Once upon a time I invested in a shiny, new, red car. At least I thought it would be an investment as it promised to take me to places I'd always wanted to go. 1997 it was. In our household we'd mostly had red and green cars in the past but this new red one promised so much.
The shiny, new, red car looked the bee's knees. It made the old blue cars lots of folk rode around in look so tired and outdated. Even the yellow and green cars in the carparks seemed drab in comparison with the highly polished, gleaming paintwork on this new one. The radio of the car played the one song over and over again. Something about things only getting better.
And in the beginning everything seemed fine. The car didn't seem to use any more petrol than the previous ones we'd had yet it performed so much better. Everywhere you looked people were changing their old ones, trading in for this almost magical, new red colour. Looking back now it seems hard to believe.
But after only a short time things started to go wrong. Little niggles at first which I put down to teething troubles. But try as I might, they never seemed to go away. Things soon got much worse when it became apparent that this car had been sold under false pretences. For one thing it was nowhere near as cheap to run. The running costs were illusory because the salesman had inserted into the contract something I didn't understand called PFI which meant I had unforeseen repayment costs on it that were in fact crippling. The paintwork - once the envy of the neighbourhood - gradually lost its shine and no matter how much the garage tried to restore it with all sorts of new products and initiatives, it soon came to look worse than the older blue, yellow and green ones on the road. Have you noticed that with red cars? Apparently it's something in the pigment of the paint.
In 2007 I could see the dealership I'd had it from was really in trouble. The guy that was in charge suddenly stepped down and his second-in-command took over. This other bloke had looked after the company books for many years and had done OK at first but some of his later decisions were becoming increasingly questionable. He'd made no secret of the fact he thought he'd do a better job in charge of the company. When he took over there was a brief resurgence of fortune but he didn't seem to have any vision as to where the company should now be taken. The reputation of the company began to fall even further. But all the new guy in charge kept repeating was the mantra - " there'll be no return to no legroom and rust". He was like a stuck record.
The killing blow for the company was probably when a national newspaper revealed details of the expenses accounts for its employees. It revealed many shocking claims, some even breaking the law and several company members went to prison as a result. Hardly a staff member was unscathed in the scandal and confidence in the company hit an all-time low.
Soon, you sensed people all over the UK who had bought into these cars were getting really angry, and throughout the country people started looking to sell their cars and invest their money elsewhere. The price of second hand red ones in particular started plummeting as more and more appeared on the market. Before long it was really difficult to sell not just your red car but any car, no matter what colour, at any sort of price. If you went to the bank to try and get a loan for a new one - you had to queue right down the street and the next one - and that was if your bank was still there!
Finally I could stand it no longer and in 2010 that tired, beaten-up jalopy just had to go. When I did the accounts when I had my new two-tone car, an odd looking combination of blue and yellow, I saw that the red one had completely emptied my bank account. Then I had to go and shop evermore in Aldi because I couldn't afford even Tesco's prices. The car that had promised so much had effectively bankrupted me.
Now it's 2014 and next year I may get rid of the two-tone one, which has hardly done me any favours. I went to the garage this week and they've got on display another new red one, though they have dropped the adjective "New" from its description. But there was something uncannily familiar about it - as if a lot of the parts of the old red one had been salvaged and repackaged as new. On the forecourt was a sign that if I bought it, this model could last me 10 years and in that time my life would be transformed. The snakeoil salesman came up to me and promised me the best possible deal - far better he said than any of the dealers selling different coloured cars would give me. He even said he'd freeze my petrol prices in the first year.
I wasn't sure, having been caught out big time once before. And it didn't help that the car company was now called Ed and Ed's Motors, having been taken over by two guys who were previously apprentices. Like the previous encumbents neither had any life experience doing anything else. They had even apparently been conceived in the back of a car, born in one and brought up in one.
I was in a dilemma so I spoke to my mate Gareth who is a dealer. Not a car dealer, I hasten to add but you'd best not ask. He offered an opinion - it doesn't matter which colour you buy because they're all basically the same. They look different on the outside but are all actually made in the same factory - in China. And whichever colour you choose you'll inevitably end up having your bank account wiped out and you'll be sorry you bought it.
For another opinion I rang Elizabeth but she said any advice she gave me would have to go through the books as otherwise it might get her husband into trouble, as a bloke called Stan had been monitoring him. It's not you is it, she joked. However she did tell me her husband would go for the red one, as it had made him a packet and had enabled him to go to all sorts of places he'd never expected. He'd been one of the lucky ones apparently. She explained it was like a pyramid selling scheme basically. Get in at the top and out before it collapses and you'll make a fortune. But be one of the latecomers to the Party - well, you've been warned. Many years ago her husband had bought a yellow car but it lacked the kudos he craved, so he had no reservation in ditching the yellow one. And he'd never looked back.
No-one could satisfactorily answer my questions so in the end, do you know what I did? I decided it was about time I stopped relying on the car and do what I could for myself. So I bought myself a bicycle which gets me to where I want to go under my own steam. I am not beholden to my car anymore, I take responsibility for what I can in my life myself - and I'm tons happier for it. There's still lots of coloured cars around where I live, and red remains the favourite colour, but not overwhelmingly so now. But somehow unlike in 1997 when we all drove our shiny, new, red cars with smiles on our faces, now the people driving them around look ever so glum and embarrassed to be seen in them. Our love affair with the red car, even any car it would seem, has well and truly run its course.
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