Yep, that’s my top consumer tip for the day. If you’re into mountain biking and you’re in the market for a new car, buy the worst one you can find. Why? Because bikes ruin cars.Anyone who knows anything about bikes and the havoc they’ll cause has ever even thought about designing a car. I’ve been driving for six years and had two ‘good’ cars and two awful ones. Without a doubt the best ones for lugging a bike around have been the rubbish ones.
I learnt to drive in a Peugeot 205 1.1GL with a manual choke and only four gears. Just to make it even more appealing the body panels on the front of the car were a different shade of red to those at the back. But it was my first car and I loved it.
Well, at first I loved it, but then my friends started getting cars as well, and they all managed to get better cars than me so I ended up being the butt of most their jokes. But the jokes on them when you don’t care about the car you’re driving. After all, if you’re ever driving in convoy, why should you stop just because they have?
And the whole not caring attitude is what makes crap cars perfect for bikers. The 205 did it’s service and lasted just under a year and a half before it gave up and was scrapped. Actually thinking about it, I was a bit sad when it got towed away. It may have been an awful car, but it was my awful car.
Anyway, the money I’d managed to save by owning an economic meant I had some put to the side and was able to buy my dream car.; a 306 1.9tds with gti6 alloys. Fast car, nice wheels, useless at getting a bike from A to B. I absolutely loved that car; right up to the point the cam belt snapped on the fast lane of the M6 to Stoke.
Loving the car was what made it so bad for biking. At first I went down the bike carrier route to get everywhere with, and you can see why. No muddy bike on the boot? Sounds ideal? Almost, but the straps rub away on the boot paintwork and the weight of a bike rack and downhill bike pushes the bumper off the chassis.
I was in my final year of university when my beloved 306 tried to kill me. Getting through uni without a car wouldn’t have been a problem, but I’d agreed to do a week’s worth of ‘work experience’ at a local paper when the term ended so was in desperate need of a car to get me there and back everyday.
I had about a hundred pounds to my name at the time, and thankfully my Dad offered to loan me the money for a new car, that he would also pick out.
What followed was probably one of the most depressing weeks of my life. I broke up with my at the time girlfriend, saw my 306 get taken away for scrap, threw up in a Tesco’s car park in front of my dad and worst of all was greeted by a 1996 red Ford Fiesta 1.2 Classic upon my arrival home.
To try and force some sort of bond with it I named her Ruby, thinking maybe if I personalised her she would grow on me and I’d learn to like her. It didn’t work like that. For the first month that I owned Ruby every time I drove her I cried with despair.
Everything about her annoyed me. I could and probably did make a list of everything that annoyed me about it. The ‘classic’ badge stuck on the boot just added insult to injury. This wasn’t a classic car, not by a long shot. Ford just had a delivery of sh*t Fiesta’s they couldn’t budge before they bought out the new version so they stuck a ‘classic’ badge on the back and sent them out to showrooms across the country.
In the short time I had the full Fiesta experience, the boot lock broke with £££ worth of bikes in the back, two wheels buckled, my mate threw up down the side of it and the exhaust fell off.
But being so rubbish at being a car, made Ruby so good at being a bike carrier. My friends were too embarrassed to be seen in it, or even let me park it outside their houses, so I never had to worry about giving people lifts. Not having to cart people around meant I could tear out the bike seats and left me with more space for bikes.
As I didn’t care about it, I didn’t care about the state of the bikes and kit when I chucked it all in the back. It was perfect, even if I could only drive everywhere at 55mph. And that was pushing it.
I knew the Fiesta wasn’t going to last forever and I didn’t exactly have high hopes for it as the MOT loomed. I pretty much knew it was going to fail, but I had no idea it would fail so spectacularly; it was almost as if it didn’t try.
The mechanic at the garage felt too bad about breaking the news to me, so waited for me to phone him before he let me know the damage. It turned out he’d given up on the test after writing a page worth of notes with the words ‘engine rebuild’ scribbled at the bottom. Needless to say Ruby’s days were numbered. Still, I got £70 for scrapping her. Truth be told that’s the only money my dad ever saw for it. Sorry dad.
So, it was time to look for another car and I decided to give Ford another chance to shine and found myself a nice Focus. Amazing car; rubbish courier. Within days of owning it and after one trip out with a bike I’d managed to ruin it.
Pedal scratches on the bumper, chips on the door panels and mud everywhere. A few months down the line and thing’s aren’t getting any better. Slowly but surely bikes are destroying the best car I’ve owned. It’s got to the point that I’ve found myself reminiscing about the Fiesta, in all it’s terrible glory.
There’s no two ways about it, my next car is going to have to cost about 50p, be falling apart and come from the dodgiest dealer around. Or be a van. Actually you know what, a van would probably be much better. Forget everything you’ve just read and do what I’m about to do and start saving for a van.
