By Simon Walker…
Having just enjoyed the article about Carolyn’s reunion with her 2CV ‘Jellybean’, (a car I also knew well during my Toronto days when Angela owned it – indeed I got to drive it on a couple of occasions!) I thought I’d share my story of being reunited with my first 2CV since I returned to the UK to live and work in Scotland.
I didn’t particularly intend to buy back my first car – I had always kept an eye out and I knew it was still on the road, but it just happened to appear for sale at a convenient time. Unlike in the US and Canada, in the UK your license plate number normally stays with the car from the time it is sold new, and then through successive owners. This makes it easy to recognize! You can also use the registration code to check online if the car’s annual road license paid and safety inspection (the ‘MOT’) has been carried out. You can even find out the details of the failures or advisory repairs needed! All this was very helpful, and for a long time I’d seen that my old 2CV was always taxed and kept passing its inspection each year, covering only a few miles in between.
Last August I happened to be on Facebook when the algorithm automatically brought up the ad, and I spotted the plate E95 BNE right away. This car, a 1988 2CV Dolly which I’d originally named ‘Bernice’ (derived from the aforementioned license plate) was now called ‘Bonnie’ and had done less than two thousand miles in the thirteen years since I’d sold it due to my relocation to Ontario. There was only one thing to do – I called up the owner for a chat! A very friendly lady called Barbara answered. She lives on the Norfolk coast and, with some reluctance, she felt it was the right time to sell. Barbara was delighted when I let slip that it had been my first car, although there had been at least two other owners in between. My journey from Perthshire Scotland was very long, but, undeterred, I traveled down by train, paid Barbara the asking price and set off home in ‘Bernice’, now called ‘Bonnie’.
The car had been preserved extremely well, and I was immediately thrilled by how well it still drove. So after waving goodbye to Barbara, I had a gorgeous roof-back journey through rural Norfolk before picking up the A1 motorway at Newark. That’s where things went a bit wrong… a spark plug, which had accidentally been cross-threaded, shot out of the engine while I was overtaking a truck at 70mph! I had to pull over, and reinsert it. Frustratingly, even with the correct tool I couldn’t prevent the same thing from happening again, and I had to limp into a village on one cylinder and phone for recovery. Luckily, there was a good old English pub, and the local characters kept me entertained long into the evening while I waited… and waited… I do miss my CAA membership!
So why was I keen to buy back my old 2CV? Some would think I was a bit crazy, since I’d owned a very tidy green 2CV Bamboo for the previous 3 years, and a really nice, original blue-lagune Special in my Canada years. In total contrast, Bonnie is a ‘well-traveled’ car with 120,000 miles on the clock. She is slightly rough around the edges, not one part of the car is pristine, though a reasonably competent paint job from years ago has kept her looking fairly presentable. The main justification was that I knew exactly what I was buying. They always say – ‘better the devil you know’, and even after 20 years of 2CV ownership it’s really hard to thoroughly appraise a car you don’t know when you go to view it. For example, Bonnie has a very sturdy aftermarket SLC brand chassis, whereas my green Bamboo had an inferior aftermarket chassis. Learning to spot the difference is very beneficial – the handling is greatly affected by the strength of the chassis. In addition to that, I’d had new galvanized floors, sills and a front bulkhead welded in back in 2007/8. The work was carried out very well and the lower bodyshell is still totally corrosion-free and likely to last well. Expert servicing had been carried out back when I’d owned the car, and luckily it had been well looked after in the meantime, with a small stack of bills for annual servicing and a few minor repairs. Since getting ‘Bonnie’ back, I’ve treated her to some new bumpers, a new exhaust, wheel rims and Michelin tires, but very little else has been necessary.
My long-time friend and mechanic Russell who carried out the lower body shell restoration all those years ago was thrilled when I contacted him and showed him the car again. We planned a road trip together to the far north of Scotland this April. His 13-year-old son Rufus wanted to come too, so there were three of us, Norma my dachshund, two tents and all our other gear squeezed in! The weather was unseasonably warm and the sky was blue, it could not have been more perfect.
We were able to meet up with some other 2CV owners, from Highland 2CV, an affiliate group of 2CVGB.
We met them at Kyle of Lochalsh and then we took part in a club drive ascending the Applecross pass.
After breaking off on our own, we visited Ullapool, and then we wild camped before driving on to Durness and Tongue on the far north coast. It’s absolutely magical up there – I highly recommend it!
The only problem I had on the trip was a suicidal pheasant which smashed my grill and put a nasty dent in the bonnet. Shame! However, it proves another reason why owning a less-than-pristine 2CV makes great sense – the replacement grill cost me £30, and the remainder of repair was done with a bit of brute force! It looks good enough….
This year’s travel in my plum and custard 2CV is just one of many stories I could tell you about this car. It saw me through my student days, and in my previous ten-year ownership I drove her to the south of France, navigated through snowstorms, and she even survived being stolen. Above all, she continuously gave me pleasure, while fueling my obsessive tendencies and bewildering my friends. I’m looking forward to many more chapters to the story, now I’m reunited with my faithful companion!
