I love cars, I’ve always been a bit obsessed with engines. Growing up my Dad would let me help him out, changing the oil, topping up his battery, looking after the family car. I learned lots of practical skills which have stood me in good stead over the years. Sadly (I’m not sad) I never learned to drive. A broken ankle mid way through my lessons stopped me, and by the time I was ok to drive I was at uni and too poor to pick it up again. Now I consider it my gift to the world that I cannot get behind the wheel. I’m still a massive petrol-head despite my lack of licence, so when hubs does anything to do with our family car, I’m all over it.

We’ve had three cars during our life together, the first (and arguably our favourite) was a Citroen Saxo, a nippy little thing we called Harry we inherited from my mother in law. Harry was a belting little car and we drove thousands and thousands of miles together with hardly any problems. Sadly Harry met his end in a crash on the Mancunian Way. Harry was the only fatality, thankfully. We cried when we said goodbye to Harry and still miss him over ten years later.

After Harry came a Citroen C3, it was a slight panic buy. They’d not been available for long and seemed to be a nicely designed car with the mod-cons Harry never had. Whereas Harry was nippy and a lot of fun, Vera was a sensible workhorse. Plodding along the motorway and cornering like an overloaded double decker bus. The Citoren C3 seemed pretty prone to problems. We were never that much in love with Vera and when I got pregnant and we realised we needed a bigger car we were not that sad to see her go. Sorry Vera.

In 2010 we bought our current car, a Citroen C4 (are you sensing a theme here?). We’ve not actually named this car, which is remiss of us. He is a solid workhorse but with Harry’s nippiness and loads of room for all the baby stuff we needed to cart around with us in the early days. He’s a keeper, or at least we’ll keep him until bits start falling off.

I think we’d really struggle without our car. We don’t use it every day any more, but we do use it for big shops and for going on adventures. I am very fond of  our car.  It’s gone on a million adventures with us with hardly any trouble at all. It was the car we brought our newborn son home from hospital in. We will be sad to see it go when it finally gives up.

Is it so unusual to be so attached to your family car?