Budapest to Bamako

Alright... I have two questions.

1) If you do an endurance rally, do you have to get your car painted like machinery in a children's cancer ward?

2) Could they have made this look any less fun? I mean I realise rallying like this is ony just two slightly smelly guys in a car for a month... but let me have some ilusions willya?

Ah, that's better.

Pijot, the Lagos taxi

I don't know what I feel about adults collecting toy cars, but if you are interested in that, you can find a Lagos Taxi Peugeot 504 toy here, or rather you can't because its so popular that its sold out.

These toys go for between 15 and 75 Euros a pop.

Pininfarina: exquisite design, hyperbolic overdrive

This is the website of the Italian designers Pininfarina, creators of the Peugeot 504. And of course the rest of the cars they created, the Lancia Aprilia, Alfa Guillietta, Ferrari Testarossa blah blah blah...

It's a gallery of amazing, cool design.

However, on their timeline for the 1960s, they write about the unveiling of the Cabriolet in 1969, and how the Coupe became the "Queen of Africa" in the African rallies (by which I'm assuming they mean the Dakar).

But NO MENTION of the 1968 launch of the 504 Berline...

It revolutionised travel in vast swathes of the world. In Nigeria it became the first domestically mass produced car in West Africa, giving stylish transport to the up-and-coming African bureaucrat.

Curious that the modern historians only want to concentrate on the sporty models. I think the sedan looks much better than its cousins anyway.

At the 1969 Paris motor show launch of the Cabriolet, Sergio Pininfarina goes into a kind of hyperbolic meltdown, where bad English meets designer bullshit:

"Italian design and manufacturing for a car which made the French dreaming, a sort of free ‘tone-production’ as regards the theme of the sedan, also designed by Pininfarina, a free ‘touch’, to use the musical term”.

Not really sure if that is exactly what he said, or just the garbled version on their website...

These days the company is pootling about with much less important projects, like the Ferrari 599 GTB, and the electric BLUECAR

The Hollow-Way

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This is absolutely my favourite road to drive at the moment. Holloway Lane, the Hollow-Way, from Turville to North End.

I see if I can power up it in one go, clean, without having to halt and find a passing place to accommodate a car coming the other way.

If you have to pull over from the narrow tarmac, you get into thick leaf-mould. Once, extracting myself from that on the way up meant I spun a shovelful of dirt into the back bumper with a satisfying squeal of wheel-spin.

The first time I drove up here a large fallow deer clopped across the road in front of me.

On the way there and back there is one of the best views of Oxfordshire from the road near Cowleaze wood, especially at sunset.

Service

I took it in to a garage called Eclectic Cars in Weston on the Green.

Their business is mostly doing up super-valuable Aston Martins, Volvo Amazons and Jaguar MkIIs and the like and selling them on for tens of thousands of pounds.

My car isn't in that league and I'm not going to be spending the kind of money they're currently going through re-doing an old Mercedes 220 SEB Coupe. They've spent nearly £3,000 on parts for this rare barn find, and that's just a start.

But I figured they know a bit about restoring older cars and could set me right on the 504's condition.

I'd had a word with Stuart before I bought the car and shown him the pictures I'd been sent, He thought it looked OK, and they seemed happy to help.

If you look at the video above you can see the 504 in the background, having its under-seal repaired.

They also did a service, replacing a leaky gasket on the oil filter that had been spraying all over the sump.

I wish I'd taken a picture of the engine in its original condition, covered in 30 years of crap. That's all gone now.

Their chief mechanic Martin altered the air/fuel mix, making it a bit leaner, slightly more air in the mix than before.

This, he said, would mean a healthier engine, but would require considerable choke on starting.

"You are planning to use it aren't you?" he asked, "it's a beautiful driver".

It turns out, that this new mixture has affected the power somewhat. It runs much smoother, but there doesn't seem to be as much oumph to 3rd gear now, especially when a bit cold. But if it is a better thing for the engine, it's manageable.

Predictably they found some more things that need doing, including a blown exhaust manifold gasket, which is responsible for the tappet-like sound sound when the accelerator is down. (you can tell it's not a tappet in the cam-shaft -apparently- as it gets louder when you put your foot down).

In their previous projects gallery, they've got a Citroen D Super, one of the most beautiful cars of all time. I'm going to remember that shade of grey when, eventually, I get a respray for the 504.

Long-term, however, the idea is that I find someone to teach me how to look after my car, and how it works, so I can do this sort of stuff myself.

Setting out

Here's a picture of me setting out at dawn from my hotel in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, with the new Peugeot 504. Do I look excited?

My route home - nearly

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This is almost the route I took home. I got deliberately lost around Waalwijk, "Whats the point of just taking the boring highway?" I thought. It was a beautiful day.

The Netherlands looked like one big farm play-set, laid out on a child's playroom floor. I drove down single track roads, through groves of trees, along canals. Sometimes the road didn't cross the canal and didn't go the way I wanted - South West. Several times I had to go back and find another way.

It was showering and everything seemed wet, even when the sun was out.

When I crossed over the border near Hoogstraten, I cheered and whooped. Although in the best tradition of motorized convoys, I just powered through Belgium, stopping only in Bruges to buy some chocolates, beer and Fois Gras.

At the Channel Tunnel the car overheated. I pulled up to the ticket booth and steam started to leak out from under the bonnet.

Cursing Gert-Jan's name I waited for the EuroTunnel mechanic to come and certify that I wasn't going to blow up 10 miles underneath the Channel.

I called Gert-Jan to ask how to open the bonnet (the handbook is in Dutch and I had forgot to ask) He said his wife had been driving home past the hotel I'd stayed in the night before and seen the car in the light of a street lamp. She'd known it was Gert-Jan's and knew he had sold it. I couldn't tell if he was happy or sad, but I knew they were going to miss it, and he wasn't to blame for it over-heating.

I cursed myself for speeding through Belgium like a Panzer on amphetamines.

Luckily there was an hour before my train for the car to cool down, and me to find some water to put in the radiator.

As I was pouring the water in from a bottle, a man pulled up and asked: "have you got enough there?" he opened his boot to get me a bottle of water and I saw it was absolutely stuffed with champagne.

"Have you got enough there!" I said, and he looked at me with a touch of irritation.

On the Kent side, I got completely lost and my phone died, no GPS and no phone call if I broke down again.

I had to buy something called "a map". Quite peculiar.

Trying to avoid the motorway, I got lost. At one point I found myself going the wrong way down the M20.

I decided to stop at my Dad's house in London on the way home.

"I've done something a bit stupid," I said.

"You've bought shares in an Irish Bank?" he countered, after thinking a moment.

We both agreed if it was a stupid thing to do, it wasn't the worst thing that I could have done.