Car Clubs ..

[Bibbs]

Many thousands of years ago, I was a member of the Ford Cortina 1600E Owners Club (South Yorkshire branch). We’d meet once a month, in a car park, and would mooch about in the rain looking at one another’s cars. Looking back on the experience, I really can’t see why this should have had any appeal at all. I mean, yes, my car had a picture of Debbie Harry in the centre of the steering wheel, but other than that it was pretty much the same as everyone else’s car.

Perhaps we thought that because we all had the same type of car we had a common bond, a platform on which lasting friendships could be built. But they were all miners. And when they lost their jobs a few years later they had to burn their cars to stay warm. So the bond was gone.

*

Today I loathe, with a furious passion, all car clubs. The notion that you’re going to get on with someone because he also has a Mini is preposterous. Clubs are for people who can’t get friends in the conventional way. They’re for bores and murderers.

The Ferrari Owners’ Club is particularly depressing because they all have carpet warehouses in Dewsbury and creaking £10,000 rust buckets from the Seventies and Eighties.

Most turn up at events in Ferrari hats, Ferrari shirts, Ferrari racing booties and Ferrari aftershave and you can’t help thinking: “For heaven’s sake, man. You’ve spent more on your apparel then you have on your damn Mondial.” Remember Virginia Water meet recently!!

Anyone with the wherewithal to buy a proper, important Ferrari from the past 60 years is going to have better things to do with his time than drive to some windswept motor racing circuit no one has ever heard of and spend the day watching a bunch of Dewsburyites going off the road backwards in their botched and bodged 308s.

Mind you, I’d rather swap saliva with someone from the Ferrari Owners’ Club than go within 50,000 miles of someone who turns up to Aston Martin events. Because there are no cheap Astons in the classifieds — well, none that will actually get you to an owners’ club meeting, or even to the end of your road — the members are a lot more well-to-do than their oppos with Ferraris. There are few regional accents, and lots of green ink.

The BMW Drivers’ Club ... was an opportunity for them to turn up and show off their new short-sleeved shirts. I went once and it looked like a meeting of the Jim Rosenthal Appreciation Society

All of them are stuck in the 1950s when for a few glorious years Aston Martin did manage to win a couple of not-very-important racing events. And all of them, you know, were attracted to the brand not because Aston made the best cars — it really, really didn’t. But because they were made by British people and not “darkies”.

The worst thing about an Aston Martin Owners Club member, however, is not his politics, or his still burning flame of hatred for Harold Wilson. It isn’t even his shoes, or his trousers. No. It’s the way he refers to all previous Astons by their chassis numbers. And to the people who raced them by their nicknames.

“Do you remember when Pinky and Lofty drove xvr/ii-2? Course that was before !Removed! Wilson.” Sometimes, when they talk to me. I find myself wondering what they’d look like without a spine.

Moving, slowly, towards the point of this morning’s column, I must alight now at the BMW Drivers’ Club, or whatever it’s called, which used to host an annual event at the Nürburgring. This was an opportunity for them to turn up and show off their new short-sleeved shirts. I went once and it looked like a meeting of the Jim Rosenthal Appreciation Society.

Anyway, what they do, once they’ve examined one another’s leisure attire, is drive round the track and then get marked by judges for speed, accuracy and knowledge of the track. I came 197th out of 201.

Naturally, this was the car’s fault. I’d taken one of the very first M3s, the left-hand-drive quasi-racer, which was great if you knew what you were doing, but a twitchy little ***** if you had fists of ham and fingers of butter. If you turned in to a corner with a little too much power, the back would swing wide — this was before traction control — and soon you’d be careering across the grass on your way to what Aston Martin Owners Club people call “ the scene of the accident. Ho-ho”.

Linky

[alanbradley]

I read that at the weekend - genius and so, so true... ;)

A

[Lou-Lou]

Clubs are ..... for bores and murderers

Oh god!! Stay back all of you!

[Boro Sera]

Clubs are ..... for bores and murderers

Oh god!! Stay back all of you!

Don't mind me, I'm not a bore

[Al J]

Me neither.

[Karma Supra]

We are all bores!!!!!!!

Then again Clareson took the ***** out of May for lining up his heater vents so they are straight.......

I do that :!Removed!:

[martin_longbow]

Wow, thats like some rant. I have only one word to describe that dude and it is anal

right I'm off to murder someone cause I have no friends, need to find someone to murder then, oh no

[Karma Supra]

When it comes to cars, I have a lavel of analness that many would find infathomable!!!

[Lou-Lou]

Wow, thats like some rant. I have only one word to describe that dude and it is anal

right I'm off to murder someone cause I have no friends, need to find someone to murder then, oh no

Shhhh... don't give the game away..

Charlie.. I have to say that when I clean the inside of my car (although this has only happened two or three times in the past two years), I sometimes do that..

[seveer unaek]

We are all bores!!!!!!!

Then again Clareson took the ***** out of May for lining up his heater vents so they are straight.......

I do that :!Removed!:

My dad and I do that as well! They're not in a straight line, but they're aimed exactly where I want them and woebetide the beast that moves them!

Clarkson doesn't like washing cars though, so he's clearly a fool!