The pandemic does many things to us, and I’m sure I’m not the only one taking more time to reflect on the past (or maybe it’s just age, who knows…). Anyway I was sitting contemplating the other day and quickly realized how many of the old memories are linked to one of the many cars I’ve owned or experienced in various ways. Given you read this blog I dare guess it may be the same for you as well? So in a slightly philosophical way, I thought I’d take you down part of my own memory lane this week.

By the time you read this (and assuming you do so in the week after publication), we’re in Zermatt for a hopefully wonderful skiing week ahead (yes, we are lucky to live in a country where ski stations are still open!). We drove here from Zurich in the family car par excellence, a Polestar-treated XC90 (at least that…) which was packed to the limit as next to our family my daughter’s boyfriend is also here with us. The first time in 20 years or so we had someone else outside of the family as part of a longer trip but obviously a natural – and enjoyable! – evolution. Living in central Europe since our children were small, car trips have been very much part of their life since their youngest years, and we always had issues understanding other families telling us about how their children screamed after 30 minutes in the car and asked when they’d be arriving. For us it was the contrary,..

Many of these trips were between Switzerland and my native Sweden where we had a summer house during ten years. Roughly 1600 kms in one direction, usually over two days with the night spent in northern Germany. I remember these trips well, the cities we passed, the route that became familiar through the years, the places we spent the night (nothing better than a real German Schnitzel & Weissbier after a day of Autobahn!) and of course also the feeling, especially at the time the family car was the AMG E63, when the left lane opened up and you could floor it! What I don’t remember is the time no doubt wasted in congestion and heavy traffic – somehow you forget about that, even when it felt hopeless at the time. The most vivid memory was however 7-8 years ago, when my wife and I had decided to fly up to Sweden instead and spare the children the long car trip. Upon announcing this my daughter (who was in her early teens) burst out in tears – for her, the car trip was equal to the start of our vacation, and something she looked forward to. So the flight tickets were cancelled and we were back on the road.

The Triumph TR4 I had during almost ten years was another source of vivid memories. From finding it in Copenhagen early December to driving it from Basle (where it had been shipped to) to Zurich a few weeks later in far from ideal oldtimer weather. Basle is no more than 100km from Zurich but it was still a bit of a shock when after coming home, the oldtimer specialist I went to for a check-through said “it’s a good thing you only drove here from around the corner, because these breaks are nothing but rust…”. After that, as long-time readers of the blog will know I was extremely lucky with the TR4, hardly having a single issue over all the years. The most memorable trip I did was no doubt the one my wife and I took to Lausanne 5-6 years ago. We chose the small roads, over many mountain passes, even running into a real Swiss cow festival. A car memory that definitely sticks, but unfortunately in the end, those trips were too few and far between, reason why I sold the TR4 last year.

There have been many cars through years but going all the way back to the beginning when I was 18 and got my first car, a -75 Golf, as blue as the ocean, with a beige interior. I bought the already well-used Golf in northern Sweden, drove it the 600km or so to Stockholm, and then all the way from Stockholm to Florence for a summer language course. I still remember arriving to Florence late one evening, with the rain pouring down and a map on my lap to help me find my way in a completely unknown city. It took a while and I had an early practice of Italian ahead of the course when I had to ask for help, but I finally made it. It may be a surprise to younger readers but it was indeed possible to find places before GPS’s, and it had the additional benefit of actually having to speak to people! After the course I drove the car from Florence to Nice, had it there for a year whilst studying at university, and then drove all the way back to Stockholm. By that time my Golf had around 270.000 km on the clock and I hadn’t had a single issue during the 15-20.000 km or so it had been mine. There is truly something special with your first car!

Even more special than your first car is perhaps your first car memory, which for me is linked to the years we lived in Monaco when I was a child. I’ll never forget the weekends we spent skiing in the southern Alps in the winter. Most of the way back would typically be one big traffic jam, and you would always have the tough guys driving past the whole line on the narrow mountain roads, calculating that they would somehow be able to get back in line when someone came in the other direction. It mostly worked, but not always, as proven one time by a Renault 5 Turbo II that passed us and a few hundred meters later had crashed straight into another car. You’re certainly allowed to be nostalgic over old cars, but it’s important to remember that most things were not better before – car deformation zones being one of them!

Now the children have grown up and this ski trip is perhaps the last family car vacation we do together. The XC90 is a lease for another couple of years so I’ll guess it’ll stay with us until then, but as you know I replaced the TR4 with my 650 convertible last year, hoping that will be the main transport for my wife and I when the children start their own lives. The Beamer will hopefully become a source of new car memories to treasure in the future and I do look forward to them, just as I know we all look forward to the day we can return to a more normal life than most of us have right now. So hang in there and until that day comes, make sure you cherish your own car memories and stories – and perhaps share them with someone!