LORD 11 NOT AGAIN...

MORLEY FINALLY ADMITS THERE ARE A COUPLE OF DECENT ABBA TUNES AND A FEW DECENT VOLVOS, LIKE THIS 142S THAT NOW RESIDES AT THE MBC

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Oh, what have I done? Why am I even asking that? I’ve done precisely what I do every time a seductive piece of old tin wanders into my cross-hairs. Here’s what’s happened.

A few years ago, I was skilful enough to write off The Speaker’s car while coming home from a mate’s wedding. Actually, to be more precise, I was driving the car down Glebe Point Road in Sydney, the day after the wedding when a cement truck parked on top of us. The addition of 20 tonnes of Western Star twin-steer and a further few tonnes of wet concrete, according to the insurance company, suddenly meant her VW hatchback was now worth less than the sum of its individual components. So they wrote us a cheque and she started driving the MBC parts chaser to the supermarket. Not ideal. Fast food, but not ideal.

Obviously, she needed a new car and it had to be a compact hatchback. Just as I have owned utes for the past 30-plus years, likewise The Speaker has been bombing around in a string of hatchbacks which suit her fine and actually carry more than a lot of my cars. But, armed with that lovely insurance cheque, which one to buy?

Just for a change, we tackled the question logically; she drew up a list of the cars that fit our budget and that she was prepared to drive (don’t forget, thanks to what I do for a living, she’s been exposed to just about everything on the market, so this was no blindfold-and-dart exercise). Meantime, I drew up a list of budget-friendly cars that I, as the mug who would have to service the bugger, was prepared to entertain.