As a kid growing up in London, I would regularly walk past a Bond GT between home and grade school and home and my best friend’s. Today it’s frightening to think that, if he were around, I’d bug the owner, not someone we really knew at all, to let me sit in it and get him to open the hood and tell me what everything did. There again, as pre-teen’s we’d think nothing of jumping on a tube train and spending the day at the museums in Kensington – times change. The owner must have really liked the car because I remember him buying an Equipe 2-litre convertible a few years later.
Maybe this was the early influence that explains why I am drawn to the slightly off-beat choices in car and motorbikes. The memories certainly factored into my decision making when I’d earned enough money to buy my first car - a Herald 13/60 convertible. If it were closer, I’d think about making room for it just to stoke childhood memories.