Favourite Cars

Of the sixteen cars Mrs MW and I have owned between us over the last sixty years or so we each have a favourite. For Mrs MW it is the big Volvo 240SE estate which we bought when we were first going up from Essex to Scotland on a regular basis, visits which culminated in our making the decision to move to Kilchoan and find a business to run there.

We had bought it when we were looking for a vehicle which would make rather less arduous the long journey between Essex and our regular holiday destination of Ardnamurchan, which took some thirteen hours. We hadn't planned to buy an automatic but we were so impressed with this vehicle that we took the plunge - and have since been amazed that so few cars on British roads are automatics.

Mrs MW liked it because, for all its size and weight, it was such a beautifully safe yet easy car to drive. Further, when we had the shop it was used for shop purposes, so Mrs MW would drive it round the peninsula delivering goods to people who couldn't get in to the shop, and to Inverness and Oban to cash-and-carries.

The car had a huge carrying capacity. For example, we could get two 47kg Calor Gas cylinders in to it as I, as the local Calor dealer, had to deliver Calor all over Western Ardnamurchan.

My favourite car was the Freelander we bought when we sold the shop. It was a diesel automatic and a joy to drive both on Ardnamurchan roads, which were often challenging; off-road when, for example....

,,,,the Coastguard vehicle got stuck; and over long distances such as the trips we made to visit friends and family in England.

We bought the Freelander new and sold it very sadly some years later because it suffered from the Land Rover malaise of rusting, particularly in the salty air of Kilchoan.