ABOVE: Classic Car Tours

Classic Car Tours In France

We’ve always loved driving around France in old cars. From our old rust bucket Triumph Spitfire 20 years ago, via umpteen VWs and 2CVs to our current 1974 Citroën camper van, my wife and I have spent holidays trundling round l’Hexagone whenever we can. There’s real pleasure to be had from cruising relatively traffic-free rural back roads at a speed and in an atmosphere which seems to suit the cars of yesteryear. You’re closer to the countryside too. Modern cars tell you which way to turn, protect you from the heat and cold, filter your air, take all the hard work out of steering and braking, flatten out the lumps and bumps and generally isolate you from the world. But in a classic, you’re a driver again – not just a passenger with a wheel in your hands, only tolerated until they work out a way to hook the satnav up to the steering and do away with human interference altogether.

But much as we love old cars, they do have disadvantages – they take a lot of maintenance, they often drink a lot of fuel, and they have a distressing tendency to suffer sudden forward motion failure (you never ‘breakdown’ in a classic – you just experience some more of its ‘character’). Naturally, the further you are from home the more character you’re likely to experience – that’s the way the world works. And you’ve not experienced the true depths of Gallic obstinance until you’ve tried to persuade a modern French mechanic even to look at a 1973 Triumph Spitfire with a broken brake pipe...

Read the full article on pages 60-63 of this months issue.

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