My very first car was a VW Bus from 1973, it was darkgreen with white bumbers. I bought it just after gotten my drivers license. It was january 1990, it was freezing cold and the windshield was covered with ice…on the inside. My first guestion after having paid the 300 euro (cheap back then) was “eeeehhhh, where is the heating?”. The seller just laughed and vanished in about 0,005 seconds.

 OK..drove the bus home, I managed to replace the exhaust with the heater chambers and even got the Ebersprächer-heater working. It was a good bus, it did run well, had a lot of space and it was mine. Even my dad approved..the very day he wanted to me to go and get some tons of building material he had ordered to renovate his house…then the bus and me got very handy.

After about one year the bus got sold because I had fallen in love with an Saab 99 GLS with twin carburators…it was a vanilla-yellow three door “combi coupe”. It had one special gimmick, the front passenger´s seat was turnable, because the previous owners wife was handicaped and needed this turnable seat arrangement in order to get in and out of the car.

I had a lot of fun with it, we made some cool trips together. I bet it is scrapped already…too bad, because the 70´s and 80´s Saab´s have a very special feeling built in, these are machines built for the eternity, never ever letting their owners down, functioning as long as you just give them a tiny bit of appreciation. I always feel safe and at home in a Saab…from the 70´or 80´s that is…newer cars are rubbish, they have no soul and filled with so much technology that the owner can nothing but drive it. Back then you could actually repair your own car…

Why?

The world is supposed to be in a deep financial crises, the oil/ petrol-prices were sky-high. Now all of a sudden they are back to normal. How long will this last? Are the pockets of the oilcompany barons filled again?

No idea.

What will the automotive future look like? I have some ideas. We will be driving hybriddrive vehicles that soundless glide through the traffic. Inside you can choose any enginesound you like to. “Today my car sounds like an Ferrari”…and the entertainment system produces the perfect sound of an Ferrari engine….inside..but on the outside there is only the sound of the wheels rolling over the tarmac to be heard.

How will the future GTI look like? A three-wheeler? Fast….silent..enviromentally correct…or will we be commuted in big trains or buses that soundless and effective take us where ever we need to go, the private cardriving will be forbidden? Right now it looks like the era of gasoline-engined cars has reached it´s peak…the oilreserves are drying out…like they did in the sixties..seventies..and even in the eighties.

Still, every decade had their supercars. Ferrari F40, Porsche 959, McLaren F1,Lamborghini Countach, Shelby Mustang, Ferrari 250 GTO…the list can be made endless long but the guestion remains…how will the future look like and will the engineers manage to build in the vibrations too, from that Ferrari engine getting warm?

The wheels were more black than silver because of the brakedust..how could this be..when did I wash it the last time….well four days ago…why does it look at me with those moody looking round headlights?

There was nothing else to do. Off we went do this DIY carwash. About 30 mins later…it looked like new again and the moody look was gone. After the wash we went for a ride on the countryside, the sunset was amazing and somehow I felt connected to my car. It seemed as it was pleased being clean, having this laid-backride.

I know every corner of this car…when something is wrong…I can just take my tools and repair it. There is no need to plug in some computers, there are no high-tech-gadgets that could spoil your day, there is not even power-steering. You actually need to drive it..and not just sit there in an perfectly airconditioned-enviroment.

I can feel every small stone on the road, the steeringwheel tells me it´s very direct story…there is no hesitation…and if you hit the brakes without that special touch, the wheels lock.

Sometimes I get to drive brandnew cars…I feel isolated from the world outside, OK…modern cars are much safer…but however, you don´t drive old cars in a way thinking “well..what could happen with all my airbags, ABS,ESP´s and god knows what..” That is where you as a driver stop to think…you just step inside…buckle up..and get transported.

I want to feel alive when driving…not feeling being driven around..

The Golf has a handling made for far more power than it´s tiny 1,6 litre 70 horsepower engine. It has a K&N airfilter, the difference is noticeable, the car has a very nice throttle-response and it remains silent. A lot of people seem to think that a loud car automatically should be fast.

I have nothing against those people….but..imagine a Renault Twingo with it´s 60 horsepower, sounding like some monster from hell with it´s loud exhaust…

Being discrete was always “my way”. Rather a silent..but fast car, than one that sounded a lot but being challenged just ”wet it´s pants”.

There is a very special road where I grew up. It has a lot of tight curves, bumbs and if you have done your homework, you can fly through some curves and actually experience how your car lifts off the road, flying for a second or two, sideways through a curve. It is basically a road on the countryside, people live outside the city, they need to use this road to get home…so as I did.

But however, if you have gasoline in your veins, this road turns in to a challenge. 18 minutes today from a-to b. Can I crack 17,5 mins? When I was younger , hazard was an unknown factor. Pushing yourself and your car to the limit and beyond was everyday business.

In march this year I drove that special road again, I am older now..and can not imagine how I could risk it all back then…. Is this getting mature or coward..I dont know, you tell me…

I saw big cars with crashzones, with about 50 airbags or so, crawl along the motorway in such a low speed that grandma with her rollator would have had no challenge at all overtaking us all. I saw some kids strapped to their childseats and all off a sudden I remembered those endless journeys in the backseat of my dad´s Ford Taunus back in the seventies.

There were no childprotection-seats back then, me and my sister used to sleep straight across the backseat, or on the floor..or we just stood between the frontseats annoying the parents with our endless questions. I have two kids of my own and I would never ever even dream of driving a single meter with them not being strapped in to the childseats.

Imagine, some 30 years ago we just did not know about the hazards. There is one special memory, involving a Opel Ascona MK1in rallyversion, equipped with two bucketseats for the driver and co-driver…where the backseat used to be, was the sparewheel and the pipes of the antiroll-bar. My dad had done some repairs to the car and was supposed to drive it back to the owner. As always there was little me crying to come along.

“Ok” my dad said, “jump in the back…hold on and don´t let go” Off we went, wild drifts with me flying around, trying to “hold on”. For me it was great fun, better than a rollerscoaster-ride..I had the feeling my dad got nerved by the neverending giggling from the former backseat. It was one of many days that I for ever shall remember. Imagine someone doing that today.

I bet the parent would be locked away for life or something…no wonder that my generation grew up to be some tough nutheads……

There is not so much to say about myself, there is more to talk about my passion for cars in any shapes. When I was a kid, I spent eternities in my grandfathers garage,he showed me the light. I grew up with cars, as kid I raced go-karts, when I got older, I bougth scrap-cars that I with a lot of love and care, rebuilt and always with tears in my eyes sold.

There is no actual count of how many different cars that already passed through my passionate hands…but here is a list of some of them VW Bus 1973, Saab 99, 900 in various shapes, Volvo 343, 360,480,740, Opel Corsa, Astra f,Kadett, Vw Golf Mk1, Passat, Golf Mk2, Ford Fiesta, Sierra, Alfa Romeo Alfasud Ti,Giuletta, BMW E12, E30, Honda Accord, Mazda 626, Citroen Xsara, Vw Bus1980,Bedford bus.

Well, those are some of the cars I drove throughout the years. Unfortunatelly there are no pictures of the them, but the memories remain deep inside me.

A lot of them cars are so called classics today, time goes on and the cars we were really impressed by as kids, like the Sierra, are obsolete today, when gimmics like navigations systems is a must..back in the 80´s we read those roadmaps and still found our way. Unbeliavable that we actually managed without cellular phones…