A tribute to my (ex, with extreme prejudice) car

I like a nice car as much as the next man. (Actually, a lot more than the next man, as at present the next man happens to be my flatmate). But when I moved to England, I found that it can be a tad expensive to get insurance on a nice car. In fact, having no insurance record in this country, a New Zealand driving licence, and being in your early 20's is seen by insurance companies here as some kind of licence to charge the earth. (They get away with this because insurance cover is a legal requirement. If the government just added 10% to income tax and passed it straight to the insurers, it'd be a lot easier for everyone).

I started looking for a reasonable car which was not too expensive. However, I soon discovered that even a crappy £1000 car would cost me £3000 to insure for a year (and that was only for 3rd party insurance!). So I had to adjust my strategy. First I would find out what I could afford to insure, and then I would try to find one.

The net result was that my first car in England was a Lada Samara. Don't think I can't see you sniggering in the back row. Or the front row for that matter. Well, before you start feeling too superior, I should mention that I soon upgraded to a fine Toyota Celica, and I now have a shiny 1999 Mazda MX5.

But I digress. For your delectation, and also to alleviate some of my slight... er... dissatisfaction with the build quality of this fine under-appreciated Russian motorised cart, here is a list of everything that fell off my Lada in the short time I owned it:

	1 wing mirror (the chewing gum I found on the bracket just didn't do the trick)
	2 hub caps (although I managed to retrieve one and slap it back on)
	1 carpet (well, I was forced to throw it out when it spontaneously converted into a swimming-pool-cum-radioactive-fire-retardent-mush swamp)
	1 water pump (It didn't exactly fall off, it just gave a death rattle and died while I was desperately trying to negotiate the notorious Hemel Hempstead 'Magic Roundabout', an evil intersection connecting 5 main roads via a roundabout with 7 mini roundabouts around it, and four lanes of traffic going around it (2 in each direction). Don't try and imagine how this configuration is possible - it only works in this one place in the universe where space folds in just the right way, and where car insurance prices increase exponentially in inverse proportion to distance from the roundabout to your house)
	1 of those plastic panels in the boot that always fall off
	1 exhaust pipe (and another on the way)
	3 twiddly things that should attach to other turny things to make a control knob kind of device. Luckily these all reasserted their grip when reunited with their turny bits.
	1 set of brake pads (just came off in the mechanic's hands after he unbolted 'em)
	1 passenger-side door (I didn't believe it either! I still can't believe it! This is the door I'm talking about, the flipping door! All of it. The whole thing. Just dropped off in my hand! Kaput! If fridges did that all our beer would be warm. If lifts did that they'd be awkwardly placed deep holes. Why should we put up with our cars doing it?! I didn't put up with it. I voted with my feet. But kicking it didn't make it any better. So I sold it. That stuck!).
	1 rear-view mirror (bumped by a passenger avoiding opening said door. Did I mention that the door fell off? I sometimes skip the lesser details you know...)
	1 battery, 1 fuse, and 1 cabin light (all the day after passing the MOT test)
	1 thing (you know, the thing that goes "clunk" a lot and then one day mysteriously stops going "clunk". Well my one fell off - it must have done, because it no longer goes "clunk")

The only thing which never showed any sign of ever falling off was the dirt.