A sleek little number anyone would be proud to own? Or just one more sign of coming down in the world?
The black Renault Clio is the first new car I have owned for something like 17 years. The last one was also a Renault, but a bit bigger (bought using the generous concession to which Mme Salut!, then a Renault employee, was entitled).
The Renault 21 was a good, solid car and gave us a fair bit of usage. And in truth, when it finally sought the motoring equivalent of a painless Dignitas exit, it was replaced by another new car, a BMW 316, but that was a company vehicle and remained so until I bought it for all of £5,000 a few years, many miles and one busted engine (a story too embarrassing to relate without inducement) later.
And it is that old BMW, now showing 320,000km on the clock (sounds more when expressed in metric terms), that needed to make way for something else.
It has been a fine old car, requiring modest maintenance - apart from the episode with the engine, which I am glad to say occurred when it was owned and serviced by my masters - and covering long distances without complaint. And also without air conditioning, unless winding down the window counts.
It has also developed a habit of wearing out its tyres at alarming speed. It ambled through its last MOT test a few months ago, but the rear tyres were judged to be within 2,000 miles or so of needing replacement.
When the time came, the French mechanic took one look, declared all four to be worn and then shook his head as the car was hoisted to head height for inspection and refitting. A fault, something to do with the suspension, meant the tyres would always wear quickly.
There was apparently no danger but I'd have to resign myself to forking out hundreds of euros every few months, and it was clear any repair was going to be costly. For a car without AC in the south of France.
So BMW, which still looks like a decent car despite the blurred picture, has gone home. Not to Germany, but to London, where a friendly mechanic will offer his opinion on whether the repair is worth carrying out on such an old car (1996).
In Paris, not owning a car be an occasional inconvenience but would hardly be the end of the world. Here in the Var, you would feel utterly lost without one.
Hence the arrival of the Clio. It seems desperately small and even flimsy after the BMW, but it is fun to drive and I like it. And it's not one of those ugly Renault Scenics that have become ubiquitous on French roads (only the French could give such a name to something so lacking in physical charm).
When the salesman, Jeremy, and I agreed a price, he wanted me to accept his word on the assorted concessions I'd negotiated. Down here, he said, it's worth more than a signature.
As I have described in another account of this purchase (in my East West column in The National, Abu Dhabi), this argument had a fatal flaw. Putting it as neutrally as possible, with a spot of self-deprecation to make him feel better, I pointed out that we represented two of the world's least trusted trades.
"Yes, people see a car salesman and read voleur stamped on his forehead,” he agreed, while cheerfully accepting the consolation that it was not much better for me, as a journalist, to be branded with menteur. And he duly signed.
* Another volume of Salut!'s Short History of Cars Owned can be found at the grossly neglected Salut! North site: see Wheels of Life
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