The idea that anyone should continue to own and use the same car for 54 years probably seems entirely alien to most people today when the current ethos is all about conspicuous consumption and products having a life span that only just exceeds the warranty period.
Old reliable: Motorist Mike Harrison, 74, still owns a 1931 Bentley Coupe, which he bought 54 years ago
It is possible to circumvent the consumer treadmill if you have some basic skills and a the ability to resist the constant suggestions in the glossy ads that you really need that new car or the new WIZZ-BANG super toy, heck you could even go as far as I did and build a new car for yourself. but then you could find as I have that a small part of the whole that in itself is insignificant , causes you a great deal of heart ache. You see when I rebuilt my sports car I bought this lovely new old stock speedo that was totally consistent with the styling cues I was following. To use it I had made a special speedo cable and when I connected it up I discovered that the inner was just a few mils too long so that the inner could not turn this resulted in the plastic drive gear in the extension housing breaking and of course that means the speedo will not work . The part is not available from Toyota (the transmission is from a Ke70 Corrola) nor can the transmission people I have spoken to supply one. On top of the difficulty in getting the part, there is the matter of fitting it. To do so requires the removal of the engine. So I have been looking into other ways to make do until I can get the part and the energy to fit it .
I bought a bicycle speedo but rejected it as a solution because Idisliked it. The best stop gap may in fact be to get one of those dreaded Satnav devices. From what I can gather many of them give you a very accurate measurement of your speed as part of their display. I have strong reservations about their potential to dumb down the abilities of the travelling public just as James May does:
Now, the May household actually has another household, a small flat in another part of town. We bought a new cooker for it, but on the day it was supposed to arrive, a man rang to say he couldn’t find us because our address wasn’t in the satnav.
What was I supposed to say? Fair enough, we’ll just make do with dry bread and olives. We really fancied a cooker but if you can’t find the door, never mind. Don’t want to be a nuisance. The flat was built in the Fifties, and it’s not as if no one found it prior to the TomTom.
The thing is, the address officially puts the building of which it is a part on one road, but the entrance to the car park and garden bit is actually off another road, running at right angles. This isn’t hard to work out.
So the reason for this ramble is to ask about the experiences of my readers with these little devices, if you own one or have one installed in your car has it killed your ability to read a map? Have they been reliable? Or have you consigned them to the bottom of the desk drawer and gone back to the easy to use maps made out of paper?
Cheers Comrades
😉
Iain Hall
Iain's Seven 
