Owner emigration forces reluctant sale. Beauty Care

Since we only have one dedicated parking space outside the gaff in Londonland and driving over here gives me palpatations (and not in a good way), I decided that it would be sensible to sell my car. 

Coming to that realisation was horrible. Painful. I got a huge lump in my throat that I thought I'd choke on when that head-over-heart decision was made, because I really flipping loved that car.

The Polo wasn't actually my first car, but I think of it as my first and of the Punto That We Shall Mention No More as an unfortunate blip on my car ownership record. I used to spend hours on end on VW enthusiast forums deciding on small DIY mods for The Polo that I could do with my own two hands.

The first thing I did was replace the rear lights: the standard lights on this Mark 4 model are multi-coloured affairs with orange stripes, and I knew that the car would look completely amazeballs with the solid red rear light casings that came on the next model up.

You can imagine the strange looks that went around the office when I took delivery of a pair of Mark 5 Polo lights from a scrappie in Donegal.

I also switched out the orange indicators for clear versions and the orange side repeaters for crystal clear ones, got some aero wipers on, and added rear mudflaps. I had two boxes of specialist car valeting gear from Meguiars and Autoglym which were bought especially for The Polo. I used to regularly do things like clay the car to get rid of contaminents from the paintwork and knowingly referred to Halfords as Halfrauds. Funds were never going to permit any lowering or new wheels or alloys or a 16v rear bumper, but this summer I was planning a few more small mods like adding front mudflaps, replacing the rear badge, and maybe adding a rear roof lip spoiler.

There is absolutely no question in my mind that this car is superior in looks and performance to others of a similiar age so I wasn't surprised in the least when Dad found an enthusiastic buyer at close to asking price for The Polo during the week.

I was very, very sad, though.