Why your classics need a winter warm-up | Thank Frankel it’s Friday

I don’t own any valuable cars. I have done in the past and what happens is they sit in the shed, never get used, make me feel guilty and get sold when they’re no longer as valuable as when I bought them, or will become shortly after I’ve sold them. Don’t ask me why, it just seems to be the pattern of my life. Instead, the cars I own are worth hardly anything which first means I don’t worry about them, but the real significance is they’re all perfectly suited for enjoying locally. Any further afield and I always have to be in something related to the day job.

So once a year, in the dead of winter, they all come out. Or as many as I can persuade to start. And that was the weekend just gone, when it was dry, clear and had been warm enough in this part of the world for long enough not to have to worry too much about salt on the road.

The stated reason for the clear-out is so I can sweep out and tidy the shed, which indeed I do, but really, I just want make sure the old dears haven’t picked up any winter maladies during the quiet months.

I knew the old Land Rover would be fine, because unlike the others it gets used more in winter than summer. Also, and so far as I am aware, in the over 40 years it has been in my family, it has never failed to complete a journey, which for a car built by BL is saying something. It just chunters on, despite the fact I still require it to work hard, carrying logs, ferrying rubbish to the tip, towing the trailer and being my daily driver when the snow falls thick and hard. A bit of choke, a bit of a churn and the 1950 2.25-litre straight four whirrs into life and settles down to a smooth and immediate idle.

I’m still learning the 1958 2CV despite having owned it for seven or eight years. And partly because I still suspect that it is somehow trying to lull me into a false sense of security. I bought it from the Wheeler Dealers mob and discovered almost immediately that 12PS (9kW) from its 425cc motor wasn’t anything like as funny as I imagined. At times it was borderline dangerous. So I took it out, wrapped it up and replaced it with a later engine from a 1964 2CV van boasting, wait for it, 17.5PS (13kW). It’s still not much but when the difference being able to keep up with local traffic and trailing a column of fed up traffic behind you everywhere you go, it’s the difference between being able to enjoy the car guilt-free and not.

I’ve not run it for a while and, as I always do, held my breath somewhat as I cranked it over. And as it always does, once it had sucked the fuel through from tank, fed it through its 28mm Solex carb and into the simple little engine, it sparked up as if it had been used yesterday. One drum brake or other was momentarily bound on as I tried to ease forward but it released in an instant and that was that.

Then came the Caterham, my most recent acquisition and, at only 25 years old, a positive whippersnapper relative to everything else. But it was still the most difficult to start, largely because, unlike the Landie and Citroën, it doesn’t have a choke. What it does have are two large sidedraft 40mm Weber DCOEs to fill and an engine originally designed for the Ford Anglia in 1959. Back then, with a 1.0-litre capacity, it developed 39PS (29kW). But by the time it had gained a crossflow head, been expanded to 1.6-litres and then bored out as far as it would go at 1.7-litres by Caterham, fitted with a hairy cam, big valves, those carbs and so on, by the mid-1980s it was up to 135PS (99kW). Which for an iron pushrod lump of that size and vintage is, in the vernacular, going some.

At first, it doesn’t want to know at all. Pump the throttle and try again. Still nothing. Then, at the third time of asking it gives just the slightest cough. One spark igniting one puddle of petrol sitting atop one piston. That is all. But it’s enough. Now it’s only a matter of time. A few more coughs, a couple of indignant snorts and the Seven blasts rambunctiously into life. So I take it out and try to compose a photograph of them all with the brand new Land Rover Defender I’m running for a while and which is doubtless worth more than all the others combined.

But there is one missing. Left in the shed under a cover is my little old suicide door Fiat 500. If I spent a couple of hours fiddling with it I could probably get it running, but it needs work before it returns to the road and I’m still in two minds as to whether to keep or sell it. I do really like it, but even I can see I don’t need two twin-cylinder air-cooled cars from the 1950s, and every time there’s been a choice, I’ve always chosen the Citroën. Which is why it’s not in the photograph.

I ran all the others up the road, just enough to get them properly warmed through, cleaned them off and put them back to bed. It’s only just February, but I can feel what my father used to describe as ‘the motoring season’ fast approaching. And I can’t bloody wait.