I’ve said this before but I love old cars.  I know that new cars are better made, more comfortable and go faster but they don’t have any charm, there is no passion or emotion in new cars, to me they are just boring.

Over the weekend we went to a car show in Woodinville at the Chateau Ste Michelle’s winery and it really wasn’t very good.  There were lots of new Porsches and Lamborghinis which had beautiful lines but weren’t my cup of tea.  Give me an old classic any day.  I’ve been working on James on this, trying to explain to him how character is important and I thought I was making progress.  He was really into old ’67 Chevy Impala’s with big V8s that look and sound fantastic, but he’s clearly moving on as he now likes modern Lamborghinis.

But I like cars like this Austin-Healey.  There were only around 14,000 of these cars made back in the early 50’s the the condition of this one was amazing.  I love the story around Austin-Healey’s, apparently Donald Healey created a one-off car called the Healey Hundred for the 1952 London Motor Show.  Leonard Lord who ran the Austin Motor Company saw the car and commissioned Donald to make a car for Austin, the result was the car below, the Austin-Healey 100.  This was made by Austin in Longbridge and the coach work was carried out by Jensen in West Bromwich.  It got it’s name because it could get to 100 mph which for it’s day was a big deal for a production model.

Remember that little bamboo plant I took to work?  Well it’s doing really well, largely due to the care and attention being given to it from Carter and Master Chief.