It is so often the case these days that to own anything that has a function is to own something that only fills that function. There is no aesthetic with the functionality. But there are still a couple of vehicle manufacturers that manage to maintain a place in a functional world whilst still retaining an edge of aesthetic. For me these would be BMW and Mercedes. I own an old Mercedes van and love its looks with a passion. It always starts first time and has never refused to carry the load I place in it.

Mercedes vans are, by their very nature, a work horse to be relied on for all occasions. The number of times I have passed other makes on the side of the road broken down are numerous. Mine just keeps on going. Don’t get me wrong though my van does break down but mainly I have it serviced very regularly and buy my required van parts as soon as they become necessary.

The last time I waited to have my service done because I spent the servicing money on a brief holiday to see some friends in Spain, I ended up having to take a taxi down to the van breakers to get an overdue accelerator linkage that had snapped. The thing is I knew from the last service that it was on its way out and did nothing about it. So really it was down to me.

The motto of this last year of ownership is that one should service regularly and never scrimp on the purchases of parts when they look like they need replacing. This way whenever anything breaks there will always be a spare part to replace the broken one and apart from the inconvenience nothing is lost except a little time nd possible some skin from the knuckles of one hand.