(MOT)

It was my Dad’s wisdom that “if you own a car, you’re never done putting your hand in your pocket”.

It was an observation he’d arrived at from a long experience of buying second hand, maintaining them himself*, and selling them at a loss. My school mates were astonished that we’d had dozens of vehicles , rather than the same one for ten years. Mind you we also moved house a lot, but that’s a different tale.

My own experiences have tended to confirm Dad’s – who has two consecutive cars which develop holes in the top of their petrol tanks? (better than the bottom I suppose)

Generally I have some idea of when my car is being held together by string, sticky tape and the power of the force, and when it’s actually in trouble. Not this time.

My mechanic is a lovely man with a slow, deliberate, delivery: “He-llo To-ny. This car , of yours, it has, some se-ri-ous prob-lems…”

I allow quite generously in my budget for annual “repairs” but we were looking at more-than-the-value-of-the-car. And as always , it’s the crippling inconvience of it when it comes out of the blue.

I am happy to announce that a temporary repair did allow the car to pass, with the advisory that it wasn’t going to be around another year. This was an unexpected and very welcome reprive, at the very least allowing a few days to get new wheels, rather than , NOW.

Search second hand car: postcode xxxxx Cars 43,000

Age : something a bit newer, say 2019 oldest. Cars 27,000

Transmission: Automatic, Cars 17,000

Body type: Hatch/Estate/SUV Cars 11,000

Fuel type : Petrol (there’s a longer story) Cars 4500

Price max: I have to consider this for some time, however Cars 953

Everything else is “Any” Except Distance, lets say 50 miles(?) Cars 19

Ok, so I don’t live in “Detroit”, but you’ve got to start somewhere, clearly I may have to travel a bit further afield, but let’s see the 19?

Car 1, is 2 miles away in Kilmarnock but unsuitable (foreign import)**

Car 2 is 2 miles away in Kilmarnock, and is somewhow the same car as car 1.

Car 3 is in Manchester! (news to me that Manchester is in the 50 mile window)

Car 4,5,7,9,11, 13 are in Northern Ireland …..

I go back and recheck several times, I also use two other search engines. Same story, by car 4 or 5 at most, I’m getting vehicles in Dagenham or Bath.

There are NO cars ticking all the boxes with 100 miles of kilmarnock.

Not to be defeated I approach this another way. I pick a make and model that might fit and search. I get two that I could almost see from my window.

What I need is a search engine to find me the correct search engine.

Next week on IaDL : It never rains, but it pours…

*When Dad was maintaining cars, you could change the cylinder head gasket by the roadside using brown paper and glue (maybe even treacle) and it was legal!

**I’ve had enough of slightly unusual, short production run cars which have spare parts which can only be found on the black market in former Czechoslovakia. This time I’d like something there are a million of, with six factories world wide still churning them out.