Exploding Maxi

I recall a holiday to Looe, Cornwall in 1979 when the Austin Maxi blew up.

The Maxi was bought at the Ormskirk auctions and had become a very dependable car for less than four hundred pounds, lots of room for the four of us.

The family favourite type of holiday in those halycon days was to lump all and sundry into the car and go off camping. One year we drove the bazillion miles from Skelmersdale to the West Country in about eight hours.

The destination was a coastal village called Looe in Cornwall, We stayed at a campsite about three miles outside of the town centre and basically used it as a hub to tour the area. Unfortunately, the two week holiday ended up being stretched to three when a piston broke. (I wrote a postcard back to Gullick Dobson saying exactly that - Pissed and Broke!)

A local taxi driver delivered me to a local garage and a wheeler dealer who took my engine out and basically changed it for an exact duplicate. I think it ended up costing me 240 quid for the works and a free pair of fluffy dice. We had investigated scrapping the thing and getting the train, or getting the Automobile Association to tow us all the way back North - a basic flaw in that one was we didn't belong to AA...no membership! and they wanted 300 quid.

The job was required, it was the cheapest option and the bullet was bit. The fact that the guy put an engine in that burnt more oil than its predecessor is superfluous, I can't describe how happy I was to get the family back from that holiday and have a cup of tea at home.

I borrowed that money off my mum and dad, I don't recall ever paying them back and therefore I still live with that guilt to this very day, of course mum and dad probably never expected to be paid back.

I'll post the ultimate demise of the Austin Maxi at some other time, now there's a story....