1996 Fiat Bravo

 

picture sourced from 

This is the same color as mine and ironically this one ended up in a wreckers yard too

I don't know who the wee fauline is, but my Bravo never looked this good

With the payments from Black Beauty (Citroen AX Gti), I got to drive away in a brand new Fiat Bravo 1.4. It was "lilac" blue, very light blue, almost gray, not a definitive color, the kind of color you can never make your mind up about.

It lacked the raw power of the Gti, but the creature comforts were a thousand fold improved. I could now talk to the person in the passenger seat and the radio was built into the car and worked.

I put a pair of DTM style wheels on her, had the bumpers and mirrors color coded and that made her look a lot more sporty, nothing like the full Arbath kit, but sexy all the same. The calmer nature of the car, seemed to calm me down too, I didn't drive quite so hard.

There were no real problems with the Bravo except that when I put it in reverse the horn honked. The dealership in Sligo had to completely rewire it at no cost to me.

I took her on a road trip to Edinburgh in Scotland and it was a pleasure to drive on the motorways and really fun on the small cross country Scottish roads.

I went off to College later that year and everyone in the house would use the Bravo, it was the perfect car for sharing. My sister put a scratch up the side of it and my mother ran the oil almost bone dry, but neither of their abuses amounted to squat compared to my brother Derek's experience.

I came home from college and Derek and the dogs met me at the front of the house as I came walking up the lane.

"I've got good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?"

"I'll take the good news first" I said naively.

"Well, your air bags work and the bad news is your car doesn't"

Lots of explicative followed and total disbelief.

Derek had borrowed the car to got to Dublin with his girlfriend and on the way home in County Cavan, they went flying off the road, down a steep field and smashed into a tree. The car was totaled.

They towed it to a wrecker's yard in Inver and it was sold for as scrap. I saw it a year later all fixed up in Letterkenny and I felt a tingle of want in me, I even had the spare key on my keyring still. But she was gone, she was someone else' trouble now. Derek was a bollocks, but at least he wasn't killed or maybe I should have killed him.

Here's an appropriate video of a Bravo in a field

1993 Citroen AX Gti

Some Portugese kid's car, but identical to my one and look sitting next to it is a lilac blue Bravo

 

I drove my AX like this a little too often

Photo courtesy of www.cardomaine.com

You never forget your first, whatever it may be. I was eighteen-years-old and Dad and I went on a mission to find a little  hatchback for me to get around in while I was out of school for the year.

I had a Corolla or Civic in mind, or even a good looking Corsa/Nova. Something with a 1.2 or 1.4 engine to get me from A to B and sometimes to C.

Outside of Bundoran we found a beast of a Opel Corsa that someone had given a dose of steroids to. It had giant flared arches and bull wheels that would have fit a NASCAR, it was completely mad looking and I wanted it at first sight. Dad talked sense to me and we got back in his car and went further up the road.

In Sligo we stopped into the BMW dealership to see if they had any trades about the yard. They didn't have much, but Damien the salesman did mention that they had just got in a 1993 Citroen AX Gti on a local trade.

She was a beauty. Black as night, alloys, sunroof, an exhaust you could shove your fist up and electric everything inside. I didn't think Dad would go for it, but he said to take her for a test drive.

It went like a hot snot and sounded like a bad tempered child screaming in a grocery store. Dad drove it back to the dealership and said "Don't you think it's got a bit too much power?" I looked at him, pleading and an hour later we hit the road back to Killybegs and I was behind the wheel of The Black Beauty.

Life with the AX was schizophrenic. When it was just me in the car driving like a mad man racing whatever came along it was great, listening to the booming exhaust. But put a passenger in the front seat and it wasn't so great. Conversation was nigh on impossible and I couldn't get the radio to work most of the time, so I had taken to strapping my gettoblaster into the back seat for I.C.E.

I went everywhere fast. To and from work, over and back to Letterkenny to my girlfriends and up and down to Dublin. The AX was a little work horse when it needed to be.

Then on a rainy night on the way to Donegal Town, coming around a bad bend in Bruckless I lost control and sent my Black Beauty into a ditch. Bollocks.

I got her towed out, brought to a fix-it-man to get the dents out and then to a French car specialist to service the damage. That's when it was discovered that the car was bent, not from my accident, but from the previous owner. The guy at the Frenchy garage told me I'd been driving "a death trap."

A big denial from the BMW dealership followed, but a few phone call with a "I'm gonna sue your fucking arse" tone from Dad and they agreed to take the AX back and put the payments from the last few months towards another car.

It was a sad day departing from the AX, it was like dropping off your dysfunctional child at the orphanage in exchange for the golden child, little Peter Perfect.