Dear Prospective Car Buyer, I can’t honestly say that the 11-year-old Skoda Fabia in which you have taken an interest has had only one careful owner. It has had four not particularly careful owners. As my wife, Lisa, said when we were driving it back from the showroom where we’d made a down payment on its successor (one of the more modest Audis), “It’s been a really good family car.”
I was unexpectedly moved, and as I parked the Skoda in our driveway for what would surely be one of the last times, I let my hand linger over the steering wheel.
If the car had been a person, I’d have said thanks just then: thanks for being reliable even if your engine is, as my eldest son (who once did a car maintenance course) likes to say, “a bit ticky”. I would also have said sorry. Sorry for not appreciating your spindly looks – charmingly reminiscent of a Citroën 2CV – until recently. Sorry for those times we were invited to smart parties and I parked you round the corner because you had no hub caps. Sorry, too, for those times when I took you in for a service, confiding to the mechanic, man-to-man, “It’s really my wife’s car,” hoping he’d assume the Skoda was an amusing little runabout garaged next to my own Jag or Land Rover.
It really is my wife’s car, actually, and perhaps you, as the Prospective Buyer (may I call you PB?), would appreciate a more informal history to go with the service log.
One day in 2007, Lisa left the house with a purposeful air. “Where are you off to?” I asked.
“Isleworth,” she replied, enigmatically.
She returned with the car, which received limited acclaim from me and our two sons, as the vehicle it was replacing had also been a Skoda Fabia, and Skoda was not yet completely rehabilitated as a brand. The old Skoda had been dark blue, which was fine for a year, but then we had the front of our house painted and Lisa felt the car clashed, so it had to go.
When we acquired the new one, our sons were starting at secondary school. Now they are both at college, and if the interior has come to look a little lived in, PB, then that is surely right for a family car. It never was impeccable, as I recall. Certainly, we were never inhibited about eating a family dinner in it, preferably one purchased at the McDonald’s on the A505 as we drove to Southwold in Suffolk, where for a while we rented a holiday house.
Those were some of our happiest times and if one of the boys happened to break off from munching in the back seat to say, “Sorry, dropped the ketchup,” it was no big deal. They are just as likely to do that now, aged 19 and 21, as they were at 10 and 12, so I’m afraid there will be no McDonald’s in the Audi, insofar as it will see any service at all as a family car.
Nor will there be trips to the dump (which I find a less pompous term than recycling centre) with a pile of assorted scrap in the rear. Carting rubbish to the dump is the nearest thing I have to a hobby, and my sons have always been willing to assist me because in order to accommodate whatever I was dumping, the back seat of the Skoda had to be folded down, which meant they could sit in the front. When so placed, they would fiddle with the CD player.
They would have fiddled with the satnav, except the car doesn’t have one, but I’ve found this lack to be useful in family bonding. When my close range eyesight began to fail, the boys would be (quite) good about locating streets in the A-Z, and later they would look up directions with (fairly) good grace, using the satnavs on their smartphones.
I admit, PB, that the exterior is not pristine either, but this frees you from any undue pressure to avoid small crashes and one of the scratches was earned honourably, arising as it did from a misplaced faith in human nature. We were on a family outing to the zoo. Lisa was driving. As she parked, she tapped the bumper of a vast, disgusting four-by-four, from which a couple were just descending.
The man didn’t seem to mind the tap, but the woman – entirely black-clad, in emulation of her car – was glaring at Lisa as we walked towards the zoo with the boys in tow. “I think we should go back and move the car,” I said. “That woman’s going to attack it.”
“Nonsense,” said Lisa.
Three hours later, we returned to the Skoda. “It gives me no satisfaction at all to point this out to you,” I said to Lisa, indicating the freshly made six-inch gouge on the bonnet. The four-by-four, of course, had gone. On the way home, Lisa and I conducted our recriminatory conversation about the incident in low tones, thinking the boys would be disturbed to learn there were people such as that woman in the world.
The car has played a starring role in other dramas. There was the time I “lost” it in the backstreets of Lowestoft … But the harder I looked, the more I began to think it had been stolen. I flagged down a policeman in a squad car, and explained. I had the boys with me and they were thrilled when he asked us to get into his car, so we could cruise around looking for ours. After two minutes we spotted it, apparently unharmed, but unlocked.
“I wonder if it was moved by joy-riders?” I suggested to the copper, but then one of the boys made a treacherous intervention: “It’s exactly where you left it. I remember that post box. And as well as forgetting where you parked it, you also forgot to lock it.”
As to the engine, yes, PB, it’s only a 1.2 but, let me assure you, it’s perfectly easy to accrue penalty points for speeding in it. I did this most recently last June, on the A64 approaching York, and I tell the following story safe in the knowledge that my late father – who had the most mordant sense of humour I’ve ever encountered – wouldn’t mind ...
In that month, my dad was dying of cancer in York and I drove up and down the A1 regularly to see him (the Skoda providing sterling service as usual). On 30 June, my stepmother called to say he didn’t have long left, and I’d better come up. Which is why, as I later told the North Yorkshire constabulary, they had clocked me at 90mph. It was a mercy mission, and my father did die that evening, although not until after I’d shaken his hand for one last time. In view of this, I couldn’t help wondering whether I might be absolved from the fine? “We are sorry for your loss,” said the lady on the helpline. “But no.”
Whoever was at fault in that fraught episode, it certainly wasn’t the Skoda, which I suspect is still some way off the end of its own life.
PB, I commend this car to you.
• The Yellow Diamond by Andrew Martin is published by Faber & Faber, £14.99. To order a copy for £11.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only.
