The Unachievable Search For Perfection

MY FRIEND at work, Ron, was a serious car aficionado, who convinced me to subscribe to Car magazine, which set itself & its readers, lofty heights. Comparatively speaking, that is, seeing as magazines for petrol-heads these days are filled with glorious pictures of unobtainable supercars.
But then, reading this & other mags put me "on the road" for the eternal quest for my ideal car.
I did like the Saab 900 but there were a couple of irritations: even with my seat lowered to its bottom level, because I like to have my backrest fairly vertical, my hair often touched the headlining. And also, on the overrun, the gear lever seemed to rock back & forward again when accelerating. As the engines were mounted back to front in Saabs - with the gearbox in front of the engine, this may have been the cause? Anyway, I was always aware of this, & began to explore the benefits of rear wheel drive cars.
One day, mooching around town while getting the Saab serviced, I came across a seldom-seen-in-Canada car - a Rover 3500.

 It was a 1980 model, so I expect the date here was 1983 when coming across the car, in this same gold colour. And...I fell in love! This car had so much going for it! A smallish V8 engine, a hatchback, a sunroof & air-con. Central locking! Power windows! What more could I ask? The price was even bearable, at $6000, which was indicative of heavy depreciation, some 60% from new, but why (I didn't ask)?
So I bought it. My wife was furious, perhaps justifiably as although I'd previously expressed an interest, she seemed not to think me serious, & admittedly, we didn't really need it, as we still had the fairly new Saab 900, but by then I'd borrowed half the money & brought the car home. Now we had 2 cars; one for winter days & a more luxurious one for the rest of the time.
Perhaps that was the excuse she needed for finding a boyfriend & then moving out? I'd tried to appease her, giving her the Saab with a personalised number plate, but the writing was on the wall.
I kept the Rover, and it wasn't long before I began to see why the Rover had suffered such serious depreciation. This was the era of tremendous industrial strife in Britain, with very bolshy unions that Mrs. Thatcher was dealing with, but my car was a product of those unfortunate times. A wonderful car in design, the execution left something to be desired. The panelling on the doors was really just thin mouse fur velour over cardboard, & frequently popped out. The engine sometimes cut out while driving, momentarily, apparently due to Rover's poor choice of Lucas ignition. But apart from that...I loved the car.