We had travelled barely 200 yards, the Ford Capri and I, and simply begun a delicate right-hand flip right into a roundabout when a rattling sound, acquainted however surprising, transported me again 4 a long time on the pace of sunshine.

Or extra precisely, on the pace of thought, which is considerably slower. The noise was simple to establish: the fluttering sound a leaf fragment makes when it encounters the blades of a two-speed Ford heater fan working on Low.

I’d heard it 100 occasions in a Cortina 1600E I owned as a result of, again then, Ford air flow techniques tended to ingest fallen leaves via an air consumption grille forward of the windscreen base, the place they quickly met the fan. When you cornered the automotive, the leaf shifted and the sound began. Or stopped. 

My do-it-yourself treatment was at all times to modify to High, hoping the additional blade pace would mince leaves to powder, and infrequently it labored.

Ironically, this sojourn in a 47-year-old Ford wasn’t alleged to be nostalgic. It was spurred by latest adjustments within the legislation.

When Transport for London introduced that sure automobiles, 40 years previous or extra, can be allowed to traverse the brand new London ULEZ boundaries with out paying the £12.50 cost, we fell to questioning how it might really feel to commute via London in a automotive as previous as that.

Soon, the proposition widened: may a 40-year-old automotive do all of its proprietor’s motoring: nation roads, motorways, evening journeys, moist journey, suburbs and cities? 

Sure, there are many traditional automotive zealots who make a problem of doing simply this (powerfully insisting the greenest automotive of all is the one you by no means scrap) however how wouldn’t it strike somebody corresponding to me, cosseted on daily basis by one of the best the fashionable automotive trade can present?

Ford had simply the automotive for the job – a Capri 1.6L in photogenic mid-blue with black vinyl roof, donated to the corporate’s Heritage Collection after the proverbial one woman proprietor had pushed it a mere 28,000 miles in all these years.