Motor Show

It was July or thereabouts, a group from my local pub, the Poacher in Winstanley, Wigan, decided to go to the Motor show in Birmingham.

The Imp had of course been playing up, overheating and losing water - I'd started carrying a bottle of water around with me to top the thing up. This was a tradition with cars I owned, containers full of spare fluids for those that leaked out.

There were four of us in the car that day as we followed Paul Martin down the motorway, his being a two seater Triumph GT6 and of course, he was pushing the envelope as usual and the Imp was doing a brave job keeping up, however, the additional load on the engine meant that we lost water at an accelerated rate.

I think we had to stop three times on the journey down and maybe twice at the services on the way back, an exhausting day - although great fun, I can picture the group of us, taking many beer breaks during our walk around the motor show, plastic glasses full of our own replacement fluids.

It was typical though, the shame of having a Hillman Imp, why the hell I bought another of these things after the first time I do not know, everything was happening again as the circus of clunkers continued.