Fiesta Auction

Goodbye to Old Tat…
 
Back in the early days of our relationship, when the safest way to establish what might have been for supper was to loiter outside the kitchen window as it hurtled by en route to the ever burgeoning throng of staunchly constitutioned local fauna (Pavlova for the Pavlovian, as it were), my wife-to-be bought her first car.
 
“Whatever you like” I had suggested from behind the sofa. “…except a Ford Fiesta. Oh, and for God’s sake don’t buy anything red.” She duly reappeared two hours later with a spanking, substantially clocked, previously pranged, bright red Fiesta Popular Plus. An apposite moment at which to abandon all hope of sneaking the ‘obey’ clause into the nuptials.
 
But I was wrong. Despite having been built to the sort of tolerances more usually associated with attempts to hit a cow’s arse with a banjo, including an infuriating centre console -complete with valve radio- which has rattled like Mothercare on a Saturday morning from day one, the Mk 2, D reg’ thudabout has been great.
 
Naturally, it’s now tattier than a galleon in a gale. That red paint has dulled to three excitingly different hues, its been vigorously parked at to the point where there isn’t a clean panel left, rust is inexorably creeping into the equation and there’s so much moss growing on the window cills that I’ve had to install an automatic sprinkler system to keep things spruce. Yet, thriving under a maintenance regime based entirely on neglect by an owner who still believes that a puncture may be successfully repaired by the simple expedient of pumping more air into the tyre, it still starts every time.
 
We would, truth be told, have kept it. It may be worth nothing, but one tank of petrol lasts a year, and it’s a far cheaper retrieve-during-subsequent-teetotal-moment party going option than those gaunt young knights of the monkey-bike who slosh petrol all over your boot and list use of the clutch under ‘options’. However, big brother local authority parking constraints only allow for one car per person, and AA Insurance Services still insist on asking a frankly iniquitous Third party Fire and Theft premium of over £225. Though quite why anyone should wish to steal a burning car is beyond me.
 
First impulse, then, was to unload the Fiesta onto some callow youth with astronomy chart acne and trainers you could row across the Atlantic who, openly weeping with gratitude at such a bargain, would tear up his ‘L’ plates and merrily lurch off straight into the nearest ditch. Fat chance. Endless advertising reaped not one sausage of interest. Clearly, terracotta Fiestas sporting ‘Babies are Bored’ stickers cut no ICE with the current generation of cash flush, mineral water babies.
 
Sadly, the Commission for Integrated Transport’s once thrilling proposal that we might be in line for a £750 Scrappage Allowance for parting with the car appears to have sunk without trace, despite having trialed successfully in Scotland… Come to think of it, that’s hardly surprising: Offer any self-respecting Glaswegian a substantial drink in exchange for a worthless old banger and he’ll promptly quaff 650 quid’s worth at a sitting. Thus imbuing him with the resolve to wager the rest on a horse called Mrs. Daphne Toshiba Music Centre II in the 2.30 at Doncaster, lose the lot and hitch a lift home.
 
At which point the sickening realisation that we might actually have to pay to shed an entirely serviceable car finally dawned.
 
Enquiries to a raft of local scrapyards advertising instant cash transactions proved dispiriting; my responsibility to the few prepared to hurdle the flat “no” barrier, it transpired, being to stump up both car and cash. Moreover, most considered themselves too far away (one a daunting six miles) to make the journey worthwhile. I did eventually reap one kindly offer to take the Fiesta off my hands. If I delivered it. Along with thirty quid.
 
For scrapyards, it seems, are on their uppers. Scrap steel is practically worthless these days. And, with each car carcass worth a scant £18, the only freely available metal of value constitutes a somewhat labour intensive offer; needing to be painstakingly claw hammered off the roof of the local church late one cloudless night.
 
Not that your local scrap dealer will exist at all for very much longer. The problem being compounded wholesale by, of course, a ‘Directive’ from Brussels. Or rather, our government’s response to it…
 
Now, other EU member states take an entirely healthy view of ill-conceived, draconian Brussels legislation (I well remember sitting in a Parisian restaurant shortly after the edict went out that all eating establishments must sport a no smoking area… When a gaggle of Americans appeared asking for a fug-free table, the waiter ushered them politely but firmly to an appropriately logo’ed cupboard under the stairs). But our government, nodding obeisance with all the vigour of a plastic bulldog on the parcel shelf, prefers to jump in feet first at every opportunity.
 
Hot on the heels of the ludicrous ban on refrigerator disposal, then, comes the exciting End -of-Life Vehicle Directive. This sets out, in terrifying detail, exactly how old cars must be disposed of and, more extraordinarily, lays the cost firmly at the feet of the manufacturers. But whilst Brussels intends the Directive to encompass only new cars from April this year, and all cars from 2007, rumours abound -in a situation that is still mammoth woolly- that the government is actually on the cusp of interpreting the Directive to include all cars from this very April.
 
Requirements to provide concrete hard standings and waste fluid storage, as well as strip the glass, plastics, battery, seats and carpet from each £18 carcass will undoubtedly cause the closure of all but the largest, manufacturer subcontracted scrapyards. Yet, whereas concerns over recycling, and oil and petrol seepage into our green and pleasant are laudable enough, such measures seem rife for ‘stable-door’ labelling in the context of the 30 million tonnes of toxin sodden household waste that goes into Britain’s landfill sights each year. Enough, incidentally, to fill Trafalgar Square to the height of Nelson’s Column every day.
 
Moreover there is, it strikes me, a very real danger that one or two manufacturers themselves might not survive this half-witted display of blinkered, band-wagon boarding: Rover may be ticking over very nicely at the moment, but present the company with a rolling bill for the disposal of every specimen of the marque on our roads and I doubt even BMW’s handy, £50 million freebie will stave of ultimate surrender.
 
Sadly, no matter how tempting the prospect of ringing some Ford bigwig at home, at 3.00am, to let him know that the Fiesta is now ready for collection (I had my eye on one Eddie Irvine -brightest star in the firmament that is the back of the Formula 1 grid and the second highest paid Ford employee of all), we cannot wait until April to unload our Popular Plus. So, short of hunting down gourmand extraordinaire Monsieur Mange Tout to enquire after his appetite, I was on the very cusp of succumbing to a surprising best offer of just £12 for Fiesta decommissioning by Wandsworth Council when, right under my nose all these years, I finally noticed Thameside Motor Auctions on Wandsworth bridge.
 
“Oh it’ll definitely go” they told me. “But there’s a minimum commission of £35 for cars that sell for under £350, plus your entry fee and VAT…. You might not make any money at all on it.” Happily, however, if the Fiesta only sold for a fiver, they wouldn’t charge me the difference. So I could do no worse than break even. Bargain.
 
The process itself is something of a doddle: Just turn up at any time on the day of the auction with all the car’s documentation, fill out a form detailing chassis and engine numbers, state of MOT and Road Fund License, establish that the Popular Plus is too old to have a reserve price set against it and that’s it. Mileage details do not enter the equation -the auction house sensibly recognising that this is nothing a three-speed Black and Decker drill cannot render meaningless in minutes. And vehicles sold for under £1200 are yours without warranty. Anything more valuable may be whisked away for an hour, under the beady eye of a compulsory passenger, and the subsequent highlighting of mechanical problems elicits a refund. “No complaints after this time” is the stern caveat.
 
You don’t even have to appear at the auction itself. They’ll simply send you a cheque for what, if anything, is owed you a few days later. Perhaps foolishly, I elected to go and give the poor old thing a send off…
 
It was, surprisingly, a rather sad moment to see D 125 OWF putter gamely into the shuffling throng of bargain hungry punters and the occasional gimlet eyed dealer. And the lump assuredly not about to appear in my wallet suddenly took up unsolicited residence in my throat. Absurd, isn’t it, how we develop affection for inanimate objects? Good job the missus stayed at home to throw chocolate mousse (I think it was) at the local wildlife; there’d be an Eskimo banquet of blubber on display.
 
The auctioneer’s mouth accelerated away like Peter O’Sullivan as they enter the final furlong and, long before I had time to work out what the hell he was actually saying, the gavel came down at a princely £80. Naturally, this translated to a cheque for a mere £15.37, but what the hell… The missus and I may celebrate at the cinema tonight. Sharing the one seat.
 
Accepting the legion difficulties inherent in disposing of old cars today, I suppose I should feel moderately elated at a successful recycling. Nonetheless, I came away from the Fiesta’s auction feeling a tad deflated, having secretly nurtured a rather more spectacular -albeit illicit- send off in the Viking idiom. And judging by the percentage of the 1 million abandoned vehicles currently littered across the UK which mysteriously take it upon themselves to spontaneously combust, I’m not alone in suffering the occasional twinge of pyromania.
 
Still, at least there’s now room on a grass verge somewhere in England for a couple of extra fridges.