You know those times
when you feel a fart brewing up, and you think it's going to be a
real crowd-pleaser? So, you shout, “Shut up, everyone, I've got a
real prizewinner bubbling under, here!” and everyone shuts up and
looks on in anticipation while you, at the centre of everyone’s
attention, adopt the Bruce Forsyth
elbow-on-knee-and-knuckles-on-forehead stance, and wait, and wait,
and you're starting to go a bit red because of the strain. Then,
eventually, it arrives at the bomb-bay and goes “pp”.
And you go absolutely crimson out of sheer shame, and the fact that
there's a worrying, slightly damp sensation spreading down under?
Then you'll know the
opposite. Those times when it's quiet and still – for instance, in
a waiting room, or on an aeroplane, or in the dock just before the
judge releases the jury to consider their verdict against you – and
you think you have a tiny fart that you can safely get shut of in
silence. So, you surreptitiously lift one cheek a millimetre and...
and it sounds like a ten-second blast on a foghorn half-full of
porridge, rips your jeans, leaves scorch marks on the upholstery,
causes the linoleum to curl up at the corners and creates a cloud of
stench so thick you could knock a nail into it. As the cloud drifts
across the room/court/plane, causing people to run, gag, retch and
generally wish they'd lived a better life, you try to adopt that
disgusted, “Jesus, who did THAT?” face while looking at the
people around you, despite the fact that your chair is smouldering
and there's a skidmark laminated to the wall behind you to a height
of five feet which, if you look at it the right way, could depict the
face of Satan.
Where's all this going?
Well, the orange four-pot Mustang has sold, and it's gone off to its
new home down in Essex with a gent who knows a thing or two about Fox
Mustangs. For me, that car definitely fell into the first category –
it was a GT, painted metalflake orange, with GT wheels, GT suspension
and brakes, the GT body kit and '5.0' badges on the wings, but with a
really limp 2.3-litre four-pot. It promised much, but delivered very
little indeed. It shouted bang, but delivered whimper. It was a sheep
in wolf's clothing, which I wouldn't have minded so much if it had
provided 'sheep-level' fuel economy; it was definitely a wolf when it
came to unleaded.
So now I have this
little Nissan. It's a really basic 1987 Sunny LX 1.3-litre four-door
saloon. And it falls into the second camp. Why? Because I expected
absolutely nothing from it, so everything it does is a delightful
surprise. It starts on the first touch of the key, and though it's
far from fast it feels quite nippy and, somehow, faster than the
Mustang. Though that's not difficult.
The previous owner was
an elderly gentleman from Buxton, recently deceased, and it
definitely has an “old geezer's car” vibe about it. For a start,
there's the tartan rug on the back seat. Then there's the charmingly
politically-incorrect little caricature dolls on the parcel shelf of
our colonial cousins. I've left them there for the time being.
Then there are the
floor mats. What is it with old people and soft furnishings in their
cars? There were no fewer than four bits of additional carpet in the
passenger footwell, on top of the OE rubber floor mat, along with a
tin of pound-shop “Back To Black” under the seat.
Emptying the glove box
was a lesson in itself. If seems that the executor of the previous
owner's estate couldn't be arsed to empty the car before punting it
on, so the glove box contained everything you see on the seat in the
photo. There were a dozen or so cassettes, mostly Elvis and Roy
Orbison, though centre stage went to “Al Jolson's Greatest Hits”.
There was a pair of sunglasses with one lens missing, a scalpel(?)
and a load of boiled sweets that had melted and stuck everything
together. No, they weren't Werther's Originals, but they were still
the sort of sweets that seem to only be bought by pensioners.
Another lesson was the
cassette player. Somebody had gently removed the original
radio-cassette – possibly with a pick-axe, judging from the state
of the dash – and replaced it with a really fancy Sony tape deck.
That same person, presumably, wired it in with the same degree of
panache – chocolate-block connectors everywhere, everything
connected to a switched live, the bare constant-live wire was just
floating about, there was no earth so it was presumably only earthed
through the aerial, one of the speaker negative wires was connected
to another switched live and only one of the two speakers worked. I
stuck a CD player in, though the door speakers are beyond shite.
Of course, despite its
64,000 miles, it's far from perfect. There's a clunk coming from the
driver's side front suspension which I couldn't trace but suspect a
drop link, the driver's window doesn't wind up or down quite straight
so it's a two-handed job, and the door locks are so worn you could
open them with a teaspoon. But, overall, I'm delighted to say that my
new old car is a massive, wet fart.
Eugene
