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On these pages I am detailing everything to do with my lovely Renault 5 Campus. This area of the site is very much under construction so please bear with me!
My first car was an Austin Metro. I learned to drive in it, as did one of my brothers, and loved it to bits, being a sentimental whatsit about silly things like cars. The Metro will be discussed on its own page in the "Other cars" section eventually. There are lots of stories to tell! Eventually said Metro went to the scrapyard - a heartbreaking moment. My next car was K reg Ford Fiesta, 5 door, 80,000 miles on the clock, which I test drove and which appeared in all respects to be fine. Hahaha, aha, ha. Ahem. The Fiesta didn't last long. Literally a month after I got it it started leaking oil and making clunking noises. I kept on topping up the oil (and my parents tried not to complain about the growing oil slick on their front drive) and it was agreed by all that as soon as the holiday period was over the car would need to go to the garage. But it never got that far. On an absolutely freezing night, in the fast lane of the M11 just outside of Cambridge, the big end went. Absolute, terrifying, clunking, banging, rattling disaster. The lovely AA man who rescued me after several hours of standing in a completely frozen field in the dark cursing and kicking the car told me it would have to be scrapped as the cost of fitting a new engine to such a rubbish car was unthinkable. I haven't bothered giving the Fiesta a page of it's own. It was far too rubbish (and a waste of my parents' money) to merit that! And so I was car-less. For, ooh, about 3 months. I decided that I didn't need a car as I had moved to virtually the centre of Oxford and everything I needed was right on the doorstep. So I wasn't really looking when I found my Renault 5. It goes that way with all true love affairs, doesn't it?! It was a sunny day in late March or early April. I went out for a sandwich for my lunch and came back with a Renault 5 AND a sandwich. The person I got it from was desperate to get rid of it, and had failed even in trying to give it away. I did give them something for it but it was at the "�100 or less" mark. I just fell in love with it. It was so dirty I couldn't even tell if it was silver, grey or white. I didn't bother test driving it, didn't inspect it for rust or missing parts, just turned the engine over, tried not to notice the black smoke coming out of the exhaust, and drove it home triumphant. It had a few months tax and 9 months MOT, and 98,000 miles on the clock. Everyone was horrified, but I was so happy at being behind the wheel that to be honest I couldn't have cared less what anyone else thought. A good wash revealed that it was in fact silver. While it hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, especially in the beginning (you can read all about it in the Car Sagas section) I can honestly say that it is the nicest car I have ever driven, and a complete bargain. It shows no signs of getting "past it" or "not worth saving" and I hope to keep driving it for many years to come! I have no prior knowledge of doing up cars or of fixing and mending cars myself, but there are a number of projects I intend to carry out with my R5, and I will be detailing them all under the above headings as time passes. Please feel free to contact me to talk about R5, especially if you have any hints and tips for me!  
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