My first supercar cost me £50.

No, seriously.

£50.

It had a 956cc engine, a mighty 44 horsepower, and to 17-year-old me…

it was bloody magnificent. 😂

The car?

A 1974 blue Renault 5.

As you’ll see in another story, I passed my driving test in November 1990. Not quite sure how…but somehow, I did. My sister owned the Renault 5, and I bought it from her for the princely sum of fifty quid. There was just one small problem…It wasn’t actually legal to drive on the road. 😂A few days after passing my test, my boss at work told me to bring it in. “We’ll get it MOT’d,” he said. So we had a look at it. Then sent it down to the MOT station.

It failed.

Apparently, it needed:

A headlight.

A seatbelt.

And a repair to one of the rockers.

So off I went to the scrapyard. Second-hand headlight. Second-hand seatbelt. Then came the rocker. We pounded some metal into place, filled it with Bondo, smoothed it over, gave it a bit of paint… a proper 90’s fix. …and tried not to look too closely at what we’d just created. 😂

Back to the MOT station for the retest.

They knocked on the repair.

CLANG.

It sounded like metal.

Which, to be fair…

it was.

They were happy.

MOT PASSED.

And just like that…I was finally legal to drive my £50 supercar. With full third-party, fire and theft insurance, although in hindsight it was probably more likely to catch fire than be stolen — and any high-speed police chases were highly unlikely.

Car legal, it was now time for some upgrades.

I know — let’s put a £350 Blaupunkt car stereo in a £50 car. Add a graphic equalizer, a booster and a subwoofer.

At this point, the stereo had more power than the car.

My knowledge of cars back then was limited, to say the least. It may have been a Renault 5. It could have been a Lamborghini. I really wouldn’t have known the difference.

Because the way that car made me feel…

felt awesome.

It was freedom.

It was mine.

And as far as 17-year-old me was concerned…

44 horsepower had never felt so bloody fast. 🚗💨