Spare a thought for the nation's breakdown recovery crews this Christmas

THE BIGGEST hazard of driving home for Christmas – at least according to Chris Rea’s 1988 hit – is being top to toe in tailbacks. Yet if it wasn’t for a trusty AA man the other day, I wouldn’t have even made it that far.

It’s typical Simister luck. After months of managing to avoid a visit from the breakdown fairy, she would have to strike on the Friday before Christmas, just as I was preparing to pack the boot with freshly-wrapped presents and head home for the festive season.

Naturally, being the sort of chap who’d rather run a42-year-old car built by British Leyland and a 15-year-old French hatchback acquired for less than most of my mates would pay for a decent shirt, I’m used to the occasional thing going wrong. It’s just not the sort of thing you want to happen on the day you’re driving home for Christmas!

In this case, the Peugeot 306 I’d bought a few weeks earlierdecided it only wanted to use three of its wheels for the long trip north – the offside rear wheel had completely seized up, and nothing I did was freeing the brakes off. Defeated, I dialled the fourth emergency service – and resigned myself to being in for a long wait.

In all my time peddling automotive tat in lieu of a shiny new car, I’ve had a distinctly mixed experience of all of Britain’s big breakdown recovery firms, including one instance when it took a staggering ten hours to recover my oldMini from Carlisle. So – on the day when most of the nation’s motorists were bound to be having the same festive intentions I was – I was hardly expecting miracles.

Yet within half an hour the stricken 306 had been jacked up and a chap in a hi-vis jacket had given me a diagnosis – the rear brake cylinder had given up the ghost and needed replacing before it was going to be safe for any pre-Christmas cruises up the A1. All of which meant finding a garage who’d be prepared to do the job inside of a day.

My usual menders of choice were too busy mending an equally problem-prone old hack – my colleague’s Saab 9000, no less – but Mr Hi-Vis had a mate at another place, and after a quick phone call and a bit of arm-twisting said garage agreed to getting the job done the same day. Sure enough, a couple of hours later I was reunited with a Peugeot ready for the important job of running the Simister family’s Christmas presents home. While I’ve had some distinctly ropey breakdown recovery jobs in the past, this time my knight in hi-vis armour genuinely was the difference between getting home and being stranded at the office, 200 miles away.

So spare a thought for the chaps in their brightly-coloured vans as they chug across the North West this Christmas. Every driver they get back on the move over the festive break is another Christmas that hasn’t been ruined by the breakdown fairy.

Here’s to them – and Merry Christmas to you too, obviously!

Rover engines that (don't quite) go bump in the night

FOLLOWING my poking fun at one BMW’s less than finest moment the other day, I breathed a sigh of relief at not having to deal with a rather more British breakdown before!

My Rover 214SEi might not be the most exciting bit of motoring ever made but it has a special place outside the Simister household because it does all the things the clapped out old sports cars don’t; it always does upwards of 30 to the gallon, it’s quiet, comfy and by and large lives a largely breakdown-free existence.

Considering it cost just £300 it’s definitely been one of my better buys, getting me everywhere from the Scottish borders to Bedfordshire, from the furthest reaches of Snowdonia to the church spires of York. In fact, just last week it managed to make it all the way to a campsite in the Norfolk Broads crammed with camping gear, and get back again. It’s a car that’s earned my respect by doing what it does brilliantly.

Aside from the well-publicised head gasket maladies long suffered by Rovers powered by the company’s K-Series engine, its biggest Achilles heel is that it struggles to start if you leave it standing for days on end in damp conditions. Given this week’s weather forecast and that it refused to play ball when I got back from my trip to Germany last year, I decided to play safe, leave it at my parents’ place and let them look after the old dog for a few days. A better bet than risking it, leaving it in downpours for days on end and then expecting it to miraculously burst into life.

Famous last words, and all that.

It was on the train heading back from Manchester Airport that I got the call. My dad, keen to make sure everything on the Rover was up and running, popped down to the local petrol station, popped a few quid’s worth of petrol in....and then discovered he couldn’t start it. Even the starter motor wouldn’t turn. Zilch. Nothing.

It’s hard enough dealing with a kaput car at the best of times, but when you’re over an hour away on the train and unable to do much to help it becomes that bit more stressful, and the mental images of a peeved-looking parent leaning under an open bonnet rain became too much to take. In desperation I rang Gaz, my long-suffering mate in the mechanic trade, to see if he could drive the five minutes up the road and take a look at the stranded Rover.

Which I’m glad he did. It turned out the reason why my old man, more familiar with cars from the Seventies and Eighties, couldn’t get the Rover going was because he couldn’t get its admittedly unfathomable immobiliser switched off. Naturally, as soon as it was the leather-lined Brit burst into life without so much as a cough. A close call!

I touched the (plastic) wood on the dashboard. My Rover’s back to its reliable old self!

BMW engines that go bump in the night

MIDNIGHT, just outside Cologne.

It's the later side of late and - having landed less than half an hour earlier at Cologne-Bonn Airport, all that's on my mind is reaching my destination as quickly as possible and catching up on some much-needed shut-eye. Luckily, I have the back seat of a BMW 5-Series Touring, a derestricted autobahn and a driver who knows how to make the best of both. The smooth, smart and devastatingly quick way to head for your German home from home.

Or rather it would have been had the Munich machine's temperature gauge not suddenly shot up and steam not started swirling out from beneath its bonnet, miles from anywhere. I don't know much German, but it doesn't take a master linguist to work out what the driver's instant analysis meant. "Auto kaput"...

As we stood in the darkness, perched on the hard shoulder of what basically is Germany's equivalent of the M1, I looked at the sorry-looking executive express and reflected on all the times my own motors had left me stranded in similar situations. The time the otherwise unremarkably reliable Rover, for instance, mysteriously cut out for no obvious reason at all. Or the one where my Mini decided to shed a wheel at 40mph. Or the one where my Mazda broke its propshaft - or rather, I sort of broke it.

In the end, it ended far more smoothly than any of us might have imagined - within half an hour the Beemer was on the back of a truck dispatched by ADAC, Germany's answer to the AA, and we were back on track, headed for our destination. What a destination it was!

The place chosen to mend the unhappy estate wasn't just any mechanic's workplace - it was an oldtimer garage, or classic car specialist in Petrolhead English. Even in the half light of the silly hours of the morning I could see it was packed with classics in near concours condition, with everything from Alfa Giulias and Giuliettas to Fiat 124 Spiders, homegrown favourites like the Volkswagen Beetle and a BMW 2002, and a right-hand-drive V12 E-Type with a curious mix of local German plates and dials still set to miles - rather than kilometres - an hour.

In the space of an hour I'd seen two very different extremes of German motoring, and finally made it to bed at about 2am shattered but surprisingly enlightened for the experience.

It just goes to show you not all of those clichés about German reliability are true...