A Traders Tale – Part One

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A real life tale from a real life motor trader in 4 parts…

It’s been a while. Nearly four years since I’ve bought a car. It was a 10 year old Ford Mondeo Zetec Automatic and it’s safely transported myself my wife our two young children and our Border collie around on countless short hop trips to the nursery, various supermarkets and the like. It’s also been used for the regular trips out of London to both grandmother’s, one near Stansted Airport and one in the Midlands. I still own it; it’s currently outside my house. Its Silver paintwork is slightly shinier than you would expect of its year, it has good quality evenly worn tyres on it but other than these two unremarkable features it is, completely and utterly unremarkable.

I’m rather fond of this car and there’s a story to tell as to why I’m driving it and what it represents. Let me fill you in with some background. My name is Cameron, I’m very nearly 43 years old and I have held a driving licence since the week after my 17th birthday. Apart from the days that I have been struck down with some form of debilitating man flu or have decided to stay in bed for carnal reasons (a memory that is now gradually misting over), I have every day, got in a car of some sort and driven somewhere. I’ve covered literally millions of miles. For example I’ve been known to drive from London to Wales and back, twice in the space of 24 hours on a regular basis. At one stage I was driving from London to Bristol and back 3-4 times a week and at the weekend I would pop down from London to Somerset on a Sunday afternoon, have dinner then drive back in the early hours Monday morning in readiness to do a another week of solid driving. I class myself as a good driver, I’m quite good on a track but nowhere near good enough – I’m not Captain Slow but I am hyper-aware when I’m driving and having a sixth sense for a child running out following a football is not skill set that is going to get you ahead of the pack at Snetterton. I’ve had just one accident that was my fault aged 17, just 3 months after I got my licence apart from that, nothing, or at least no incident that I was responsible for. On the road I drive swiftly but with my eyes and ears fully open, I’ve never been caught speeding, not one speeding ticket, not even a sneakiest of speed camera has ever been able to catch me out.

I’ve driven every make of car, I say that with reasonable confidence, there are some obscure pre 1950’s manufacturers that I’ve yet to sample but apart from that I have driven or at least manoeuvred every type of car, sometimes up to 100 different cars a day. I’ve driven some shockingly bad cars, in terrible states of repair. I’ve nursed cars across the country that most people would not want to attempt to move off their driveway. Sometimes truly awful, end of their life bangers, where the owners have handed me the keys and literally ran away. I’ve limped along in these poor souls for those extra miles that they thought they’d never do. I’m glad to say that those cars were the exception as opposed to the rule and that I have driven thousands of high end cars that have been brand spanking new.

So now you all know, this information along with the fact that you are looking at the pages of MTI will almost certainly allow you to come to the conclusion that I am a motor trader. You’d be nearly right as I’m officially an ex-motor trader so no need to retain my anonymity on here, I am out of the shadows and into the civilian world. The above Mondeo is the first car that I’ve ever had to register in my name, out of the hundreds of thousands that I’ve used, it’s the first car that I’ve owned.

You see things got a bit, shall we say, tough.

Read Part Two Tomorrow…