Andy Richardson: Lesson learned after buying an old car just for its colour

I think the happiest of childhood experiences inspired me. As a kid, one of my dad’s friends would occasionally visit. He had an old Jaguar, or so I seem to remember.

We’d never seen anything so grand. The paintwork gleamed under the Tipton sun as he opened the doors to an excited family that was driven serenely around the housing estate on which they lived. Innocent fun.

And so having saved hard, I decided to take the plunge.

I found an advert and literally chose a car based on the colour and badge. As you do. The guy who sold me the car told me I was unusually trusting. He had no idea I’d bought the car because it was beluga black and had got a shiny silver badge. The engine and its past history didn’t really trouble me, the way it should have done.

And so it was carefully driven the 150 miles from dealer to home. It stayed there for a month.

The heating system didn’t work. Apparently it frequently doesn’t on cars of that type. The guy at our local garage – a fabulously truthful and gleefully pessimistic type – agreed to fix it.

In sympathy, he refused to charge. He also issued this advice: ‘Send it back.’

His bluntness was so surprising that I nearly crashed on the short journey home.

Worse was to come. The windscreen washers thought they were at a disco. Every time I drove, they’d eject water on the windscreen. I returned the car to our trusted mechanic. Then, after he’d assessed the problem, I tried to drive home – with the handbrake still on. If I’d been trying to create the impression that I was an absolute idiot who didn’t know what he was doing, I’d succeeded.

The petrol cap failed. Something to do with corrosion. Because it was a classic old banger, the repair bill was around 20 times the cost it would have been if I’d bought something sensible.

And those imagining the figure '20 times' is hyperbolic should be reassured it’s not.

The idiosyncrasies of the car have been matched only by those of its new owner.

After a period in which it had been off the road (again) for some electrical fault or other, I was finally allowed out. We celebrated with a trip to Sainsbury's.

Returning home, I took the shopping off the back seat then tried to zap the alarm to close it securely. For some reason, the car wouldn’t play ball. The alarm pierced the evening sky and buzzards left this quiet rural village to find somewhere safer to live, like Birmingham.

I tried again. Nothing. I phoned the garage and outlined the fault. “I think it’s the electrics,” I said. The mechanic rolled his eyes and wondered why I’d not heeded his advice to send the damned thing back.

I called the guy I’d bought the car from. He was sympathetic and offered to call the garage that had repaired the car before I’d bought it. A more helpful seller I could not have hoped for.

And then She Who Must Be Obeyed arrived home. She asked if there was a reason I’d failed to shut the passenger door properly, so that it was still a bit open. I told her about the car alarm thing and she too rolled her eyes. “Blonde,” she called me, though seldom are blondes as stupid as this fun-seeker.

The alarm, you’ve already realised, wasn’t in the least bit defective. It had done its job perfectly properly by screeching at me: ‘You’ve left the back door open, dumbo.’ It was my failure to translate its message that was the problem, rather than the alarm itself.

Embarrassed messages followed to the mechanic and the guy who’d bought the car, though I have adopted a new philosophy when it comes to fulfilling childhood dreams – particularly when they involve such expensive and unpredictable pursuits as buying cars. Don’t. Leave them in your memory and save your money.