Ripping Free In A 2200

My first solo drive was in a stolen car

My eldest daughter passed her test recently. She set off for her first drive with nobody in the car with her and was both excited and apprehensive. The car she drove was not stolen. She was insured, too.

Shortly after I passed my driving test I took my first solo drive. In a stolen car.

But my life as a car thief was a short one. It was hardly going to land me a prison sentence, either. I had neither the balls to steal a vehicle off the street nor the technical smarts to hot-wire an unprotected car. Forty years later, my balls are no larger and my technical know-how when it comes to cars has not increased.

The car I stole was neatly locked away in a garage but the keys to both the garage and the car itself were to hand. The car belonged to my father. I had passed my test in the middle of May. I was 17 and there were still weeks of school to go before the end of the year and the start of summer. My parents decided to take a holiday — without me — at a time when they could be sure of cheaper flights and hotels free of children. So off they went to Austria for a week in term time. They were asking for trouble.

They flew off on the Saturday. On the Sunday, I celebrated in a manner fitting a teenager left at home. On Monday, I woke late and realised that I was unlikely to reach school — the local sixth form college, in fact — in time for my first lesson if I walked. Taking the car came to mind. I’m sure I had not planned to use my dad’s car while they were away. But perhaps I had set myself up to be late for the very purpose of giving me the excuse I needed. No matter, I grabbed the keys and set off for college.

I was not insured, of course. That fact didn’t cross my mind. If it had, it would have made no difference. I also had the brash confidence of my youth when it came to driving a car I had never driven before. My father had an Austin 2200, which was a bus of a thing. Heavy, with no power steering as far as I can remember. It’s stubby bonnet and the way the large steering wheel was set almost on a horizontal plane made it feel like I was driving a bus.

I reversed out the garage onto the street and off I went. The college had a large car park but it was always fairly empty. Students, for the most part walked or had mopeds and motorbikes if they had transport at all. Only teachers drove. Had the car been anything other than the rather boxy and very unsexy 2200 I might have hoped that my arrival by car could improve my chances with some of the more discerning women at the college. But I was realistic enough to know that the only people I would impress would be my drinking buddies who would see the potential for a drive into the country after college to sample the rural pubs.

And so it proved. This was the late 70s and it was rare to be asked your age at the bar. The light evenings and the warm nights made trips to countryside a pleasure. I was also careful — acting against type but with some notion of self-preservation — to make sure I didn’t drink too much. This wasn’t a bad lands crime spree: I stuck to shandies. We were hardly so flush with cash that we could make a long night of it, anyway.

I spent a week driving my friends to pubs in the early evenings. Each night as I parked the car I swore that the next day I would leave the car at home but every fresh morning saw me drawn to the garage. I justified this by telling myself that taking the car once without permission was bad enough so to keep doing it made no difference.

My parents returned from holiday. On the last night I had checked the car for any tell-tale signs. I had even replaced what little petrol had been used and prayed that my dad didn’t notice the extra miles on the clock. I waited.

Finally, on the Monday I came down to find a scorecard from the local pitch and putt on the kitchen table. Rumbled. I had stuck one in the glove compartment after an afternoon spent in an untypically sporty fashion.

I later found out that our neighbours had also casually mentioned to my parents that they had seen me driving the car. Double rumble.

My parents said very little about the whole thing. In some ways, I think their already low opinion of me was subtly reinforced. In practical terms, it meant that my father didn’t add me to the insurance and I never got to drive that or any of his future cars again. Fair enough.

As it went, I didn’t own a car of my own for almost 20 years after that. And that was in Singapore, where the cars don’t come cheap. I bought a Mazda 626 that was ten years old and had to pay the equivalent of about £20,000 in total. And that was in the 90s.

The revenge of gods offended by unfilial car theft, no doubt.