Silly story, with regard to picking up new cars. I was reminded of this when I was thinking I might have to go to England to pick up a car.
When I ordered my Peugeot 306 GTi-6 I was given a build time of about 3 months, but only 3 or 4 weeks later the dealer phoned to say it was ready, pick it up Friday. (It came with the CD autochanger in the boot, which I hadn’t ordered, so I imagine they just found they had a ready-built car close enough to my specs to do it.) I had booked to spend that weekend at an SF con in Leicester, and was driving up on the Friday evening. I said, fine, I’ll pick it up after work then drive straight to Leicester.
My then business partner (Vauxhall Omega) told me I was mad to drive off in a brand new car like that. What can go wrong, I said blithely. He then launched into a story about how he’d once picked up a new car, only to find very soon afterwards that it was impossible to get it to reverse. I just laughed it off.
I showed up at the dealer Friday evening, and they had the car parked prominently in the front window of the showroom. It took a bit of manoeuvring to get it out, and I also remember a 5-point turn in the car park. The salesman then took me on a fifteen-minute familiarisation trip round the Sussex lanes. When I dropped him back at the dealership, there was another 5-point turn. (Did I mention this car has a turning circle about the diameter of the moons of Jupiter?) No problems at all.
I drove to Leicester and found the hotel. As I was turning into the car park I made a scary discovery. It was impossible to engage reverse gear! I managed to drive nose-first into a free parking space and park only slightly squinty. I’m afraid I then took myself off into the hotel and forgot all about it until I was ready to leave, two days later. (Well, I think I had an inkling what was wrong, and that I could probably fix it.)
The problem was the cuff on the gear stick that you have to pull up to engage reverse. It was loose, and not pulling on anything. Well, I used to drive a motorbike and I know how these cables work. I could tell by the feel of it that a cable had slipped out of place, so I worked the leather gaiter down until I could get hold of the cable, and managed to hook it back into place and pulling on the proper lever. That got me into reverse, out of the car park and back on the main road heading home.
It kept happening however, and I went back to the dealer with it. They had the car in for a day to fix it, and to their credit it has never come loose again. Well, what were the odds of my partner telling me that tale about his new car that wouldn’t go backwards (apparently that was some strange problem with the actual gearbox), then my new car promptly shows up and – won’t go backwards?
The salesman collected the car from my office for that repair, and when he delivered it back, he was visibly white and shaking. He said, that ABS system works really well, doesn’t it? I said pointedly that I had Absolutely No Idea, as I hadn’t needed to try it. Apparently the village where I worked was on one of the dealer’s regular test-drive routes, but he hadn’t been round it for some months. In that time, the council had installed some pretty stupid “traffic calming†measures, which included a new traffic island right in the middle of the road just after a corner. The salesman must have been having a bit of fun in my brand new GTi, and come tearing round that corner to find himself almost on top of the traffic island.
If he had pranged my one-week-old pride and joy, I swear I would have murdered him on the spot.
Rolfe.
