Silver

Have you noticed? As I look at car in Britain today, they are all silver! I have an eleven year old red car which has done over one hundred thousand miles, and despite loving it, there may come a time when the replacement parts and labour come to more than the car is worth. Therefore, I have been looking for a replacement. Something that is just as curvy, fun and vibrant - something that makes the distance between A to B more than a lost moment in time.

There are cars out there that fullfil this criteria, but they have all one litre engines and so would not satisfy my need to perform some of the motorway trips I make. A good car has the ability to get you out of trouble just as fast as it got you there in the first place.

I am currently interested in the new BMW Mini - having initially owned an original Mini as my first car, again, curvy, fun and vibrant. My Mini being built in Britain, had a lot of faults with it, that it is not to say that everything made in Britain is bad, it is just that sometimes things are done on the cheap simply because the money is not there. Perhaps a little more effort could have been put in to improve the build quality. In any case, I still have the tools I purchased to help with the head gasket replacement, the most useful of which is a Torque Wrench that comes in very handy in changing wheels - I definately recommend carrying one as however strong you are, they just make the process easy. However, back to the original point, well sort of, the BMW Mini is really cool, small but cool and has a 1.4 litre engine which is big enough for the size of the car. The price is the main issue, at over twelve thousand pounds for a new one, it is a little on the expensive side, so I need to look at the second hand market and ensure that my Bow Box (as in Archery not Ribbons) fits in the boot.

So, uh hum, why are most cars these days Silver? Is it because we are becoming more lazy and do not want to wash our cars more as Silver hides the dirt more? Looking around a the £7.5k to £9k market, the products on offer are all boxy and mostly boring and the good stuff has the speedometer in the centre of the dash - really annoying - even if the Mini does too, but it is 'well big'. I drove a mini-bus on a Midas test and that's speedometer was in the middle of the dashboard - really annoying and actually takes longer to read when you could be spending vital time looking at the road.

So, what will happen, who knows, I need to spend more time investigating options.