I suppose I have always been a car nut. My mother used to tell me I always wanted toy tractors and cars etc, so I had a collection of Dinky Toys - which got well bashed about, repainted, you name it. I also had a Meccano set and just about the only thing I made with it were cars of ever-increasing complexity.
My father wasn't really interested in cars - they were just a convenient mode of transport - but my mother was. The petrol in my veins comes from her father, who was definitely a car nut. I have a scrap book of his from when he was a boy over 100 years ago with pictures of motorbikes cut out from magazines. He had a succession of cars - none of them ever a tin-top. Mother's favourite was his Riley Lynx - I remember his Triumph Herald convertible in which he used to tour the Alps every summer.
My own journey started with a Hillman Imp, through an MG 1300, Triumph Vitesse, TR6, GT6- based home-made Spartan kit-car, E-type, XK8, BMW Alpina, Capri 2.8, other boring ones, to currently a Morgan +8 and Golf GTI. I have always enjoyed tinkering with them and used to do a lot of the maintenance when I was younger, but now I leave the tin-tops to the garage and their diagnostic computers, whilst still tinkering with the Morgan. Next job - replacement windscreen, because the current one is de-laminating.
