RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29824, 17 May 1962, Page 21

RANDOM REMINDER

NEW WHINE FOR OLD

One thing and another, including successive Governments and the insistence of the manufacturers on demanding princes’ ransoms for their products, have made it difficult for most people to buy new cars very often. But every cloud has a lining of something and there is compensation for the owner of an older car in the ties of friendship which are usually established between himself and his vehicle. Only the owner of an old car knows the warm pride of feeling, the surge of response after he has pulled the string

on the choke and saved a stall on the Colombo street overbridge, the feeling that the old girl is with him still. Even the syncopated slapping of the pistons becomes an irresistible rhythm, often accompanied by something akin to an electric guitar when the passenger moves in his seat and sets off the broken spring. Sharing triumphs and disasters over a long period inevitably forges bonds of comradeship, with the garage receipts like a bundle of love letters. But there is a time in the lives of many men

when it is possible to buy a new car. He is pushed into it by his wife and family; selling the old one is rather like shooting the family faithful hound. And when the gleaming new car is in the garage, and the children talk excitedly about horsepower and their mother about loose covers, the owner may stare sadly into space, speculating on th» fate of his old machine, whether she will be properly understood. He might even paraphrase the wellknown old song and call it “I Wonder Who she's Missing For Now*