Parting is such sweet sorrow – Thank Frankel it’s Friday

Indeed I have owned my Peugeot 205 1.9 for eight years despite the fact that in that time I have covered fewer than 5000 miles in it. And if you think I should be ashamed of myself, I think you are entirely correct. I guess I’ve not sold it because ultimately it doesn’t represent such an enormous pile of cash as many of the others and because on the admittedly rare occasions when I have driven, I’ve loved every moment of it. It has been quietly appreciating in value too, which I’ll admits helps too.

So why have I not racked up tens of thousands of miles behind its wheel? It’s my job. When your work is to drive cars, it’s very difficult for it to be your hobby too. Indeed the only way I can combine the two is by buying very slow old cars that are only practical over short distances. I call them pub cars and currently the fleet comprises the Series III Land Rover in which I passed my test, a suicide-door Fiat 500D and a 1958 ripple-bonnet Citroen 2CV. By comparison the Peugeot is just too damn good and needs to be driven too damn far before getting it out of the shed makes sense.

Which is why most of its journeys have come on those rare occasions when I’ve been able to mix business with pleasure and for it to become the subject of my work. It’s been in Autocar loads of times and was used for an Octane cover story (from whence these pictures originate) where it was compared and contrasted to original Golf GTI in a quest to find the world’s greatest fast hatch. No prizes for guessing which won, but it wasn’t German.

Read our take on the greatest hot hatches of the 1980s.

And I do feel an idiot for selling it. It’s never failed to complete a journey, the only thing that’s gone wrong with it was a slight weep from the water pump prompting its replacement and it’s as good to drive today as it ever was, despite the 92,000 miles on its clock. So why is it going? The usual excuse is I’ve found something else and therefore need the space in the shed, but not this time. I think it’s got something to do with the fact that the last child leaves home next month and in this hopefully soon to be post COVID era, I feel like having a bit of a clear out, not just of my kids, but some of my lesser used possessions too. Of which the 205 is sadly the prime example.

So it will be auctioned in the next couple of weeks and the strange thing is I won’t be sorry to see it go. Partly that’s because I’m not the kind of person who spends much time looking over his shoulder and re-examining past decisions, but mainly I’ll just be happy in the hope that, for the first time in far too long, it’s being used for the purpose for which it was designed.

Pictures courtesy of Octane Magazine.