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Title: Automobilia
Author: Fleming, Ian [Ian Lancaster] (1908-1964)
Date of first publication: 4 April 1958
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   The Spectator [London], 4 April 1958
Date first posted: 8 January 2015
Date last updated: 8 January 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1226

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.






Automobilia

By IAN FLEMING



'Dig that T-bird!'  I had cut it a bit fine round Queen Victoria's
skirts and my wing mirror had almost dashed the Leica from the GI's
hand.  If the tourists don't snap the Queen, at about 10 a.m. on most
mornings they can at least get a picture of me and my Ford Thunderbird
with Buckingham Palace in the background.

I suspect that all motorists are vain about their cars.  I certainly
am, and have been ever since the khaki Standard with the enamelled
Union Jack on its nose which founded my _curie_ in the Twenties.
Today the chorus of 'Smashing!', 'Cor!' and 'Rraauu!' which greets my
passage is the perfume of Araby.

* * *

One man who is even more childishly vain than myself is Nol Coward.
Last year, in Jamaica, he took delivery of a sky-blue Chevrolet Belair
Convertible which he immediately drove round to show off to me.  We
went for a long ride to _pater la bourgeoisie_.  Our passage along the
coast road was as triumphal as, a year before, Princess Margaret's had
been.  As we swept through a tiny village, a Negro lounger, galvanised
by the glorious vision, threw his hands up to heaven and cried,
'Cheesus-Kerist!'

'How did he know?' said Coward.

Our pride was to have a fall.  We stopped for petrol.

'Fill her up,' said Coward.

There was a prolonged pause, followed by some quiet tinkering and
jabbering from behind the car.

'What's going on, Coley?'

'They can't find the hole,' said Leslie Cole from the rear seat.

Coley got out.  There was more and louder argumentation.  A crowd
gathered.  I got out and, while Coward stared loftily, patiently at the
sky, went over the car front and back with a tooth-comb.  There was no
hole.  I told Coward so.

'Don't be silly, dear boy.  The Americans are very clever at making
motor-cars.  They wouldn't forget a thing like that.  In fact, they
probably started with the hole and then built the car round it.'

'Come and look for yourself.'

'I wouldn't think of demeaning myself before the natives.'

'Well, have you got an instruction book?'

'How should I know?  Don't ask silly questions.'

The crowd gazed earnestly at us, trying to fathom whether we were
ignorant or playing some white man's game.  I found the trick catch of
the glove compartment and took out the instruction book.  The secret
was on the last page.  You had to unscrew the stop-light.  The filler
cap was behind it.

'Anyone could have told you that,' commented Coward airily.

I looked at him coldly.  'It's interesting,' I said.  'When you sweat
with embarrassment the sweat runs down your face and drops off your
first chin on to your second.'

'Don't be childish.'

* * *

I am not only vain about my Thunderbird, but proud of it.  It is by far
the best car I have ever possessed, although, on looking back through
my motley stud book, I admit that there is no string of Bentleys and
Jaguars and Aston Martins with which to compare it.

After the khaki Standard, I went to a khaki Morris Oxford which was
demolished between Munich and Kufstein.  I had passed a notice saying
'_Achtung Rollbahn!_' and was keeping my eyes peeled for a steamroller
when, just before I crossed a small bridge over a stream, I heard a
yell in my ear and had time to see a terrified peasant leap off a
gravity-propelled trolley laden with cement blocks when it hit
broadside and hurled the car, with me in it, upside down into the
stream.

I changed to the worst car I have ever had, a 16/80 open Lagonda.  I
fell in love with the whine of its gears and its outside brake.  But it
would barely do seventy, which made me ashamed of its sporty appearance.

I transferred to a supercharged Graham Paige Convertible Coup, an
excellent car which I stupidly gave to the ambulance service when war
broke out.

Half-way through the war I had, for a time, a battered but handy little
Opel.  One night at the height of the blitz I was dining with Sefton
Delmer in his top-floor flat in Lincoln's Inn.  A direct hit blew out
the lower three floors and left us swilling champagne and waiting for
the top floor to fall into the chasm.  The fireman who finally hauled
us out and down his ladder was so indignant at our tipsy insouciance
that I made him a present of the crumpled remains of the Opel.

After the war I had an umpteenth-hand beetle-shaped Renault and a
pre-war Hillman Minx before buying my first expensive car--a 2-litre
Riley, which ran well for a year before developing really expensive
troubles for which I only obtained some compensation through a personal
appeal to Lord Nuffield.

I transferred to one of the first of the Sapphires, a fast, comfortable
car, but one which made me feel too elderly when it was going slowly
and too nervous when it was going fast.  I decided to revert to an open
car and, on the advice of a friend, bought a Daimler Convertible.  Very
soon I couldn't stand the ugliness of its rump and, when the winter
came and I found the engine ran so coolly that the heater wouldn't
heat, I got fed up with post-war English cars.

* * *

It was then that a fairly handsome ship came home and I decided to buy
myself a luxurious present.  I first toyed with the idea of a Lancia
Gran Turismo, a really beautiful piece of machinery, but it was small
and rather too busy--like driving an angry washing machine--and it cost
over 3,000, which seemed ridiculous.  I happened to see a Thunderbird
in the street and fell head over heels in love.  I rang up Lincoln's.
Apparently there was no difficulty in buying any make of American car
out of the small import quota which we accept in part exchange for our
big motor-car exports to the States.  The salesman brought along a
fire-engine-red model with white upholstery which I drove nervously
round Battersea Park.

I dickered and wavered.  Why not a Mercedes?  But they are still more
expensive and selfish and the highly desirable SL has only room beside
the driver for a diminutive blonde with a sponge bag.  Moreover, when
you open those bat-like doors in the rain, the rain pours straight into
the car.

I paid 3,000 for a Thunderbird.  Black, with conventional gear change
plus overdrive, and as few power assists as possible.  In due course it
appeared.  My wife was indignant.  The car was hideous.  There was no
room for taking people to the station (a point I found greatly in its
favour) and, anyway, why hadn't I bought her a mink coat?  To this day
she hasn't relented.  She has invented a new disease called
'Thunderbird neck' which she complains she gets in the passenger seat.
The truth is that she has a prejudice against all American artefacts
and, indeed, against artefacts of any kind.

She herself drives like Evelyn Waugh's Lady Metroland, using the
pavement as if it were part of the road.  Like many women, she prides
herself on her 'quick reactions' and is constantly twitting me with my
sluggish consideration for others in traffic.  She is unmoved when I
remind her that in her previous car, a grey and heavily scarred Sunbeam
Talbot whose interior always looked as if it had just been used as
dustcart for the circus at Olympia, she had been guilty of
misdemeanours which would have landed any man in gaol.  She once hit an
old man in a motorised bathchair so hard in the rear that he was
propelled right across Oxford Street against the traffic lights.
Turning into Dover Street, she had cut a milk cart so fine that she had
left her onside door-handle embedded in the rump of the horse.
Unfortunately, she is unmoved by these memories, having that most
valuable of all feminine attributes--the ability to see her vices as
virtues.

* * *

I have now had my Thunderbird for over two years.  It has done 27,000
miles without a single mechanical failure, without developing a squeak
or a rattle.  Its paintwork is immaculate and there is not a spot of
discoloration anywhere on its rather over-lavish chrome, despite the
fact that it is never garaged at night and gets a wash only twice a
week.  I have it serviced every quarter, but this is only a matter of
the usual oil-changing, etc.  The only time it ever stopped in traffic
was carefully planned to give me a short, sharp reminder that, like
other fine pieces of machinery, it has a temperament.

The occasion was, for the car's purposes, well chosen--exactly half-way
under the Thames in the Blackwall Tunnel, with lorries howling by nose
to tail a few inches away in the ill-lit gloom, and with a giant petrol
tanker snoring impatiently down my neck.  The din was so terrific that
I hadn't even noticed that the engine had stopped when the traffic in
front moved on after a halt.  It was only then that I noticed the rev.
counter at zero.  I ground feverishly at the starter without result.
The perspiration poured down my face at the thought of the ghastly walk
I would have to take through the tunnel to get the breakdown van and
pay the 5 fine.  Then, having reminded me never again to take its
services for granted, the engine stuttered and fired and we got going.

The reason why I particularly like the Thunderbird, apart from the
beauty of its line and the drama of its snarling mouth and the giant,
flaring nostril of its air-intake, is that everything works.
Absolutely nothing goes wrong.  True, it isn't a precision instrument
like English sports cars, but that I count a virtue.  The mechanical
margin of error in its construction is wider.  Everything has a solid
feel.  The engine--a huge adapted low-revving Mercury V-8 of 5-litre
capacity--never gives the impression of stress or strain.  When, on
occasion, you can do a hundred without danger of going over the edge of
this small island, you have not only the knowledge that you have an
extra twenty m.p.h. in reserve, but the feel of it.  As for
acceleration, when the two extra barrels of the four-barrel carburetter
come in, at around 3,000 revs., it is a real thump in the back.  The
brakes are good enough for fast driving, but would have to be better if
you wanted to drive dangerously.  The same applies to the suspension,
where rigidity has been sacrificed slightly to give a comfortable ride.
Petrol consumption, using overdrive for long runs, averages 17 m.p.g.
Water and oil, practically nil.

There is a hard top for the winter which you take off and store during
the summer when the soft top is resurrected from its completely
disappeared position behind the seat.  The soft top can be put up or
down without effort and both tops have remained absolutely
weatherproof, which, after two years, is miraculous.

One outstanding virtue is that all accessories seem to be infallible,
though the speedometer, as with most American cars, is a maddening 10
per cent. optimistic.  The heater really heats; the wipers, though
unfortunately suction-operated, really wipe; and not a fuse has blown
nor a lamp bulb died.  The engine never overheats and has never failed
to start immediately from cold, even after all night outside in a
frost.  The solidity of the manufacture is, of course, the result of
designing cars for a seller's market and for a country with great
extremes of heat and cold.

Cyril Connolly once said to me that, if men were honest, they would
admit that their motor-cars came next after their women and children in
their list of loves.  I won't go all the way with him on that, but I do
enjoy well-designed and attractively wrapped bits of machinery that
really work--and that's what the Thunderbird is, a first-class express
carriage.






[End of Automobilia, by Ian Fleming]
