A few months back I parted ways with my old Mercedes and I’m not ashamed to say it utterly broke me. This was a car that I’d driven for years, something I’d fought tooth and nail to hang on to but the time eventually came to get rid. She wasn’t a particularly grand old rig, certainly not anything special to anyone other than me but I’m going to at least try to explain why she wasn’t just a car, why she meant so much more but why I’m glad she’s gone.

From as far back as I can remember my parents were taxi operators, dad also being a full time driver. Mum had her cabbie’s license too (she was actually one of the first female drivers in Dundee, how cool is that!) but she mostly had people drive for her and stayed at home  to look after her brood. As with most working class families money was always a wee bit tight and I don’t really remember them having a personal car when we were little. Holidays were mostly of the caravanning type and dad would simply whip the sign off the roof of the taxi, strap the ‘van on it’s arse and off we would go.

Childhood for me was actually pretty blissfull for the most part. For a time we had trotting horses (harness racing for you posh fowk) and some of my earliest memories are of holdays to York Races, loooong summers in the caravan in Monifieth (so the parents could still work) and absolute freedom. Sometimes when a taxi had to be replaced my folks would run the old one as their own car until it died but that was as far as a personal vehicle went really. That all changed when I was in high school.

I remember coming home from school one particular day and my mum telling me they were getting another car, this time it was theirs and not for a taxi. Now for most of my life they had taxied Volvos, Austin Ambassadors, the odd ford Cortina or Sierra, a Saab or two and a brief stint with a couple of Lada Rivas (proper sturdy little buggers and went like the clappers if you stuck a Fiat Mirafiori engine in them but as per…..). At that particular time they had were working a couple of Mk2 Cavaliers so when mum had me guess what they had bought I listed all the usual makes and models I’d known them to have. Each suggestion was met with a more and more excitable ‘no’. I was stumped.

Enter the first Mercedes.

She wasn’t flashy or new, not by any stretch of the imagination. She was a big old W reg beast (DSC 797W to be precise…funny what you remember), missing a wheeltrim and was a bit careworn but for a proper wee council estate lad this was the epitome of class. The big chrome grille, the three pointed star mounted on the nose. I was in rapture!! Over the time my folks had her my dad and I spent a lot of time getting her back up to scratch. We tidied up the bodywork, filling in dents and painting black sills and chin skirts back to the car’s signal red, we changed the worn beige interior to a lovely black part-leather and pottered about fixing all the little niggles the old girl had. In time she was replaced by a newer blue Benz which saw the same love and attention from me and my pop. That in turn made way for a more modern gold affair and so on until they ended up with the Green Goddess.

Throught those years I obviously passed my driving test and ran my own never ending procession of bangers; Datsuns, Minis, a few of the old cabs and a surprisingly brilliant little Fiat. My folks would ALWAYS made sure I was insured to drive whatever Merc they had at the time and would actually let me use it if they were not. High days and holidays kinda deal. Dad would be quick to give me the keys whenever I wanted, mum would always make a show of letting me use it but I knew secretly she really didn’t mind at all, even if I didn’t always (ever) replace the fuel. Anyways I guess what I am getting at is at the centre of me and dad’s love of all things motorised lay old crusty Mercs.

As some of you are aware my dad has numerous physical complaints and as time progressed the old clunker cabs were replaced by sleek new Skodas for ease of ownership, the battered old Mercs lost favour to a Kia people carrier and latterly brand new Skoda estates to accommodate dad’s mobility scooter. What was constant though was our clapped out old Merc. When I came back from overseas I couldn’t afford a new car so she stayed, decaying slightly but running like a Swiss watch. When I went to uni to study nursing I could barely afford to run it never mind replace it buut It saw me through and served me really well. Naturally then when I began my nursing post and actually had a decent income I formed a plan. Buy a daily driver, stick the old doyenne off the road, save money, restore her. Job done.

Well, not quite.

You see the daily driver turned out to be the biggest money pit on four wheels. Thought I’d gone for the sensible option of a diesel Jaguar estate, just a Ford in a fancy frock. Terribly pretty to look at, terribly expensive to repair and BOY did it need repairs often. So the grand old dame languished in a garage for a couple of years until the Jag statred to behave itself (briefly) and I had the chance to roll her out and MOT her. In in hindsight however the damage was done. Rot had set in, the chassis started to crumble and before I know where I am fast forward two years and she’s too expensive to repair. So she had to go. Fiscal sense. What I didn’t really prepare myself for was how hard this would hit.

It’s just a car eh?

Actually it wasn’t, she was so much more. She was a car full of queers on manys a roadtrip to Edinbugh or Glasgow for nights out. Two pals driving up to Stornaway to visit a long missed chum.  So many memories I can’t even list them. Believe it or not she had my partner Mal’s name on the bloody numberplate keeping in mind I got her donkeys years before Mal and I even met. She was familiarity, reliability and comfort. Something I could depend on, something static and unwavering when so much was changing but most of all she was a direct, tangible connection between me and my dad. He could drive her as and when he wanted, could have that connection to something he loved so much. Something that gave him joy when joy was something he didn’t have a lot of.

Now she’s gone.

It’s funny how people form attachments to inanimate objects and how those attachments can often mean more than people do. When I initially decided to let her go I immediately knew that she had to be scrapped. I couldn’t bear the idea of anyone else getting pleasure from what was mine. Selfish as that sounds I couldn’t handle the thought of seeing anyone other than me or my parents driving about in her so I made a point of selling her to a chap I knew would break her up. He came and collected her on a flatbed and I completely and utterly broke. Ended up sat in my parents’ house sobbing my wee heart out knowing full well that a link to my relationship with my dad had just……gone. But really, it hadn’t. Even in that moment my dad was the one who had the sage words of comfort because he totally understood how and why I felt so bereft. He had taught me to be a car buff because he was a car buff and he had mourned the loss of manys a set of wheels in his time. Now though, now I’m glad she’s gone.

These days I have a sporty little number that’s comfortable, nice to drive but most importantly is (so far) very reliable. I don’t worry it might break down, I don’t have a repair bill to pay every month and I don’t have to work overtime just to keep it on the road. This means that the free time I have I can spend with my dad and we spend it out. Out in the car. Out for a filled roll and a cuppa. Out running errands. It doesn’t matter where or why, we just head out. Me and him, father and son. We head up the Glens, around Fife, to museums, to car shows or we sometimes just drive aimlessly all over the place. Doesn’t matter where as long as we get to spend time together.

This has absolutely made our relationship better. I get to have quality time with my childhood hero and I adore every single second.

And I owe it to a rusted Mercedes.