Father’s Day

Father’s Day. For some it’s a time of celebration, for others a time of reflection. Its mainly reflection for me, but I’m celebrating too. My dad, to parrot Monty Python, shuffled off this mortal coil in February 2022. He gifted me skills and taught me many things, but it was something he had absolutely no interest in, strangely enough, that probably cast the longest shadow.

Cars were, it seems, not so much in my blood as in the air. My first word was snatched out of nowhere, from the ether: ‘car.’ The only gifts I wanted were the ones with four wheels. My confused parents thankfully indulged me. Matchbox was my Calpol. But I wonder if that might have eventually withered away if it had not been for my dad’s choice of cars. There wasn’t much obvious logic to them, but one thing does unite them: if there was an obvious mainstream choice, my dad would avoid it like the plague. Our neighbours had Fords and Vauxhalls. We had Renaults and SAABs and Fiats. Perhaps this had something to do with his single, disastrous foray into normal: a Mk1 Cortina estate that he had to push start so often it gave him a slipped disc.

Whatever the reasons, his choice of Beetles, Volvos, SAABs, Renault, Fiats and Seats was characterised by a desire to think and do different. It was, as we’ll see, a rocky road. But it was his road. If cars are an unconscious reflection of the soul, my dad’s were proof that he walked a different path. On a practical level it introduced me to cars that most car magazines outside of actual CAR magazine actively ignored. This was a ’70s and ’80s era of ‘buy British’ when cars like the Renault 20 were a rare sight in leafy Surrey. As it turned out, it was a rare sight on our driveway too. Less so the service department of Renault Guildford.

One day, a day that was to cast a multi-decade shadow, my dad came home in a nearly-new dark blue SAAB 99 GL. He’d recently taken a work trip to Norway where a colleague had taken him on a snowy cross country trip at very high speed in a 99. He was sold and quickly found a home for his new company car allowance. Our recollections of that SAAB always differed. I recalled a brilliant, stylish car driven by an individualist. I discovered James Bond had one – albeit briefly and only in a book – then something called Turbocharging. Here was a car for speed freaks, free thinkers and – briefly – British special agents. It kick started my serial ownership of SAABs.

He, were he still able to voice an opinion, would see things a bit differently. My dad would say – and, objectively, he would be entirely right – that the SAAB was terrible. It was unreliable. It overheated. A lot. It refused to start. The electrics didn’t always electric. In fact, he hated it. Obviously he replaced it with that paragon of reliability, the Renault.

In the ’80s and approaching his 40s, my dad set up his own business and the big barges disappeared. He bought a nearly new Fiat Strada. At the time there was a lot of hoopla about how the Strada was Fiat’s brand new start, the ‘Italian Golf’ that was better and cheaper than the Volkswagen. Of course it was – it was built by something called Robots. Several of our neighbours also fell for the marketing. Whereas theirs proved porous to rain, ours was surprisingly impervious. Perhaps my weekly cleaning regime helped – I loved cars so much that even washing them was a joy. Or maybe it was luck.

As the business took off he invested in a Volvo 244. The first owner was some sort of American ambassador so our upmarket GL came with heated leather, a better stereo, a sunroof and other accoutrements befitting a man of international diplomacy. I learnt to drive in that Volvo. Clearly some of that diplomacy had imbued the interior of the big boxy bus because my dad kept his cool as I stalled and kangarooed the Volvo around Surrey.

My dad was an inveterate thinker and ideas man. This was in the days before voice notes and Apple Reminders so the 244 dashboard was always festooned with a carpet of yellow Post-It notes, two and three word mind-jogs for my dad’s day ahead. More Volvos followed, including a brace of 740s. Today Volvo is a thoroughly mainstream choice. In the 80s it wasn’t. Our neighbours had Granadas and BMWs and Audis, we had a car that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a 1970s American crime drama. This is where me and my dad parted motoring ways. Each of the previous cars shaped my passion for cars. The Volvos didn’t. I do love a well equipped barge though, so perhaps that 244 is in there somewhere.

Cars were an unavoidable part of my dad’s life but they were just that – cars. A form of transport. They weren’t status symbols – he chose them for practical reasons and the ones he chose were the ones other people didn’t normally choose. That was him: he thought uniquely and did different. And yet, something he cared so little about has had a significant impact on my life. I love all cars, but particularly the ones that are less obvious. Alongside my T16S SAAB I have an Alfasud Ti, the hot hatch that even hot hatch fans forget exists.

My dad was an individualist. His motoring choices were very clearly a reflection of who he was. I’m grateful he was who he was and made the motoring choices he did because it has given me my own unique enthusiasm for cars. And that, in its way, also defines me.

Norman Eason 27/4/40 – 24/2/22. RIP.