I had a job for one year in Birmingham. My home was about thirty miles from my new job. I knew that I would be coming back to finish college after one year, and it seemed to make little sense to move for one year. Thirty miles doesn't seem much? To put it in context, remember that one hundred years is a long time in the USA, while one hundred miles is a long way in England.
Whatever else it might be, The Can wasn't particularly economical with fuel. And much as I liked it, I understood that the wear cycles of an air cooled VW were shorter than one might like. So with great regret (which would have been greater if I'd been gifted with prescience) The Can passed to a new owner. I still remember the little tug at my heart as it drove away.
The next vehicle was eminently sensible. A 1966 (only six years old, this vile thing was almost new!) Triumph Herald. Like all the previous vehicles I had no idea of the lifetime mileage because the concept of the odometer being accurate was laughable. The Herald was a wagon (arguably the best looking type of Herald), somewhat sporty with a cute chrome gearshift, had a real wood dashboard and even had a functioning heater. Sounds great! What could possibly go wrong? Well, what could go wrong was a series of problems, ending with this Car From Hell stealthily dumping all its coolant on the road, shortly followed by the engine seizing solid. I suppose that there were warning signs, but I missed them. The Herald wasn't big on problem diagnosis. For example: Electrical problems were, to put it kindly, not uncommon on English vehicles of this vintage. Triumph decided that they weren't going to have problems with blown fuses on the Herald. So there weren't any. Not one. I suppose they assumed that if there was a short circuit you would be able to follow the smoke to the source of the problem before the wiring caught fire.
It turned out that the Herald needed a new engine. The advice was honest; I still worked, at times, at the garage whose manager delivered the diagnosis. And that was how I came to learn that just because an engine reconditioner has advertised in Exchange & Mart for years doesn't mean that he's competent or honest. A whole summer went by with the Herald stored behind the garage where I continued to work sometimes (if only to keep my storage privileges), while the engine remained "almost finished". With the first golden leaves of autumn came not the promised reconditioned engine, but my old engine (allegedly) rebuilt. We were suspicious, given the stripped thread on head studs and dried sludge in the oil pan, even if it had been repainted in a sprightly shade of green. But the guys at the garage and I spruced it up, fitted it and then towed it behind a truck for a while to turn over the incredibly stiff engine.
After something like four months I was mobile again. For a week or so, anyway. It was that long before what they later said was a catastrophic oil pump failure reduced the engine to an inert lump of metal again. This time I was really mad. In retrospect it was probably the fact that the professionals from my garage were calling the reconditioner that got the engine back without charge and in just over a month.
I ended up heartily disliking the Herald, to put it mildly. Just about everything had to be rebuilt or replaced, and every time I thought that it was about done, something else would fail. One day I walked up to it, wondering where the pool of fuel underneath it came from. I needn't have wondered, but was pleased to find that the English version of Bondo will cure even while soaked in gasoline. It was during this period that I knew what the first words would be when I contacted somebody about this car: Almost invariably it was "I've got bad news for you, sir".
On the other hand, Friend Andy had a Herald convertible that was a great success, and Friend Mike had a Herald sedan that he really enjoyed until he discovered why swing-arm suspension had fallen out of favor when he neatly executed the first half of an Eskimo roll with it (a three-point turn doesn't usually mean two wheels and a door handle).
All in all, I was very pleased to move on to a much less interesting vehicle.