I am not ashamed to admit it – my family are kind of tight! We are also perhaps a little slow to get with the times – you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to convince my parents that a DVD player would be a good investment. In much the same vein, they have only just upgraded their TV to be digital friendly – how slow is that?! Still, it makes my point – we are cheap with what we buy, and slow to move onto new technology.

This tightness unfortunately covers our feelings towards cars as well. While I would love to have a new car, my parents have always preferred to by an aged old banger and stick with it until it eventually gave in and died. We used to own piles of rust (literally), where the engine would just stop working, or (worse!) fall out! I remember many of my childhood holidays by the breakdowns that we had – being towed back home by a truck, or breaking down just a mile away from the campsite that was our destination. Amusing, yet irritating, these problems essentially plagued all our travel!
The, a few years ago, my dad hit the jackpot. Not literally, unfortunately – but he suddenly ended up with a cheap used car that wasn’t an ancient Cortina or a tin can with wheels. Found in the local newspaper (does anyone buy cars like that any more?!), he came across a used Volvo for a bit more money than he usually shelled out. However, something made him give in and buy it, and I swear he has never regretted it. Nor, to be fair, ahs the rest of our family!

You see, the thing is that this old Volvo may not have looked particularly stylish, but it was incredibly reliable. It just seemed to go on and on, clocking up more and more miles on the clock and just not giving in. The first used Volvo we had was suitably ancient, and after a year or two it did give in and die. However, the taste of driving a Volvo estate seemed to have stuck – my dad simply loved them. I too was convinced – whilst not the stylish sports car of my delirious dreams, I had never felt safer in a car ever. I always had the distinct and probably inaccurate impression that if something hit us, we would have to be safe. It was like driving a tank!

Our most recent car just continues the story. From a used Volvo dealer this time, it had a vast amount of miles on the clock. However, in the years (yes, years plural) since we got it, very little has gone wrong. In fact, it past two MOTs with flying colours, and since then only one thing has broken, And this car is 15 years old now, making that feat pretty incredible! Even more incredible, I suppose, since my parents have never been ones to bother with getting something serviced regularly or maintained! Thankfully with the Volvo, this doesn’t seem to matter!