Oct. 7, 2005 - Forbidden Fruit
Forbidden fruit. For me the title refers to those cars that the DOT and EPA have decided are not to be available in the USA fo whatever reason. Surely with only our best interests in mind, they have determined these cars to be hazardous to our health. The really special ones will kill us outright due to the lack of 5MPH bumpers and the like, whilst the others will no doubt kill us slowly by polluting the American air to a level of toxicity that they obviously don't do elsewhere.
Of course most of this is absolute horseshit. I bought a few grey market cars back in the early 80s when the $/DM exchange rate was favourable and enjoyed them immensely although they were just slightly better and cheaper than the officially imported versions. This was back in the good old days when one could cheat a bit on the compliance without too much risk. Things have tightened up a bit since.
On moving to Europe, I was determined to have a go in some of the cars that were either never available in the USA or were no longer imported.
Ireland of 15 years ago was nothing like the boomtown it is now. I can honestly say that I had never seen a car still being driven that sported moss until moving there. The Irish for some reason never washed their cars. Green moss would grow on the rubber bits around the windows and along the seams in the coachwork. They would never renew their windscreen wipers. Most windscreens would have the telltale arcs scratched into them which cried out that the owner was indeed a miser. Tyres would be replaced when they wore out. Through the cords. There was no motor vehicle inspection.
Add to the general lack of maintenance the fact that the roads were very bumpy and potholed you can appreciate the that fleet of English, Japanese and Italian bangers was in a sorry and generally unsafe state.
Well as the saying goes: "When in Rome...". This was too good to be true. I decided to become completely Irish and set about looking for a Mini, one of the forbidden fruit in the USA. I noted a rather forelorn example on the side of a street near a shop I frequented, and noticed it hadn't moved for weeks. I asked the shop owner about it and he put me in touch with the owner, who had found running it a bit too much for her meagre finances.
Over a cup or two of tea we haggled and I ended up parting with IR£180 for a 12 year old Mini 1000. Someone had helped themselves to the alternator so I had to find one and instal it before driving away. The car had 54,000 miles on it and drove literally like new. I can honestly say that it was as much fun to drive as any car I've driven.
Highpoints included taking the Irish approach to tyre wear to an extreme. I noticed after a while that the right front tyre was quite bald. A few weeks later it was showing cords. I proceeded to find out just how many layers of cords it possessed, until one day I noted that I had worn clear through the tyre at one spot and exposed a dime sized portion of the innertube. It was bulging out a bit, but seemed to be holding up quite well condsidering, so just for kicks I thought I'd see how long it would last. The next day there was a muffled pop, much like a bubble gum bubble bursting and I had my answer: not very long.
The speedo in the old mini resided in the middle of the dash. A really stupid place to put it in my book and I find it incredible that the MINI has this absurdly retro "feature", especially since it is the only thing on the new one that remotely resembles the original. Well, the speedo on mine gave up on me one day and I duly replaced the cable. Shortly thereafter, the speedo began to operate erratically. It would work normally until about 60MPH at which point the needle would start bouncing off the stop at the end of the scale. Strange.
This went on for some time until the peg gave out from the repeated hammering, allowing the needle to make full revolutions. I like this feature. It was quite amusing to see the needle acting like a propellor, lapping the dial at a rate commensurate with speed. It would remain visible to about 50 as a blur but would then seemingly disappear. The most entertaining feature was the fact that whilst reversing, the needle would move in the opposite direction, going around the dial in an anti-clockwise direction.
At some point the brakes started acting up and wee clearly in need of some attention. These brakes were absolutely tiny drums on all four corners. As the wheels were only 10 inchers, you can imagine the dimensions for the drums. Well, the pedal was getting a bit long and quickly graduate to being a one pumper. One pump to the floor, release and once to stop. Not too bad considering. Well, the progression from a one to a two pumper was altogether too rapid, and every now and again it would demad three pumps.
Traffic lights in Dublin are never set to blink, and never shut off either, even in the middle of the night. Hell, they even have what they call ghost pedestrian lights which switch to red randomly just to "calm" traffic, but which really serve to anger drivers who spent seeminly hours at un-coordinated lights across town. Dublin got its first traffic lights not all that long ago, but the traffic engineers took to them with enthusiansm. EU money to spend, must be sure to spend it all you know.
With two or three pump brakes, and the general disregard for late night traffic signals, I would have to debate whether or not to start pumping or just cruise through the yellow. One particualr night on the way home at about 0200 the lights changed on me. I calculated hat I could ignore them and sure enough drove through just a tiny bit of a red light. I remarked to my passenger that I had surely run a slightly red light, but the van behind me really ran that one. Not an unusual occurance, but one worth noting. At the next light the van drew level with me and I noticed the Garda Síochána shield on the door. Oops! The Garda driving motioned me over, and I complied.
Nothing at all was mentioned about the fact that I had driven through an obviously red light, but he had noticed that my brake lights didn't function at the next one. He also was not impressed with the note of my exhaust which was rather loud as the downpipe had parted from the exhaust manifold, as they are prone to do, earlier that evening. He took my details, name and address had to be given to a Garda on request, but licence needn't be carried at the time. He advised me that I would be getting a summons to appear in court that I could ignore. Apparently the lads got overtime work delivering summonses and they were issued all the time just to augment the income of the Gardai. I did have to appear at the Garda station with the repairs done, my licence and the car's insurance documents for a Garda to inspect. A deadline of ten days seems to be the norm for this sort of thing.
Well, I repaired the car and was ready to set off to the station, ringing ahead just to be sure that someone would be able to see me. Went outside and aked the bird to make one last check on the brake lights. tail lights and indicators. Of course, a few of them decided not to work. As I had an appointment a the station I figured I'd take a chance and we drove in in her car and I presented myself at the desk. I brought the old clamp from the manifold/downpipe join and a few burnt out fuses to show, along with the required documents. As luck would have it, the Garda at the desk couldn't be bothered to come outside to inspect the car so I was off free.
I worked in the Japanese import trade for a while and sampled some rather interesting cars, my favourites being the Evos and WRX STis. They were perfectly suited for the Irish roads, and could be enjoyed to thier fullest on the secondary roads, where the speed limit was 60MPH but one had to woke very hard to average anywhere near.
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About Me
Motoring from a German/European perspective, seen through the eyes of a American Irish transplant.
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