I have said goodbye to my silver 2007 Ford Fiesta, after 15 years of ownership. Which I know is quite a long time to keep a car, but it was still serving my needs, decent cars are expensive and I don’t see the point in changing cars for the sake of it.
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| Parked in the garage, shortly after I'd acquired it in May 2011 |
The Fiesta came via
Bufton's of
Peterchurch. Bufton's have now supplied my parents with four or so cars and they sourced this one for me in 2011. Prior to this, I had not owned a car for a few years, as I worked locally here in Reading and found it less hassle to hire a car for the odd long-distance journey. However, having accepted a job at the OU, I knew I’d need one, a) to travel back and forth between Reading and Milton Keynes, as the train journey is cumbersome; b) because Milton Keynes was clearly built around cars. MK is low-density and spread out for a UK town and it isn’t simply a case of walking from A to B, whereas in Reading, often it is (and where it isn’t, Reading has a much better bus service than MK does).
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| Snowy at Old Groveway in 2012 |
The Fiesta proved to be an excellently reliable, sturdy little vehicle. Over the years it’s had some repairs done, but nothing obscenely expensive - I think the priciest single repair was a clutch replacement in 2014 but that was sub-£400. In all the years I owned it, I think I only had to call the AA out three times, and one of those was to my home during lockdown when the car's battery had gone flat. I had managed to put quite a large number of miles on it: at its MOT in May 2011, when I got it, it had 45,128 miles on the clock; at its MOT this August it had 191,144. Although not the most comfortable drive over long distances, it was still reliably getting from A to B and had not reached the stage of "exciting" unpredictability that my Renault 5 reached the year before I offloaded it. So I took quite some time ruminating over whether it made sense to offload a still mechanically reliable vehicle and spend a not inconsiderable sum of money that I could have spent on other things, like a new kitchen. Also, more sentimentally, it had served me well and I was just going to abandon it, alone and bewildered, for the lure of a shinier, newer vehicle? What sort of a way was that to reward years of faithful service? This Reddit thread didn't help with all of that.
My friend Matt owns a 1987 Peugeot 205 which he evidently regards as part of the family. However, I’m reasonably sure that Matt’s Peugeot only does small local journeys. Most of my driving currently is between Reading and Milton Keynes (on the route that I usually take, about 70 miles) or to Wales to visit family (around 120 miles from Reading to Abergavenny), plus the occasional UK-based holiday. I do as little local driving as possible. For the last couple of years I have found the Fiesta less comfortable for longer journeys with pain up my right leg after about an hour of driving. I’ll also admit to being tempted by the navigation screens and climate control that a newer car promised, but then berated myself for shallowness, wanton extravagance etc. Also, various minor things had stopped working – most recently, the passenger door had stopped being willing to open from the outside. Nothing insurmountable, but small things can build up.
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| Looking a bit solitary in the car park at the Wolverton Park flats in 2019 |
Because I like to have some parameters, and I’d been impressed with the Fiesta’s reliability, I decided to go for another Fiesta. I’ve since discovered from Bufton's that Fiestas from the end years of production – Ford ceased production of the Fiesta in 2023 – are a bit like gold dust. To cut a few months’ car search story short, and skipping over several possibilities that didn’t come off, I am now the owner of a 2023 Ford Fiesta Trend. The new car is a delicious tomato red. It isn’t one of the turbo engines – actually, at only 1084 cc, its engine is smaller than my 2007 Fiesta, at 1242. Which I suppose isn’t ideal, but other things seemed right about it. Certainly driving it back on the motorway, I wouldn’t say its acceleration felt turbo-charged but I think it will be adequate for my purposes. It's a more comfortable and smoother ride than my old Fiesta - something I could tell as soon as I drove it out onto the road from Bufton's yard, even without Dad commenting darkly that the suspension was better on this one.
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| Parked near the
Premier Inn MK Theatre District, where I often stay. Just back from being
cleaned at Roni’s Peartree Bridge. |
Mervyn Bufton had agreed that they would take back the 2011 Fiesta and give me something in part-exchange. I was not expecting very much, given that it had done heavy mileage and had some cosmetic damage, and was fine with the £500 I got for it. I was a bit more downcast when, having tried to assure Mervyn that it would be a good car for someone as a local runabout, he said “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it, to be honest” and said that apparently all the youngsters have high expectations, which I assume means more gadgetry than the old car has. Bloody hell. I drove off with visions of it being fed into a giant compactor as soon as my back was turned.
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| Parked under a tree in the OU’s East car
park, July this year |
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| Having a bath at the Hill's Meadow car wash last week |
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| Ready to return to Buftons. Its last journey? |
I'll finish with its successful MOT in July this year. Relatively few advisories really. Rust schmust.
