March 30, 2007 — The city yesterday hailed cabdrivers who went that extra mile for their passengers. Alande Nicolas, 52, a Haitian immigrant, was named Driver of the Year at the annual ceremony at Rockefeller Center. Just before starting his shift on Jan. 17, 2006, Nicolas saw a truck smash into a parked car at 106th Street and Riverside Drive before speeding off. He followed it for 30 blocks and wrote down its plate number. Then he returned to the crash scene and, after doing a...

Stephen Mohan has a Morgan 4/4 (that’s a four-seater), which was built in 1978. The car covers about 200 miles a week in commuting to work. It’s fun, eccentric and popular with his two young sons. It is also low-maintenance, with its aluminium body and Cortina engine.

However, the roof takes an age to put on, so he takes it off in May and puts it back on in October (often getting wet in the intervening months). The heater is almost irrelevant in cold weather, the lights aren’t halogen and it gulps down LPG. Stephen wants another characterful car, but he can’t think of one that will be as good, even though he has 30,000 to spend.

tephen is a fantastic example to those of us who love cars. He’s really living the automotive dream. There isn’t an ounce of compromise, but he isn’t being environmentally evil. This is a truly sustainable vehicle, still going strong after almost three decades.

First, I hope Stephen has the garage space to keep his 4/4 tucked up during winter so that he can bring it out for spring and summer fun. But I agree that finding a replacement is not going to be easy.

Stephen mentioned to me that the only similar car he could think of would be an Aston. He might well be right, but one thing Britain has been good at is building lovably eccentric vehicles. It just depends whether Stephen wants something that is fairly contemporary, and with a degree of reliability, or would be happy with something equally as ancient as the Morgan but with a hint of practicality. This is certainly one of the more fascinating Car Choice dilemmas I’ve had to deal with. And the good news is that there’s no shortage of excellent candidates that won’t disappoint Stephen and his boys.

A CAR FOR THE HEAD

The trouble with old and interesting cars is that they can break down a lot - unless, that is, they are built by Mercedes. I was starting to think that Stephen should consider a Mercedes SL, which has a removable hardtop that he could fix in place with his lads during the winter. Unfortunately, the SL is a two-seater.

Alternatively, there is the coupй version, badged as the SLC and available with six-cylinder and V8 engines. So it will be a bit more powerful and costly to repair than the Ford engine in the Morgan. The SLC will seat four, just about, but I don’t know whether it’s quirky enough.

If Stephen wants an oddity, then it has to be British - and it really should be a Bristol. These have huge and unstressed American Chrysler engines that run for ever. Of course, they use a lot of fuel but then Stephen will have to convert it to LPG, as he did the Morgan, which will lower fuel bills.

The Bristol 412, made from 1972 to 1982, and the Beaufighter (1980 to 1992) were not pretty cars, but they cost a substantial amount new and were fabulously well engineered - and available as convertibles. The roofs are targa arrangements with solid centre sections, so they are easy to put up. Immaculate examples are now below 20,000. Bargain.

A CAR FOR THE HEART

I believe that the Bristol would be a car for the heart anyway, but another unusual Brit would be a TVR. Again, we run into the problem of finding a four-seater as the majority of open-tops were strictly two-seaters, although the coupй, called the Cerbera, is certainly worth considering, with its low-maintenance plastic body. The trouble here is that the electrics and engines can be iffy and need a lot of looking after.

Again, it’s tempting to start thinking German again. One of the maddest things ever to come out of Munich was the BMW Z3 M coupй, which looked rather like an MGB but a lot angrier, and was a million times faster. Being a BMW, it won’t break down.

At the risk of sounding completely bonkers, I reckon that a Triumph Stag would work well for Stephen. This car did not have the best reliability record, but that was because British Leyland never quite finished developing it. Specialists have now completed the job.

EJ Ward in Leicestershire has been repairing and selling these cars since the early 1980s, and has managed to improve the cooling systems. The best examples go for about 15,000, and that will also buy Stephen a lift-off hardtop that he can refit in winter. The Stag’s V8 engine makes a wonderful sound, but Stephen will have to maintain the body carefully to keep rust at bay.

CAR CHOICE

Please write to Car Choice, Features, Independent House, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS, or e-mail James Ruppert at carchoice@independent.co.uk, giving your age, address and phone number, details of the type of vehicle in which you are interested and budget.

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