Idle Hands: Renault GTA

Part of me couldn’t quite believe my eyes, while the other part was ecstatic. There, in the car park at Brooklands, was my dad’s Renault GTA V6 Turbo. It had made it. I had been waiting all morning for my phone to ring, to reveal some tale of woe, but it had remained silent. Instead, the car had clearly driven all 80 miles, under its own power, defying my expectations.

I had good reason to question its capabilities, mind, its age and complexity aside. Ever since my dad had bought it, a mysterious electrical gremlin would occasionally turn the car into a juddering mess. More often than not, this intermittent fault would strike after the Renault had ventured just a few miles. Cycling the power would sometimes fix it but, infuriatingly, sometimes it wouldn’t.

All manner of diagnostic processes and fixes had been tried, including resoldering its ECU and replacing countless parts, often seemingly to no effect, but fortune had evidently smiled on it or us at some point, and there it was, ticking quietly as it cooled. Finally, after so much hard work, my dad had been able to rack up some enjoyable time on the road in his GTA.