Oh no. I’m driving along a lightly potholed road (when are we not?) and as the offside rear wheel of this BMW hits another dinner plate depression in the tarmac, the back-end steps sideways. Not by much, and in a manner completely unsurprising to the driver of an old-school pickup truck, but enough to know that Something Was Wrong. Again.
Just a couple of months ago this 20-year-old BMW, bought three years ago for £5500, had just had a major bush replaced within its multi-link rear suspension, as the car had been wandering slightly at speed. The transformation was impressive. It tracked straight, felt more stable and steered more accurately. Pleased with the improvement, I took the car to France for a road trip with some mates. But as we neared the Eurotunnel terminal in Folkestone, I was beginning to sense its new-found commitment to the straight and narrow starting to fade.
This wasn’t rabbit-in-the headlights uncertainty, but the BMW’s progress down the road felt faintly drunken. By the time it was home in Hertfordshire, it had clearly had another pint. Back to Sytner, my local BMW dealer, it went. Before it was airborne on the ramp, a technician drove the car to get a sense of what it was doing. A bit of speed and decaying road soon revealed the problems, random bumps triggering shimmies through the car, mild weaving an occasional accompaniment.
