After failing my driving test 3 times, my parents were kind enough to give me a helping hand in the style of buying a car for my mum and insuring me on it as well. When I went out that night in June 1996 I was thrilled to see this car we were going to get. A very shiny little Fiesta 1.1L with plastic body mouldings down the side topped by nicely patterned Go-Faster stripes. Such a fun little car that I permanently borrowed it when I went to University in London after a year there. After several repairs on various things it went really well and I became dependant on it and washed it regularly and basically loved it as much as any first car.
In July 1998, the ownership was officially passed to me and it was time to start accumulating my NCD. It had done 87k when we bought it and I must have done about 12k in it before it was officially mine.
It was great, I did consider faster cars but didn't want to sell this car, so thought I'd hang on till MOT repairs became too much. I had been driving by on my own for 3 years and at 21 I was starting to feel chuffed about not having an accident and hearing about people I knew having accidents and with occasional near misses that we're all used to I actually felt as if there was a forcefield around me as I drove and didn't think I would ever crash, but then....On the afternoon of Monday 31st August 1999, I was living around St Albans in Hertfordshire for work for 3 months and popped out at lunchtime to get a stone checked at a local museum. I decided to take a different route back to the farm that might be quicker. It went along a windy two-way country road through farmland, woodland and quarries. I had just turned a bend and was calmly accelerating to around 45-50mph (60mph limit) passing a quarry to the left and ahead saw a junction to turn left. After that was a fairly sharp bend to the right in a wooded area...
All I noticed was a car had slowed down to nearly stopping waiting for me to pass so he could turn into the junction on my side of the road. I came to within abour 25 yards of him and saw a black Toyota MR2 approaching behind him. Not suspecting anything at all, he pulls out to overtake - catching me totally by surprise! Slammed on the brakes as hard as I could, what else could I do? How can I avoid him? I knew I was going to hit him. It was like approaching a car in bumper cars, except I didn't want to so tried to move to the left slightly (brakes locked on) but avoid hitting the lamppost approaching after that junction. I could not do anything other than hope I could get through with minimum damage if any....
In no time whatsoever I looked as the front of his car smashed into the side of mine, the surroundings flashed around me as I felt the car get smashed and crash into the ditch. It felt like those spinning cup rides you get at fairgrounds as the car spun round with huge G-Force and the hard impact at the back of the driver's side caused a clockwise spin, with the back end of the car falling into a deep ditch at the side of the road, overshadowed by small trees. The car had nestled amongst the branches and I was looking up at a 45 degree angle out the windscreen.
Then came the trembling, I had had an accident, what was going to happen, what about insurance, am I going to get whiplash or other injuries? How's my car going to get fixed? Then I saw someone approaching from the turning where the other cars had pulled over and several people were chatting on their mobiles and passing cars stared and asked if it was ok. I quickly put my CD player out of sight (didn't want it stolen) and brushed glass off my lap and pushed hard to open the badly buckled door. Then crawled up out of the trench dismayed as to what had happened. Then the guy says 'Are you alright?', I quickly go 'Yes thanks' to be left alone for a bit...to look at my car.
It was then that it occurred to me just how much damage is done in a collision at just 40mph and was relieved it was not a head-on for me. Two police cars then arrived and I was instantly terrified. Could there be any reason for me to be in trouble? I couldn't think of anything. Even still, didn't really chat to the other driver apart from asking if he was OK and then got taken into a police car and interviewed. All very terrifying as your first experience of an accident. I watched as my car was pulled out of the hedges and desperately asked if it would be OK. They didn't think so and I realised that the damage was really bad. Half of it from going into the trench. Apart from the body damage down the side, the rear suspension was severely buckled and malformed. There's no way it could be moved.
I went to the scrapyard a few days later after being granted a hire car. I saw it under the trees and had to have a quick sit inside to remember it. Even started it and as always it started first time and ran beautifully. I wanted to take it back, but realised I had to move on... I took the stereo out and a couple of other small bits and also noticed that the window was still intact wound down despite the hard dent in the door!
The end result was in my favour, it was a fairly simple third party claim and costs were recovered to enable me to buy my XS, which I am now very happy with as a much faster car but still really miss my Fiesta which remained so faithful for my first few driving years.