The Beemer 2

I was thinking about my old BMW I used to drive - mechanics are wont to call them BM trouble yous - and mine certainly had its idiosyncrasies. A favourite one was to cut out while I was driving. There I would be, cruising along on the school run, five kids in the car (it was a 7-series and very spacious), and suddenly the engine would die. The first time this happened, I waited at the side of the road until I could eventually get it to start again. But here is the value of idle chit chat with girlfriends. I mentioned to a general group that this had happened and one girl said, "Oh that happens all the time to me. I hit the air filter with the heel of my shoe and then it goes again for ages!"

Well, imagine telling that to a mechanic - he would mentally tell himself that you were mental and then dismantle the entire engine and look for faulty wiring or spark plugs. After all, what do women know about cars? So the very next time this happened, I cruised to the side of the road out of the line of slow-moving traffic, raised the bonnet and hit the air filter sharply with a spanner which was handy in the toolkit that comes with the car in a neat compartment under the boot lid. Closed everything up, back in the car and off we went again. So obviously that theory was correct.

I did this many times over the years, frequently endeavouring to impart my knowledge to various mechanics who just wouldn't take me seriously. One even had the gall to suggest I might have run out of petrol (that was the one time that the spanner didn't work!) and we never did get to the root of the problem. Too many other things eventually went wrong and I traded it in for a Toyota Tazz which still goes without any trouble 15 years later.

Style, comfort and class are no substitute for reliability!