"G" reg Rover 216S (circa 1989). Had a weird "HIF" (Horizontal Integral Float) carburettor. It never matched its official performance and fuel economy figures and for some reason it never liked trips to the seaside, to wit, Pembrokeshire where my parents lived.

Heading back home, it gave advance warning of its intentions by stalling on the hill a quarter of a mile from Ma and Pa's house. After I had been lulled into a false sense of security, it stalled again, violently, while pulling away from traffic lights in Monmouth; so violently in fact that the cars behind nearly cannoned off my back bumper, lots of language usually represented as "%&@£!" directed at me. Once on the M6, it once again bided its time until I pulled off onto the A56. Then, as I took my foot off the throttle, there was an over-fed gurgle from the exhaust and the car ACCELERATED very rapidly up the slip road. With the roundabout looming large, I had to hit the clutch, brakes, handbrake and ignition key all at once.

The garage cleaned out the carburettor. Then my mother fell ill two months later, so I had to go back down to Pembrokeshire. The scenario above was repeated almost exactly.

Someone later took the car for a joyride and did me a favour by causing so much damage bypassing the alarm and steering lock that it had to go, for one pound in part-exchange for a much better Rover 420 (fuel injection, no carburettors to object to healthy seaside air).