If you think back to the time when we passed our driving tests and then had our first motor, you’ll no doubt remember it was - not to put too fine a point on it - a complete and utter heap. For some completely irrational and unfathomable reason with no realistic hope of success whatsoever, a good percentage of us decided to ‘personalise’ or ‘customise’ said bag of bolts to our own warped tastes. This is all well and good if it’s simply adding a set of mud flaps, pair of fog lights, even new seat covers, but sadly it goes way beyond this into the realms of ’For goodness sake……………….’
Modern science and psychiatry has yet to fully establish why this particular affliction seems to be more predominantly found in the male of our species. From my own personal experience, this is actually quite (and embarrassingly) true. I did some horrendous things to my first car - a bright custard yellow 1975 Vauxhall Chevette that in hindsight I should’ve been beaten about my person with a cricket bat which had six inch nails inserted through it for my crimes against motoring good taste and common sense.
In my defence, the interior of the Chevette was boring beyond mind-numbing tedium - faeces brown vinyl, peculiar khaki-tartan upholstery that in retrospect the Burberry company would now be ecstatically proud of, and finished off with carpet that very shade of brown you only ever see on the fur of stray, mongrel dogs. To my late-teenage mind back then, this just was not socially acceptable. I didn’t have a love-life as such back then, but this would’ve terminated it altogether. Something different was desperately required.
First of all, the upholstery. I found a pair of front seats in a Coventry breaker’s yard - infinitely more comfortable that the originals in the Chevette (these replacements had head-rests too), plus being from a Mk.1 Cavalier / Opel Ascona (stable mates of the same era) I assumed the fittings would be identical to my little car. What do you know - they weren’t!!! I established this as I endeavoured and toiled to install them. The only way these seats would fit was by removing the anchoring assembly from the original seats and somehow fix it to these replacements. A very frustrating Sunday afternoon ensued, with several blooded knuckles, many choice words that would’ve made Gordon Ramsay seriously impressed, and my father questioning my sanity on numerous occasions.
The other slight problem was the colour of these ex-Cavalier seats - the exact same hue as a Persian blue feline. I purchased a black set of covers from Halfords but being made from Nylon meant I could see the old upholstery through the covers. It looked vile. Mind you, it was my own fault for purchasing a more inexpensive collection. And my disappointment didn’t end there either - the set did not include head rest covers, and I was totally unable to source anything suitable - so Mother made me a pair!!! That’s right, homemade head rest covers!! At least it was something to talk about to a date as I was driving her home, should a girl ever be brave enough to be seen dead inside an insipid yellow car.
And finally, if these replacement seats hadn’t been enough of a headache, they were too wide for my Chevette. To put this into perspective, if I shut the driver’s door a tad too firmly, the passenger door would fly open immediately. Perhaps they weren’t ex-Cavalier seats at all - possibly from or something bigger, for example a Carlton or Opel Commodore.
When the seats were removed from the car, I also tore out the worn carpet. I had my eye on a nice new black carpet but the purse strings wouldn’t stretch to this sadly. Mum and Dad came to my aid again, by giving me a reasonable size off-cut from what they had their stairs layed in. The only snag was this new carpet I’d inherited was the same colour as weetabix - brown again!!!!! Still, the old saying is you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, so into the Vauxhall it went.
Installing this wasn’t without it’s tribulations either, as proper car carpet is a ‘cord’ weave and quite thin. This was household carpet. Four times the thickness. I think for the rest of it’s useful life, it was the carpet and adhesive that was holding certain parts of the chassis together in the correct places.
I do believe it’s rather self-explanatory why in the four years I owned and drove this car, I only ever had three dates. What a babe magnet, eh?
My girlfriend, Annette, ironically enough also had an old Vauxhall for her first set of wheels - a 1972 Viva HC. Obviously she was as thrilled as the rest of us at gaining her motoring freedom upon passing her driving test, but faced with the prospect of driving an aging car from the early seventies she did add something to the interior herself to personalise it - a magic tree air freshener.
Annette did the direct opposite of me (no doubt having infinitely more common sense and better things to spend her time, money and patience on), leaving her Viva as it was, keeping it the same as when it left Ellesmere Port. She simply began saving for her next motor, not bothering with insignificant cosmetic adjustments to a car she clearly wasn’t going to hang onto.
Once Annette had amassed enough necessary, she purchased a Mk.1 Ford Fiesta XR2i - a car sporty enough for her tastes, that didn’t need any personalisation in the vein of the criminal acts I’d performed upon my Vauxhall (save for magic tree). She could look stylish, modern, a bit of a ‘girl racer’, but had seen sense and not pillaged the accessory section in Halfords for items that just add weight to your car and serve no productive contribution to it’s performance.
Now, as a fully-fledged ‘proper’ grown up, I frown upon seeing any car that’s carrying ‘bling’ and been customised to within an inch of it’s life. It took me a good quarter of an hour the other day to work out underneath the spoilers, tinted windows, pointless over sized rally bucket seats and hideous alloys was a Citroen Saxo. But it may have been a Corsa. Or a Clio for that matter.
Praise the Lord common sense and good taste prevail eventually - bar those members of society who purchase a Fiat 500 with it’s high usage aimed white / beige interior!!!!

Stuart Tidman August 2009