Old cars can still teach us something

Picking up our Berlingo from its MOT test last week I was warned that although it had passed the test, for a modern vehicle the engine was much smokier than it should be.

The suggestion for curing this was interesting, "Fill up from time to time somewhere that isn't a supermarket."

This shouldn't come as a surpise to me. I've found water in fuel before when buying at a supermarket and when I commuted to work in my Beetle, I knew that after filling up at the Shell garage in Wellesbourne the car ran better than when I used a supermarket.

I'd always assumed that modern engines would be set up to handle todays rubbish fuel so we didn't need to worry. It appears that this isn't the case though and some decent car-food still helps an engine covered in wires and plastic as it does the basic 1300 four-pot that showed motivated my bug.