There I was relaxing with a new bottom----

There I was relaxing with a new bottom and sills after years of neglect, when I was suddenly grabbed again and had my front wings and front panel ripped off! I'm gonna get that bloke who's organising all this!
I thought he was up to something when he arrived the other day with a flat package marked; Middle Barton and handed it over to my mate Steve. They spoke for a while, looked me over and poked about a bit.
"It should only cost £xxx or so." Says Steve. Next thing I know the angle grinder's out and screaming metal's hitting the floor.

It's worth all the pain though-I can look the world in the face without my raggedy grin caused by having my front panel rotted away at the bottom. I had a couple of little holes in the inside of my bonnet done plus one by the rear window. My new front is a genuine Fiat original with all the little holes and slits to take my decorative aluminium bits and medallion. I'm still a bit sore but it's worth it to look like this at last!

All this welding and current surging round me is getting me quite frisky which is more than I can say about the white Morris Minor I shared the workshop with. He had his engine out and his front panel off. He did look very well painted though and he's cleaner than me. The black one on the ramp last week was nice and I found out he'd got a proper engine-a Fiat Mirafiori 2 litre job and smart new discs all round with disc alloy wheels. He looked a proper Q car, only the front grille said he was different until he started up.

I wonder if I'll get a battery soon and come to life properly? I don't like these blackouts. I never know what'll happen when I wake up.

What did I say? I was dozing last Tuesday when suddenly I was pushed out, put onto a trailer and whisked back up the road. They fiddled around getting into the drive then slid me off into the garage.

'Thinks.Where am I?' The garage was dry, had a much bigger door than last time and the floor was red.
'A New Garage!' I yelled and woke up the spares in the boxes at the back.
'Shut up!' Something yelled. It sounded like the old 600 gearbox.
'But the garage is new!' I yelled back. I couldn't get over it. For several hours I chatted with the bits in boxes and found that they'd been back several months enjoying the space while I was being ripped apart.

The garage has a red painted concrete floor, a metal frame and plywood inner cladding with outer cladding in white Hardie planks. The roof is topped off with an immitation slate steel sheet called Meta Slate and has an inner roof of insulated steel sheets. The door is a roller shutter in a fetching dark green which runs up and down without waking me. Oh, and it's got lights ( the garage, not the door!). Very nice!

All the tools are still here but now stacked on steel shelving and in plastic storage boxes. Even the dreaded electric cables are no longer writhing from the hook on the door. I also appear to have some railway track and engines(OO guage) to share with me and the Punto. I hope they don't intend to spread.

Stuffed with damp Junk!

Well the garage was-not me. I'd been stripped down and my intimate little bits were scattered all round the garage.
There was the ever present danger of a vital part of me being ruined by the damp which now penetrated the woodchip roof of the shed and the increasingly unholsome corrugated concrete roof of the garage.
Can you believe someone roofed a shed in chipboard? I was regularly showered in wood crumbs when spiders trapsed across the ceiling.Very messy!

When the Y10 left us he was replaced with a silvery Chinquecento Sporting who was a delicate little flower and suffered a burst radiator, swiftly followed by a distorted cylinderhead when a foreign object found its way through his grille. He was replaced by a slightly superior Punto who always points out that she has Climate  Control not simply air conditioning. One used to open ones quarter light for a breeze.

She was getting more spots dropped on her from the crumbling roof and at last a decision was made and work began on the garage replacement.
Boxes were packed with things too useful to bin and some things were actually thrown out.
One morning a transit arrived and was loaded with the contents of the garage which went off to a local storehouse. One more trip and I was feeling very exposed. I wondered at first if I was going to have to brave the elements in the front yard but I was whisked away and pushed into a stall in a local barn behind a Morris Minor restoration firm.

This was almost exactly the situation I'd been rescued from all those years before. I began to worry again that the Autostrada in the sky was beckoning. I shouldn't have worried; I was rolled into the warm, dry workshop and reunited with some of the panels that had been sharing the garage with me. They'd suffered from the damp and had to be stripped and re coated before work on me could start. I was apparently a bit of a novelty for the men working on me. Although they were used to welding, they spent all their time repairing rusty Morris Minors. One was delighted to work on a different make of car and another started talking about his days as an apprentice for a Fiat garage.

I quickly had my left floor replaced along with a neatly patched rear wheel arch and numerous other improvemants. A new inner sill arrived from Middle Barton Garage and went straight on to my right side. God, I looked good! Life was getting better by the day!

Rain on the roof and on---everything else!

As I said earlier, it rained. Did it rain? All the boxes got spattered and so did I. At my age rain is not what you need in your garage.
I started to feel the effects quite soon and knew the WD40 would be needed. My sticky door stuck and the flat tyre welded itself to the damp chip board floor. Spare parts and household goods oozed slowly from fat damp cartons and formed extra clutter on the floor.

The old currugated roof was supposed to be in a type of waterproof concrete but it was way out of guarantee and little pin holes dripped dusty stains onto poor old me below.
The garage had been added to by various owners over the years and consisted of the main garage some 25 feet long by 9 feet wide and a once smart wooden shed tacked alongside. The rear half of the garage had been removed at one side to join the party with the shed and a flimsy 4 x 2 beam held up the roof. The front of the shed was made into an office with a separate door. The shed had more windows than it really needed and spiders took advantage of the flies and moths attracted to the light. The whole place was festooned with webs. So was I pretty soon! Urgh!
The new owner was tall and the shed was low so progress was slow as he didn't like spiders any more than me. When he started to work on me he had to clear a space first.

That's what has taken the time to get me repaired. The boxes gradually went off to live indoors and shelves were put up. One week he set to and cleared a large area at the back of the garage and began taking bits off me and crawling round in the dust beneath me. An angle grinder was produced and sparks and bits of steel flew in all directions. Small fires broke out in the detritus on the floor. God, that was sore! I moaned but he took no notice.

After lots of cleaning and probing and removing bits of me it went quiet for a week or two and all was peaceful. Time to doze and remember my old handbook and nice times on smooth roads in the sun.
Then he arrived home with a large grey boxy looking item with a long bendy tube sticking out of one end and an electric cable out the other. I gathered it was a welder of some type but not like the gas or arc welders that had been used on me before. This was a Mig welder. A thin coated copper wire slid out of the thick tube as a button was pressed. A large zap of electricity and a small cloud of gas forced a fierce bright flame to lay a little trail of molten steel to the given point.
I was that point! Did that make me jump? But it also improved my memory with stray voltages zapping around my crumbly steelwork.

It was all quite exhilherating for an old car! For several days I was knocked about,cleaned in obscure places and probed at. He even cut some of my front wing off to get at the rusty A post (that's car talk for the first upright bit where the front door hangs from) and inner wheel arch. I have some lovely Fiat manuals on my bodywork and spare parts if you'd like to see them sometime!
I had a length of steel tube welded  into the gap where my door had been to stiffen me up before the left side of my floor was removed and then things ground to a halt.

The garage was also occupied by a larger car, a strange chap who I had difficulty understanding. I think he came from Malaysia but he seemed to be made with Japanese parts. He had a very nifty looking twin cam engine that he was very proud of but his trim inside was not much better than mine and I'm pretty basic!
He left the garage after a while and I could hear him outside in the drive in all weathers for a few months.

 My new companion was another car about my size-a red Lancia Y10. He kept arguing that he was actually called Ipsilon Day-chay, which I still think is a rather silly name but Lancias have always had odd Greek names. He never explained what the 10 stood for!
He had all sorts of bells and whistles and could tell immediateley if one of his bulbs had gone out and could wipe his own headlamps. I loved his remote control opening rear side windows-I wish mine even opened.
I also had designs on his alloy wheels which I found would fit me. How could I get them off him? Humm.

The years came and went and I was left pretty much alone although the odd spare part arrived occaisionally and was stored away just in case.
The Y10 had grown old along with me but he was in constant use and finally he was told he was too far gone to repair and went off behind a Land Rover never to be seen again. A sad day, as he was a really nice little fellow even if he was argumentative.

The day after he went his wheels reappeared in the garage. Obviously my owner and I both thought I would look good in alloy wheels. They're a size too large but hey, who cares?

Back to life!

It's been some time, I'm not sure how long, since I was conscious enough to think straight. I think I was last compos' about sixteen years ago but rusting metal isn't much of a power source. I do remember someone connecting up my engine to a bursting, juicy battery and firing me up but it was short lived.
My new owner had re assembled the box of bits that sat where my back seat should be but became overwhelmed with the task of getting me on the road.

Old Fiats are renowned for rusting but then, how many Austin 1100s have you seen lately? We all get old in the end and without a bit of help, we all fall apart and rust in the same places. I had a set of new sills fitted once when I got a bit past it. Unfortunately, the welder didn't remove the rusty originals and the tin worms really got going in the dark and damp!
Another owner who liked driving around muddy fields didn't help as mud is excellent tin worm food! I'm not sure if he actually had a licence but I got tired of fields-ghastly wet places.
I digress.

The latest owner had been doing a bit to help me back on the road to recovery by buying parts for me. A nice pair of black sills, a new bonnet and two new floor pans appeared early on when he sold a rather smart Fiat 126. Nice Polish chap he was.

I heard the poor little devil complaining when he lost his garage to me and had to go and live on a hill in Sussex. I was quite happy lounging under a tree listening to the birds and looking at the modern cars passing by. Have you noticed that no one seems to have their engine at the back nowadays?

I digress again. Must be getting old.

After a few months I was put on a trailer and thought, "This is it for you Luigi. The great autostrada in the sky for you!" But no, we had a nice drive out into the country past smart cottages and fields full of sheep and then I was dropped off in a much bigger garage. Chuffed?
Not half!
Safe but not very sound I was the sole occupant apart from about thirty packing cases and various tools. Then it rained.