“Emma and I would like to thank the club”

“Emma and I would like to thank the club”
Membership Secretary, Cam, has been talking to one of our
members about being a minority in the world of classic cars.
Well, the main question for me to start o with is; why
classic cars?
“Cam, I just I have to be honest with you, I like cars, and it doesn’t
actually matter what sort of car it is, it’s loved by the person that
owns it. I even like modi ed cars. I like looking at modern cars
as well that youngsters have modi ed. It’s just a general love of
vehicles that started when I was a child.”
So how did your love of everything on wheels start?
“When I was very little, my father used to deliver vehicles, mainly
Land Rovers. We lived in the Midlands, and he used to pick up
Land Rovers, and he used to bring them home, and then he
would deliver them all over the country. So, of course, he’d bring
them onto the driveway, and I’d climb in and press all the pedals
and the buttons and pretend to drive the cars. And I remember
the smell, because they always had that lovely new smell about
them. So I think it started then, and as I got a little bit older and
my father, who was quite portly, it was me that he used to send
underneath with a baked bean can and a half a meter of wire to
wrap around the exhaust pipe because it was blowing. So I was
always the one that had my head inside the bonnet, always the
one that was doing the chores around the car if you like. He used
to sort of became the white coat, and I was the brown coat. So
I’ve loved cars since the late nineteen sixties, I should think.”
Picture: Emma and Sarah
very nicely now, and she’ll do until we think of something else.
But we are always looking for something else, so I don’t know
how long we’ll keep her.”
Which one of your cars would you say is your favourite?
How does that then bring you to your current eet of cars then?
“There’s two of us and we have three cars. We’d like many more,
but you have to be sensible. I think I’ve worked my way through
an array of vehicles. My very rst car was an Austin Cambridge.
I then went on and had a Ford Capri, an orange one with a vinyl
roof. I’ve had a Renault Five with the gear stick coming out of
the dashboard…that was quite a lot of fun. I’ve had Fiat 500s. I
had a VW Beetle for a while, when I was younger or just going
from one car to another. I’ve had some dreadful cars like a Talbot
Horizon, Vauxhall Cavalier, loads of [di erent] cars. I worked my
way through everything, really.”
What car do you regret selling most?
“Well, in 2004, I bought myself a brand new Audi TT, I loved
that car and I rather stupidly, some would say, part exchanged
it for a Quattro version, and then came to service it and found
it was terribly expensive to run. So that had to go. And that’s
why last year, we bought the Audi TT, but a Cabriolet because
Emma (Sarah’s wife) wanted something with a soft top. I’d
had soft tops before – an MX-5, a Z3 and an MGF – but I hadn’t
owned a TT Cabriolet.. So I’ve had so many cars, but I haven’t
had a TT Cabriolet.
We’re slowly working round her because she needed quite a lot
of attention to the bodywork, the wheels and so on. She runs
“The Mazda MX-5. Because they absolutely glue [themselves]
to the road like a roller skate. They’re so much fun. They’re
light, when you sit in an MX-5, you and the car are one. Well, I
am anyway. I’m quite a petite person. But when I sit in an MX-5,
it’s not [as if] you and the car are separate. You and the car are
as one, they are incredible, they’re so much fun. But nding an
older one that isn’t completely rusted [is di cult], because a lot
of them really struggle with rust underneath.”
And so what car’s next, dare I ask?
“We fancy a Mercedes SLK, I think. [Emma, Sarah’s wife, is
nodding]. I have had one of those in the past. Emma hasn’t, but
she drives a Mercedes A-Class now, and she’s a big Mercedes fan.
But I think it’s a little bit like, if you rescue a pet, the pet comes
to you. You don’t go looking for the pet. You know what I mean?
The best pets are the ones that you come across by accident.
I think that’s how it will work with the next vehicle. We might be
out [at] a show when somebody might have one for sale. We
might hear of somebody who knows somebody.”