Living in the countryside is great, until you want to go somewhere. Public transport is almost non-existent so we’re dependent on gas-guzzling carbon-emitting motor vehicles.

These days we try to keep it to a minimum of course, see the last part below for more on that, but it wasn’t always that way.  How much can we tell about people by the vehicles they drive?

My first machine was a motor scooter – I was a ‘Mod’ for a while in the mid-60s, like the two below, though I don’t have any actual photos of me in all that gear:

The first car I drove was my dad’s old Morris Minor, similar to the one on the right.

Then I got my own first car in 1967, a 1960 model Ford Prefect like the one at the bottom. We never gave much thought to things like the environment or fuel costs in those days.

Below: 1969 – an actual photo of my next car, a old Ford Anglia with the rake-back rear window - somewhere in North West Scotland, my mate Dave leaning against it. We drove from the south coast of England to the northern tip of Scotland and back in one week, camping wherever we could find.

1974 – Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia. Pete on the left, and me, with my Mini van. We had a boat on the roofrack and drove across Europe to Greece and back in that tiny vehicle.

1978, nearer home, Citroen 2CV with a fold-back roof, I bought that one brand new.

1983 – in the garage at home. Since the above photo I had married Hazel, acquired an instant family, then Ben arrived too. So time to get a proper job and a sensible car - though the Ford Fiesta was a bit of a squash with 3 kids.

1987 – by a rented cottage in the Yorkshire Dales, with the white Ford Escort. Hazel sitting at the table and Ben, 7, on the wall.

1989 – a Gite (holiday cottage) in Normandy, France. I’d moved up to a Ford Sierra now. That’s Hazel and Ben taking in the French bread.

2000 – the silver Ford Mondeo in front of a veggie B&B in Cornwall:

2006 – a country lane near our village in Shropshire. The Landrover Freelander on what was once the main road in the area, way back in the middle ages:

So the inevitable time came to buy another one, and the criteria have changed a bit over the years… Now we want something that uses as little fuel as possible, partly out of concern for the environment, but also because the cost of fuel has almost doubled in the UK in the last 10 years. We found one that uses less than half the fuel of the one above.

We also have a ‘road tax’ in the UK (more properly ‘Vehicle Excise License’) which is now directly related to CO2 emissions and can be really high on bigger vehicles.  We’ve lopped a whopping 90% off that.

Then we wanted something that would last at least 10 years as we’re getting to the age where we might not have the money for another one in the future. That meant higher quality engineering, which came with a bonus of only needing to be serviced every two years, saving some more cash.

And it had to be just big enough to drive comfortably around the countryside where we live, not one of the tiny ‘city cars’ that are appearing now. But not too big as that just adds to the cost and the fuel emissions.

Having found what we wanted, we then got 30% off the original price by buying it one year old with a very low mileage on clock.

So what did we get?  What would you have gone for?

FACEBOOK COMMENTS: