Do you remember the days, say just before Christmas '87, when Rover P4's were going for well under £500?. With Old Smokey vanishing in a puff of namesake, I bought my father's.

A "new" second hand engine had been placed in it in North Wales; I live in Leighton Buzzard. As dad was working in Holland at the time, long suffering mum had to drive me up the A5 to collect it, in a 250 Merc; interesting those Coupé contrast articles. On the way back we found a few little things wrong - no headlights for example. Having cleaned some joints, well done mum, we got headlights but not main beam. As most of the A5 is dark (at night), this called for a careful follow-my-leader that failed at one point. Negotiating a round-a-bout (60mph yelling Ho! Ho! Ho!) we flew off at different points. There followed one of those panicky decisions (will she come back for me or will she wait? - so will I wait here or try to find my way back?) made all the more difficult because I was stuck on a dual carriageway.... We found each other. Other problems included the choke light which still lights up when the choke is out, no matter what the temperature. All sorts of electrics were out. One tapper-wotsit had been cross threaded. There was something very strange about the gearbox that made changing difficult.

Then began a lot of heavy work for what became The Beast. I took a year off between school & university, 1987-8, to work for my fathers small computing company (anybody want any medical software or computer consultancy? plug plug!). It was a sales-and-support car for myself, which drew a few comments from the customers, and it covered well over 15,000 miles. And those miles were either high-speed motorwaying, as these young teenage kids do (like, foot down, like, hey man, watch that needle fly, man!), or heavy London driving. The first I found very comfortable, despite the noise, and the second I thoroughly enjoyed. As I didn't have to go in every day, I usually avoided the rush hours, and I often had different routes, there was plenty of variety. About the only thing I have against it was the heavy steering which can make parking difficult and tiring. But throwing one and a half tonnes of good looking style around a six lane traffc system, arguing for space with Rolls-Royces and big american cars - no contest!

The car was present when I first met some real people from Roversportsreg Land (hey! they really exist!). Dressed in peculiar clothing, four of us terrorised sundry Surrey peoples on a mad chase for an ex-bird, restrained only by a reluctant exhaust pipe that kept leaping off in an attempt to get away. This was a recurrent problem (escaping exhaust pipes that is, not Polly Handicaps which are great). The operation by this stage had become quite smooth; first comes the occasional clonk on bumpy roads indicating the last bracket has come undone. Pull over. Put the car kettle on. Open boot. Extract toolbox and oilcan. Place oilcan under exhaust to hold it up. Undo bracket. Politely refuse kind offer of help from passing Rover. Replace thong between bracket and pipe. Politely refuse kind offer of help from passing Rover. Quickly grow extra arm to hold thong and bracket and do up nut at same time. Drink coffee. Tighten everything. Politely refuse kind offer of help from passing Rover. Remove can. Put everything back in boot. Look for cloth to clean hands; smear over grass then get steering wheel all yucky. For diagram see photo -that's me demonstrating how to do it with your eyes closed... Actually the camera caught me at a funny angle.

I bought another old P4 (guest star - "HOO"!) for spares from a garage. An MOT certificate from 13 years ago, when compared with the mileometer, gave a staggering 30 mile difference! The engine was allegedly "as sweet as a nut" despite having no radiator, according to the seller who had run it briefly. On getting it home we decided the nut must have been a little rusty. It joined the ranks of "spare" cars up the back, donating bits now and then - especially the aluminium doors and bonnet, which I put on The Beast to lighten it and lengthen its lifetime.

So if you've seen a Rover 110, with mismatching grey doors and blue/grey two tone wings, flying down the motorway on the outside lane, leaving all those puny GTi's, etc in a cloud of oily smoke, 'twas I...