The End of the Road

Mileage: 275,012

I start by apologising for the terrible pun in the title. It, and the return of this blog after a 2 year hiatus, signify the sad news that my high-mileage Vauxhall Cavalier has finally reached the end of its life-span.

Since I last posted here I have spent many times the car’s value on attempting to keep the rust at bay, but it has now reached the time to admit that the rust is endemic and cannot be defeated without continuing to spend at the same rate, which would be silly at best. When the car failed it’s MOT on 21^st February with 274,147 miles on the clock and a whole 11 days left of the previous year’s MOT, there was only one thing to do.

275,000 was the goal – the (somewhat unnecessary?) mileage top-up operation had begun. For the next week and a half I constantly sought to add extra distance to journeys wherever possible: volunteering for errands, taking the scenic route, even going for a drive in my spare time (generally all by myself... but it was ok, I took an audiobook!). I even renewed the road tax to allow for 4 extra days motoring in the vehicle that had been in the family since new. Finally on 4^th March 2011, with my MOT expiring at 23:59, the milestone was reached, allowing me to retire the car in a much happier state of mind.

*A Postscript:

If you think that the above account is beyond comprehension, perhaps you missed the original 2009 blog posts. If so, read on below, you’ve a hold lot of catching up to catch up on. Oh boy. If you still think that I’m a little crazy after reading that, well, you’re probably right.