I hear they’re dropping the Jag wannabe X Type too, and I have very high hopes for the forthcoming XJ, a car that finally buries the whiff of tweed and pipe smoke forever.

I parked the company Fiesta (which, incidentally, has rather disappointingly stopped being vivid green and seems to have turned blue and sprouted an extra pair of doors) and pushed open the heavy glass showroom door. I was greeted politely by an immaculately coiffured salesman in an expensive suit and proper watch who enquired if he could be of assistance? I asked whether they had the brochure of the new XJ yet as my father had requested I pick one up for him. I did this for two reasons, firstly so that he wouldn’t want to take my details as a potential contact or engage me in conversation about the car (time and bladder were pressing), and secondly in case he’d clocked the Fiesta. I’d have hated for him to think I was some kind of timewaster who’d just popped in for a brochure and to use the loo’s…

Whilst he went to find me a brochure I popped to the loo and, mission accomplished, returned to the showroom. Our man from Jag had my glossy XJ marketing material all ready so I thanked him, bade him goodbye, and headed for the door. As I got there I stopped and took a last long reflective gaze at the beautifully furnished showroom, the glitteringly expensive cars, the church-like hush and the deep buttoned leather sofas that surrounded the expensive looking coffee table in the customer courtesy area.

And I thought “Hmmmm…”

PS. XJ Portfolio 3.0 V6 diesel, long wheelbase, in Lunar Grey, Cashew leather seats with Truffle contrast stitch and piping, Jet softgrain dash upper (anything too light just reflects in the windscreen on sunny days) and Canvas headlining, with Satin American Walnut veneers, and embossed Leaper on the headrests. 19″ Aleutian wheels, Bowers & Wilkins 1200w premium sound system, heated and cooled massaging seats front and rear, heated steering wheel with remote controls, adaptive front headlights, rear parking camera, DAB radio and digital television.

Cracking Kerridge.

I did it, finally I did it!!

Did a deal with a customer, sat down to do the inevitable paperwork, and got stuck into the dreaded Kerridge computer system fully expecting to grind to a halt and seek help. But as I filled in boxes and activated “Wizards” to choose sales options and ploughed on through it all gradually came together. Finally I finished on the operating screen with the customers details in, car details in, part exchange car details in, deposit taken, balance showing, right car figures showing, all in the right places and adding up. Scarcely able to believe my luck I tentatively hit “print”. And a perfect completed order form rolled off the printer like the answer to a million prayers.

Resisting the temptation to pull my shirt up over my head footballer stylie and run around the showroom holding the sacred document over my head and screaming I slid it in front of the customer for his signature before flourishing my own on the document and giving him a copy. Job done.

Well, job done apart from all the other paperwork of taking the deposit, creating a receipt, filling it in on the daily banking, doing a HPI check on the p/x, quoting and then proposing the finance, raising the finance paperwork, getting it signed, getting correct proofs of ID for the finance house, faxing the whole lot off to the finance house, getting the deal “confirmed”, raising the invoice and p/x invoice, getting a job card raised for a service and valet, booking the car in for a service and a valet, organising “Diamond Bright” paintwork and interior protection if the customer wants it, organising drive-away insurance, arranging a cheque for it to be taxed, getting fuel put in it, organising the used car warranty, filling in the warranty book, obtaining and preparing the V5, making sure we’ve got a valid MOT certificate (and booking it for one if not), preparing the hand-over sheet, finding the spare key that definitely went with the main key to the service department (and which they definitely did not get), making sure any accessories they wanted or the wheel trim that was missing and we promised would be fitted is there, organising the V5, MOT, and insurance certificate to obtain the tax disc, then later making sure we have finance payout, or taking the balance if no finance, providing another receipt for that, filling that in on the banking, making sure all the receipts go off correctly to HQ, running through the insurance programs we offer, doing the FSA forms to confirm eligibility and prove we’ve offered them, raising the invoice and paperwork for any of the programs they do want, running through all the paperwork with the owner, a full handover of the car with the owner making sure they’re happy with all of the operations, and finally making sure all the relevant paperwork goes off for archiving and that I have copies of it for my records of course.

Naturally that all applies only to used car sales. New car sales are far more complex…

Two days later I sold another and confidently sat down to create another order form. Only to find that despite filling in details of the part exchanged car properly and it appearing on the order form, it resolutely refused to enter the p/x car’s value. After much faffing I finally conceded defeat and sought out a colleague. Turns out there’s an anonymous little section where, if you click it with the mouse, a tick magically appears. Then it links the p/x car’s value to the order form correctly.

G’aaaahhh!!!!

So far, so good.

As Christmas approaches and life slows a little in the car sales world I come to you in a contemplative mood tonight. We’re still shifting metal but the joys of Christmas preparations are clearly taking their time and toll on potential punters and we’re finding a little slack in the day, which is rather nice actually. Time to slow down and take stock.

So where are we at? Or more specifically, where am I at?

Well I seem to be finding my groove, slotting in. The thick fog of admin is starting to become a little clearer, not gone completely but more of a light mist with fog patches these days. I can muddle through most of it with little intervention. The computerised customer handling/car ordering/deposit taking/finance arranging/order form creating computer system called Kerridge is still proving a complete mystery however. Bits of it I can cope with, some of it I’m positively adroit at, but stringing it all together? No.

The journalism side of things rumbles on at it’s inexorably slow rate, but I did finally get to do that review, complete with photographer and engineer so who knows, if The Editor likes what I throw together it could yet prove to be a catalyst for future options. We shall see.

That Saab convertible sadly never came in so I missed out there. Funnily enough I spotted an identical one on the motorway today, could even have been the same one in fact, and it’s such a lovely looking car. But I’m a big believer in fate and I guess it wasn’t to be. Probably too soon to be thinking about such toys anyway so hey ho, onward and upward, maybe next year.

The Blonde is still very much in evidence, more so than ever in fact. It feels almost like a proper grown up relationship, a novelty for me but in a very good and positive way. She is of course more beautiful, wise, kind, supportive and warmhearted than ever. (Hello Al!) And she’s keeping the Polite Hatchback clean despite the filthy weather, bless her! We’re even spending Christmas together, awww…

Other than that, all pretty quiet on the Western Front. I’m not a winter person, I prefer to hibernate and wait for spring. Actually I’d prefer to jet out to Sandy Lane or Necker Island for the winter months, but I may have to find something just a tad more rewarding than car sales before I’m able to make that a reality.

But as we drift quietly toward Christmas I have to report that after what can best be described as an “interesting” year the vibe generally is good. Whilst not quite the dream ticket, life at Ford is proving comfortable and financially supportive, and good place to hide and ride out the financial turbulence that I fear hasn’t buffeted it’s last yet, and I think if nothing else it will prove a good move for the future.

I’m sure next year will be the start of fresh challenges and adventures and a blog full of rants, raves, and raconteurs, but for the moment I’m feeling mellow, settled, happy and generally at peace with the world.

So it just remains for me to thank you for all your support and good wishes this year, it really has been and still is genuinely appreciated.

And wish you all a very happy Christmas.

The Green Machine.

My lovely Panther Black Fiesta Zetec has been sold from under me (the perils of being in car sales, everything is for sale, even my own company car) and I’d been offered a choice of two of the courtesy cars to run temporarily until they could source me a replacement. One a Fiesta 3 door in retina searing green (inexplicably labelled “Squeeze” in the brochure and at extra cost even over option metallic!), the other a very demur but very boring dark blue Fusion diesel. Of course I took the Fusion, it might be dull but at least it’s discreet.

However I quickly realised just how badly I’d underestimated its dullness. The most exciting feature is a front passenger seatback that folds forward flat to make a table. Why? Because the Fusion is the pensioners choice and so a picnic table is the ultimate accessory. Think of it as the James Bond ejector seat for the blue rinse brigade. I can see Q now, “Since you’ve retired 007 I’ve made a couple of rather special adjustments to your new company car”. “Really Q, another Aston Martin with an ejector seat”? “No 007, it’s a Fusion diesel and the passenger seat cunningly folds flat so you’ve somewhere to stand the thermos and sandwiches. Oh and under the dash I’ve replaced the Walther PPK holster with a place for you to store your Whethers Originals”.

The pensioners love the Fusion, its high stance aiding ingress and egress and square corners making it easy to park. But good grief it’s a dull steer, the addition of a diesel engine robbing it of the last bastion of any merit to the enthusiast. Within a week (a week during which I’d never before spent so much time with the right pedal flattened in a bid to make the thing go) I realised the error of my ways and quietly swapped it for The Green Machine, the Fiesta with a colour so vivid you need to apply Factor Twenty sun cream if you want to stand within a metre of it for any length of time.

What a contrast to the insipid Fusion though. A tiny 1.25 engine meant it probably was no faster, but the way it revs and the way it seems to run on tiptoes, darting into and out of corners like an excitable Jack Russel puppy, are a revelation after the leaden OAPmobile. Worth braving the colour choice for I decided, and at least the British winter ensured it was dark and wet and dirty most of the time.

Then, over the following weeks, something rather odd happened. I found myself actually not wincing as I spied it glowing quietly to itself and braved a dark glasses dash for the drivers seat in the morning. I started to mind it less and less. Then, bizarrely, I found myself actually glancing back at it as I walked away and almost nodding in approval. Shortly after that I spotted a freshly serviced and immaculately cleaned one rolling out of the service bay and I actually decided it looked good. I had a quiet word with the cleaning pixies and when I returned to it that evening they’d sprinkled their magic pixie dust over it and all the carefully cultivated winter grime I’d acquired had gone, leaving the thing resplendent and shining like a new born shiny thing.

And I liked it. I actually liked it. It’s different and it’s funky and it suits the sporty youthful look of the car (if not the decidedly unsporty and unyouthful look of the driver). In the few short weeks I’ve had it I’ve been converted.

So would I buy one that colour?

Good heavens no, but it’s a bit of fun and it’s brightening up an otherwise dull winter.