I'm sure you'd agree that on a lovely day there's nothing better than going out for a spin in one's classic. Enjoying the admiring looks, the waves from fascinated children and the smiles from those who obviously have fond memories of cars long since sold for something newer. It's easy to get distracted as you soak up your kudos congratulating yourself for your excellent choice of buying an older motor. But that moment of self-reverential reverie might cost you dear. I thought I’d
mention that because of the recent accident that occurred in northern England near to Manchester
airport. Did you see that in the news? A near-priceless
Aston Martin DB5 utterly totalled in a collision with a Vauxhall Astra. If the loss of such a beautiful car wasn’t enough, the fact it was a mundane
'rep
mobile' involved
in the classic's doom makes
the
whole thing acutely tragic. It might have been slightly more palatable if the
crunch had come at the conclusion of an exciting car chase with the DB5 driver
in hot pursuit of some international baddies but, alas, it was simply an
unfortunate and very expensive twist of fate.
I’ve appended the press
picture of the incident below because, as
the saying goes: it
paints a thousand words (and so you can say 'ouch' just like I did when I saw it). If it was my car involved I can assure you a
lot of those 'words'
would be utterly unprintable. Indeed,
I suspect I’d
have innovated a number of new and unique expletives to suit the occasion. Luckily no one was seriously hurt and that’s the most important thing.
Off to the scrap heap in the sky...
It does beg the question of all of us though: How safe
are we when out
and about in our classics? Let’s not forget many of our cars were built in a
different age when air-bags, ABS, crumple zones and, in some cases, seat belts were still
pretty much the stuff of science fiction.
And today they're older, much older. Let's face it, when they were
designed the
driving conditions were different and poor driving was perhaps more accepted. Yes there were fewer vehicles on the road but there were also many more fatal accidents hence the
campaigns to 'clunk click' from those we can no longer name. And yet even knowing all that we routinely take our precious,
ageing motors
out into the everyday madness of UK roads in the twenty first century. Seems a bit
foolhardy on the face of it.
Here's an interesting exercise: try and get hold of
some the original marketing literature for your classic and see what safety
equipment it vaunts. I suspect it'll say something like: "we have provided some brakes, four tyres, windscreen wipers, 12
volt headlights, and a steering wheel for use in avoiding obstacles. In our
luxury version some handy string to secure shopping to the back seat to prevent
unfortunate injuries from flying potatoes." Things we take for granted
as the basic parts of a car were, back in the day, considered 'features' to keep
us safe.
The Citroen DS is often cited as having an unusually
high number of safety gizmos even for a sixty year old design. Front and rear
crumple zones were built in allied to a solid box-section chassis. The single
spoke steering wheel was designed to safely collapse in a shunt rather than
skewer the driver. It's said that the
engine will slide under the car if dislodged in a frontal incident. Not sure
where it goes after that. The inboard disc brakes were considered some of the
most powerful ever fitted to a road car, capable of temporarily stopping the
world from spinning if leaned on heavily enough. I'm told US tourists in the
seventies were advised not to tailgate a DS in their hire cars on the way to
the south of France because if a D suddenly braked there was no chance of them
stopping too. (Nowadays it's the French that will be tailgating usually in a
Renault Twingo being driven at insane speed by a total cretin).
Later versions of the DS had swivelling headlights so
you could see what's going to hit you from around a corner so you can prepare
yourself for the collision with a hasty genuflection. They even had a stopping
distance calculator built onto the speedometer that is so confusing that you could
easily have an accident whilst trying to decipher it. And do any of these things give me comfort in the
modern motoring age? Do I feel safe in my DS? Do I buggery! Even with all those
so-called ‘safety features’ I wouldn't want to go mano-a-mano with a modern car
where it's sure I'll be the one carted off in an ambulance as the other driver
looks on dusting air-bag talc off their jogging pants.
There's no real conclusion to be drawn here - it is
what it is - and we accept the risks assuming they are on-the-whole largely
minimised. My advice is that we all drive carefully and considerately in our
classics and try to avoid driving when our chances of coming to grief are
heightened. And apart from actively avoiding Vauxhall Astras and Renault
Twingos the rest is down to luck, fate, karma or perhaps even faith. None of
which were working very well for one unfortunate DB5 which, I'm sure you'll all
agree, is a massive shame. Happy
motoring everyone.
