PAST JALOPIES

Travelling Smurf Pt.6

Goodbye to an old friend

It suddenly occurred to me recently that we hadn't published the sixth and final part of 'Travelling Smurf', the tale of my 2nd generation Toyota Surf - christened the Smurf, ‘cos it rhymes with Surf. (Parts 1 to 5 can be found in issues 7-11)

She was a cracking 4x4, and one that taught me that Land Rovers aren’t the be all and end all when it comes to offroaders, and let’s not even mention reliability. She took us on some amazing trips, towed the caravan and never once let me down off road, or left me stranded at the side of the road. Actually, that last bit isn’t actually true.

One dark and wet December evening after spending a day playing off-road at a friends farm near Queensferry I was 20 minutes into the journey home on the M56 when I suddenly heard, and felt this awful grinding noise coming from the front off side wheel, it was bad enough to call the local exorcist!

Pulling over onto the hard shoulder (remember those?), reversed a little bit thinking that it maybe a stone lodged in the brakes, but it was still there. As it was wet, dark and on the drivers side, I didn’t bother to investigate, and promptly phoned the rescue service.

Within twenty or so minutes she was on the back of a flatbed, and a further 40 minutes after that I was reversing off outside Muddy Towers, but with one noticeable difference, the noise had disappeared! This led me to believe that it actually was an errant pebble that had got itself stuck in the brakes. Weird timing though, I’d been driving for 20 minutes before it showed up.

During our time together our Smurf had adorned the pages of 4x4 Mart magazine on numerous occasions, and judging by the amount of questions the editor forwarded to me, she created a lot of interest.

Then, back in 2009, our esteemed editor, Emm, left the magazine, and the new one didn’t bother returning any of my emails, so I had no one to write for. At the time John, my father-in-law, was thinking of scrapping his 1993 Lexus LS400 as it had developed an annoying fault of randomly cutting out. Since I had a thing for big V8 saloons, and this 4.0 litre monster had my name written all over it, I bought it off him for £100.

And so it came to be that after 5 years and 25,000 miles together, the time had come to pass our Smurf onto someone else who would enjoy her.

Have you ever had one of those moments in life when you aren’t sure if you’re doing the right thing? That’s how I felt when Dan was looking over the Smurf and the sale was imminent. There was no doubt that he would be driving her home, she was in great condition.

I was actually quite sad watching him drive off as I had nothing but great memories with her. She was a great motorway cruiser, commuter, play toy and explorer. She was regularly serviced with the odd part being replaced when required, and during that time she was utterly reliable, but alas it was time to move on, I had a V8 Lexus itch to scratch!