StrayCat

Hi Karl There’s not much science behind what I can tell you but I hope my experience might be helpful. Our family live in north Scotland, almost exactly 450 miles from our home. In recent years we’ve visited them about forty times. Creatures of habit, our route, driving style and refreshment stops are reasonably similar each time. Out of curiosity I tried to assess whether the two petrol types made any difference and recorded the details of several round-trips, alternating the normal fuel with, what I call, the high octane stuff. Despite the extra cost of the premium fuel, indications were that the car consumed almost a gallon less over the 900 miles. That excercise was in a Volvo S60 2.5T but, equally unscientifically, I sense that our S Type also prefers to sip the Premier Cru.

The French use the phrase ‘Old Timers’ (in English) for many of their veteran and vintage car shows. Perhaps that’s how we could differentiate between lovingly cherished popular motors from the past, and those which qualify as bona-fide classics.

Future classics? I bet there are many motorists of ‘a certain age’ who can look back at having owned cars that are now considered classics. If only we didn’t know now what we didn’t know then! Then, cars were usually very different to what we are offered by today’s manufacturers but I wonder if that isn’t a double edged sword? Modern cars are technological marvels but technology moves on faster than mechanical engineering ever did so is it likely that the four wheeled beauties we see in today's showrooms could be consigned to the scrap yards faster than you can say “planned obsolescence”? With a motoring future likely to include different fuels and driverless cars (at least the girls can text safely!) are some of us driving the very last cars that might be considered ‘classics’ in the future? If that is the case, how many of us will be brave enough to keep the car we own today, unlike those of us who wish we’d kept the cars we owned forty years ago?

A friend asked "Why have you bought an old Jaguar?" I replied "Because I can't afford a very old Jaguar."