A few weeks ago I posted about our new car, a rather wonderful 2 CV that is destined for a new life in Provence, with a plan to do a bit of a road-trip at the start of May to drive her from Exeter down to The Luberon. As you can understand though, our plans are now on hold and we will have to wait until later this year, or even perhaps next year to be able to take her down.
It was always going to be a bit of an adventure, as driving any older car over 1000 miles always has potential to go a bit wrong, but driving a 50 year old 2 CV the same distance could end up being more like a scene from the Whacky Races.
In the little trips that we have done so far, we’ve realised she is a great little car, starting beautifully and just purring her way around the Devon lanes. She may not be fast, but she goes up hills quite happily, although we do worry that we may need to start pedalling when it gets really steep.
She has her little eccentricities and we found the doors occasionally flew open if they weren’t shut tightly from the outside, but happily after a bit of tinkering Andy has managed to solve that and we no longer find ourselves grabbing the handles as we go round a bend, just in case.
She is a character and just such fun – it’s the first time we have had a car that has turned heads and brought a smile to peoples faces as we have passed. There is something about a 2 CV that just makes you smile, whether you want to or not.
As she will be staying in the UK for longer than we had originally planned, we have taken the time to do some research on her, reading through the huge file of papers that came with her, finding out more about her former life and where she has been.
It’s been fascinating and we’ve found out a lot about her – she started life in Belgium in 1971, moving to the UK in the mid 70’s and spent most of her life near London. The main thing is that we have found she already has a name and throughout all the paperwork detailing her life, she has in fact been called ‘Fifi’.
It seems only right that as she has had this name for over 40 years, she should continue to answer to that name, so Rose has now become Fifi overnight.
To be honest Fifi (a diminutive form of Josephine) is probably a better name for a bright red, characterful and iconic French old lady, rather than Rose, which although its the name of one of the main characters in La Gloire de Mon Pere by Pagnol, is still very English in comparison.
So Fifi, will have a little longer to rest in Devon, before she takes to the roads of France for the journey south. Hopefully by then we will have found out about all her character traits and we’ll have a perfect road-trip, however if she manages to hide a few then we could be in for quite an adventure.
Vaucluse Dreamer 