Back when I was a lad, you could get out on the road on a motorbike at least 3 months before you could get out and about independently in a car. Three months is forever when you are young, so it was always going to be a motorbike first!
How about riding then?
The XL250 Honda had a hard life with me. It taught me all about the joys of an internal combustion engine. Such things as four strokes requiring oil in the sump! You learn these lessons at night, on a freeway, when you are laying on the tank doing 115 kph (as fast as the bike went), and the back wheel stops turning! Interestingly, the lights also went out (no battery on that bike), and I was skidding about in the dark! Thankfully I found the clutch and rolled to the side of the road. After it cooled down, it actually started again, and I drove the rest of the way home very slowly. (With chunks of piston rings rattling around in the gearbox!)
As the 250 struggled to propel me at any speed particularly into a headwind, it had to be replaced by a bigger bike, didn't it? Next was a 400/4 Honda. Time to go for a road bike and get 6 gears too! To make sure it went fast, I got the red one!
Maybe a car would be safer?
Had a couple of close calls with people doing things like u-turns in front of me, so finally thought it was time to come in from the weather! Traded the bike in on an Alfa Romeo Guilia. I thought I was doing reasonably well looking after this, but I still managed to cease the engine (so one of my mate's fathers told me).
After I got the Alfa back on the road with a "new" engine from the wreckers, I traded it in on a Laverda 1000 motor bike. I loved that bike!
It is extremely interesting how much attention a motorbike can get. I was pulled over a number of times so the police could just check out what sort of bike I was riding!
Unless you part company whilst on the road.
Sadly, we made a mess of each other when a kid pulled out of a stop sign in front of me. The bike became scrap metal, and after a short stint of playing superman, I splattered into the road.
When I could finally get mobile again, a mate sold me a 1963 Ford XL sedan with a two speed automatic transmission! I could drag anything off from the lights until it changed gears at 15 mph, then everything overtook me again!
Maybe time for something with a bit of fuel economy?
I started doing a few kilometres with work, so traded it in on a smaller car. The colour of the lemon Galant should have been a hint! There were a few problems with that little beasty! Made worse by the crumpled boot when a HG Holden crashed into the rear of it and didn't even get a scratch on it's own paintwork!
A Mitsubishi GH Sigma station wagon came next. Partly motivated by the St. Bernard that we now had. It was the early days of metallic paint jobs, and the coppery/brown looked quite good when it was clean and new. (That's it behind the white Pajero below).
My second new car
Then came the first model Mitsubishi Pajero. What a great little car that was for its day! I towed 2 ton tractors from one side of Melbourne to the other (Macedon to Mornington) and all sorts of things with it. It was quite easy to see how these cars won the Paris-Dakar rallies for so many years.
Even though it had air conditioning JUST fitted, and brand new tyres, my wife at the time wasn't happy that I had a new car (the Pajero) whilst she had to drive around in our old one! I wasn't happy, but I couldn't get her to be happy any other way, so the GH station wagon got traded in on a blue GJ GXR Sedan. (Keep in mind that we still had a St. Bernard dog!)
Downtrade time to a Colt 45 and older Sigma
Then the money ran out (must have been from feeding the St. Bernard?!), and there was still no job, so both of these last two got traded down on a green GE Sigma wagon and white Mitsubishi Colt 45. The Colt was a good and zippy little number, but the GE was a sad and tired car from our first experience with it.
Time for an XD Falcon?
I bought into a company (in order to secure employment I thought) and I needed a bigger car for work, so I traded the GE Sigma in on an XD Falcon Wagon. Again another lemon in colour and experience! Had so many problems that it put me off Fords for life! (Although I do look at the F250 7.4 litre diesels and imagine I could tolerate that! Mightn't be able to find anywhere to park it, but I certainly would enjoy driving it!!!)
The XD Ford was quickly traded in for an Alfa Romeo Guilietta which was a zippy little sedan. It had most of the modern stuff, but was disappointing in how much rust it had so quickly!
Let's try a V8 VH Commodore
I tried to make do with the Colt for the work I was doing, but finally traded that in on VH Commodore sedan, and my first v8. Wow! I was hooked! It did a number of long trips around Victoria and a couple of trips to and from Brisbane to Melbourne, and on 3 occasions pulling a heavy trailer. Apart from running out of petrol and getting a cracked head (but continuing to run), I couldn't fault it.
The Alfa got written off by the boyfriend of my now ex-wife. The car was all in my name, and as it was with a friend to be sold, it was also uninsured! I told my sorry plight to the finance company and gave them the wreck. I continued to pay the payments on the car as before, but now there was no car!
The VH went back to the finance company as I couldn't afford it any more. Keep in mind that if you ever hand back an item that is on Hire Purchase, the finance company does not care that you were trying to do the right thing - you still end up with a big black mark against your name. The finance company consider it a repossession, mark your account as "defaulting" and they auction off the car with no reserve price, and you still owe them the difference between what it sold for and what you still owed them. I made the right arrangements and paid them the rest of their money. I find it bizarre that they marked my records with the finance being a write off.
Back to public transport for the third time in my life!
A mate decided to help me get some finance as he needed me to have a car so he could get a lift to work with me. I got a HX Premier sedan (which happened to have a 4.2 litre V8!)
The Premier was a reasonable and simple car, and I might have still had it now, except my partner back then didn't like it. She decided she'd help me get into a new car, so I ended up behind the wheel of the base model of the Corolla hatches. An SE. They came in white, white or white, and had no radio (to keep the price down I guess). The Corolla went well and was totally reliable until my partner decided to take it off me again when we split up.
Beep Beep - Barina
My next partner had a Holden Barina which we shared. It was another little white car that was reasonably zippy and reliable.
When we had a conversation about Mitsubishi Pajeros, we ended up down at the local car yard, and signed up for one that night. We then shared the Pajero until we decided to trade it in on a house!
Of all the cars I have driven prior to a BMW X5, it is still right up there as one of the most pleasurable to drive.
In order to get to and from the house that we now lived in, we bought a new base model Corolla again!
Mini Clubman
As the Corolla was doing a heck of a lot of kilometres, I got myself a Mini Clubman and did it up. Mechanically it was fine, if not a bit scary to drive in the wet! It went from no brakes for about 10 metres to fully locked and sliding when they dried out in a rush. Apart from that the heater was permanently off, so I used to freeze on cold days.
Beep Beep once again
Eventually the Mini went in and became a new blue automatic Barina. Now I was warm on cold days, and able to brake effectively, however it was like driving a slug after the very quick mini!
VT Commodore wagon
Along came a promotion and the Corolla was able to be turned into a company car - VT Commodore Wagon. As I had the option, I selected the 5 litre V8 in a slightly up-market Berlina model!
From this Commodore onwards I've had my cars converted to a left foot accelerator (by Frank's Engineering), and it seems the pedal on the left can get mistaken for a clutch pedal by other drivers! I had this car in getting it washed at a local hand car wash place and they'd dealt with the pedal being on the wrong side for over a year. One particular day, one of the younger assistants jumped in the move it forward. He checked everything out, started the engine, put it into "D", took the hand brake off, and floored it!!!!! All I could do was watch as he rocketed out the back of the wash bay and down an alleyway. So far no noise but the squealing of the tyres. Then came a sickening crunching sound! After it had taken out the back corner of a shed and a Ford laser, it finally stopped when it ran into the back corner of a Holden Statesman Caprice. The young Indian lad "driving" it had turned white and still had his hands clenched onto the steering wheel! For the record - the airbags did NOT go off.
The Barina also got upgraded to another VT Commodore. This one a silver sedan. The sedan had the standard 3.5 litre 6 cylinder engine. Interestingly, it was just as quick off the mark as the 5 litre V8, but also miserly on fuel by comparison! The down side was the engine sounded very harsh when revved up.
The wagon got to replacement age, and became a VX Commodore sedan. (That's it pulling the caravan in the background picture). I went a little overboard on the extras this time - I got the leather, sunroof, satellite navigation, a towbar, 5.7 litre V8, umm, I think that's about all! Oh, and it was the top of the range - a Calais.
When we got the caravan, I had Holden upgrade the tow kit from the standard 1200kg to the maximum 2100kg. It also had an electric brake controller (for the caravan brakes) and a solenoid controlled "hot wire" included to feed the battery and fridge in the van.
The VT Commodore sedan also got to replacement age, and it became a Holden Vectra 2.6 CD Hatch. Shona was very happy choofing around in this for the 15 months we had it.
When doing the sums on how cost effective it was to lease the Vectra through work versus owning a smaller car, we came up with the conclusion that a 3 door Echo was all we really needed, and it would save us money!
Thankfully the Vectra held it's value really well, and we were able to sell it to a car yard for the same money that it cost to get out of the lease early.
The present!
I've been looking at the BMW X5 for at least the last two years.... I guess I'm a bit of a car nut as I like driving and going places, and the BMW X5 would be so good to be doing that in! They've now brought out a diesel version of it! And because it is BMW, they've succeeded in making it a sporty diesel! We recently applied for finance for one and BMW came back and said "That's fine!" (Must have been due to all that money we'd been able to save by having the Echo!)
So to get the best possible price for the Calais (as a trade-in, not as a private sale), I took it to get new tyres put on it. That was April Fool's Day. Just after midday the mechanic rang me to say "Mike, I've got some bad news!" As it was a company car, I thought he was going to tell me that the tyres had been knocked back by the fleet people. Instead he told me that he'd just driven the car into the wall! I double checked what the time was as you aren't supposed to do April Fool's jokes after midday. It was 12:30. I asked where the car was "right now". He calmly said "In the wall"! So, there you have it - at some point in a car's life, if the "go" pedal is on the wrong side, someone will get caught out and try to use it like a clutch! (BTW - Again a chap with a good tan went white and again the airbags did not fire).
Meantime, the particular options we would like on an X5 happened to be on one that was loaded on a ship already. We paid a deposit, they allocated it to us, and we sat back and waited whilst the Calais got repaired and the ship with the X5 on it got closer to Australia. The ship finally docked. The Customs people finally released the X5. Holden finally found a spare part (in Cairns!) that was stopping the front bumper from being refitted to the Calais. The 2700kg towbar got fitted to the X5. The Calais got traded in. (Due to the bad press the 5.7 litre engines had been getting, the value of the car shrank by 9% over the 5 weeks it took to repair!)
Then the big day came! Shona and I drove up to Doncaster BMW in the Echo to take delivery of the new X5. I signed a million bits of paper in triplicate (at least!) and got to sit in the car. After they finished telling us all about it, I got back into the Echo and Shona followed me in the X5 to Frank's Engineering to get a left foot accelerator pedal fitted. I couldn't drive it until it was converted. All the test drives I'd had were on the passenger seat! I was so hanging out to drive it!
Thankfully, the conversion was finished on the Saturday so we took it for a short drive to Grand Ridge Road! Seven hours later we pulled back into the driveway. Shona asked me, "Well?" I was Beemering from ear-to-ear!
The next Saturday we went for another short drive. This time to Lorne on the Great Ocean Road. We came back via the inland route and tried some of the "dry weather only" roads that lead off into the national park areas. I can report that an X5 diesel is a very capable all roads vehicle! I couldn't fault it with anything I tried. Again, seven hours later we pulled back into the driveway.
Although the car is actually manufactured in the USA, it is to the original German design and specification. The trailer electrical plug is therefore a 13 pin job! To get around this, BMW Australia have a 13 to 7 jumper cable. On investigating what the 13 pins are actually wired to do, I think I'd sooner have them perform those functions than to be blanked off like 6 of them have been.
The 
As the 250 struggled to propel me at any speed particularly into a headwind, it had to be replaced by a bigger bike, didn't it? Next was a 
Had a couple of close calls with people doing things like u-turns in front of me, so finally thought it was time to come in from the weather! Traded the bike in on an 
After I got the Alfa back on the road with a "new" engine from the wreckers, I traded it in on a 
Unless you part company whilst on the road.
When I could finally get mobile again, a mate sold me a 
I started doing a few kilometres with work, so traded it in on a smaller car. The colour of the lemon 
Then came the first model Mitsubishi Pajero. What a great little car that was for its day! I towed 2 ton tractors from one side of Melbourne to the other (Macedon to Mornington) and all sorts of things with it. It was quite easy to see how these cars won the Paris-Dakar rallies for so many years.
As the Corolla was doing a heck of a lot of kilometres, I got myself a 
The VT Commodore sedan also got to replacement age, and it became a Holden Vectra 2.6 CD Hatch. Shona was very happy choofing around in this for the 15 months we had it.
When doing the sums on how cost effective it was to lease the Vectra through work versus owning a smaller car, we came up with the conclusion that a 3 door Echo was all we really needed, and it would save us money!
I've been looking at the 
