It was a stupid idea really, although I blame my best mate's wife. I was filling up my 13 year old Nissan Micra with petrol when I saw her. I waved as she cruised past the petrol station in her Mercedes CLK 230 Cabriolet, and she waved back. Now, I know that her Merc cost £46,000 and my Micra was swapped for a watch that cost me £300, but she did make the remark to her husband that started this whole crazy adventure. The next time that Terry and I were jogging together he remarked that June had seen me in the petrol station - her exact words were "Mick is not penniless, so why does he drive a heap of dung like that?" (Actually she didn't say dung she said shit, but I don't want to embarrass her if she ever reads this).Then I made the mistake of telling my wife. She also wondered why we didn't get a 'decent' car, until she saw how much a Mercedes CLK 230 Cabriolet cost. I still liked my Micra, it was economical, cheap, anonymous and yes, it was a bit dented and yes, it was thirteen years old and yes, not everyone likes slime green but I liked it. Then we went on holiday for three weeks.

We are very fortunate in owning a house on the south coast of Spain, between Fuengirola and Marbella. June is usually a wonderful time of year on the Costa del Sol, not too hot, but wonderful long, lazy sunny days. It's a struggle to get out to a restaurant for a 'menu del dia' before 10 o'clock in the evening where an excellent home made three course meal, including a drink and dessert can be enjoyed outside on the patio for £4-£5 a head. Every Friday a free English paper called 'Sur in English' (Sewer to the locals) is published and I usually read it to see what is going on locally. The report that the local Mayor came along to Fuengirola to lay the first stone of the new promenade was big news. They say that next year he is coming along to lay the second stone! They really understand the meaning of mañana at Sur in English. The adverts are even more entertaining, trying to decipher the 'Spanglish' in small ads like 'Child mincer required' - Oh, so someone wants a childminder, or 'Experienced prick layer' - obviously brick layer, an easy mistake to make when you are typesetting a newspaper in a strange language, but it could be a bit embarrassing.

It was in the Motors section of Sur that I first saw my holiday romance. For Sale - Rolls Royce Silver Spirit, English registered, right hand drive, 1987, 39,000 miles, 4 million pesetas and a local phone number. I read the ad out to my wife and we worked out 4 million pesetas at 250 to the pound as £16,000. Buying a Rolls Royce would be madness, but we have nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in. After all, we are on holiday.

My wife telephones Mr Gray who sounds very genuine. He has owned the car since almost new and we arrange to see it on Sunday morning. Our expectations are very low. The few cars I have seen for sale in Spain have been disappointing, in fact most of the police cars you see on the roads there don't look like they would pass an MOT. A car auction recently started in Fuengirola and we went along out of interest. This new venture in a smart new building with a smart new auctioneer only managed to field eighteen cars, most of which looked like they belonged in a breaker's yard, and only one sold. It seemed such a shame, all that effort to no avail, but you can see why we were less than excited.

Sunday morning, we hide our seventeen year old Honda Quintet that lives in Spain, around the corner and walk the last hundred yards. Mr Gray has brought the Rolls Royce out of the garage and it gleams in the sun. It looks beautiful. It must drive like a dog, there must be loads of major mechanical faults. Could you take us round the block in it, I enquire? You drive, says Mr Gray, and off we go, my wife and I in the front with Mr and Mrs Gray in the back. The car was magic. I felt like a million dollars - the acres of real wood, the leather which I am sure you can smell twenty yards away. Then reality sets in. I could never afford to run a car like this, the petrol, the insurance the servicing - but £16,000 - it's very tempting so we say we'll think about it.

We phone our friend Kenny, who used to sell Rolls Royces in Cricklewood in the good old days, and ask his opinion. Don't pay more than £12,000 he says. Who has the chutzpah to offer Mr Gray £12,000 for this stunning car that he thought he was selling for £20,000 (at 200 pesetas to the pound) but because of the brilliant exchange rate was really only just over £16,000 for us? My wife phones Mr Gray and offers him £12,000. He politely declines. My wife asks that if he changes his mind to please phone us. He phones next day - he has thought about it and will now accept £13,000.

Now what do we do? My friend has just bought a new BMW motorbike for £14.500 so it cannot be dear, but it's still madness. Roz (my wife) phones Ron (Mr Gray - we are like part of the family now!) and reiterates our £12,000 offer. Ron is very stubborn about this £13,000. We decide to leave it. We have friends staying with us for a week, but I cannot get the car out of my mind. Our friends go home and we are going soon so we decide to have one last look at the car. We look, we take photos, it still looks stunning and we tell Ron that if it will fit in our garage at home we will have it.

We arrive back home late Sunday night, sort through three weeks post and then at 1.30am we are on our hands and knees in the garage, measuring. The car is 17'3"ish and the garage is 17'2½"ish or 17'3½"ish depending where you measure it. Too risky - we'll leave it. Roz phones Ron and tells him. He sounds surprised.

The following Sunday Kenny (our ex Cricklewood car dealer friend!) and his wife Ann come for tea. We show him the photos and he says "Why didn't you buy it?" You said not to, we reminded him. He counters with "You didn't describe it accurately. This car is beautiful, it is a Hooper with thousands of pounds worth of extras, - buy it". We don't think it will fit in the garage. Kenny is driving a Shadow II which we try in the garage. It fits, just, but is a couple of inches shorter than the Spirit. By now we have spent so much time thinking about the car and measuring and talking to people and asking their opinions that I figure we have already had £13,000 worth of enjoyment out of it, so I ask Roz to phone Ron and if he still has the car, say that we will have it.

Ron still has the car and is still stubborn about the £13,000 and is about to re-advertise it. Roz points out that he will probably only get more people like us messing him about. We agree on £12,500 and arrange to pick up the car in two weeks. Now I am very nervous. The car has been out of the country for three years and has no road tax or MOT, and it is now mine! I hope Ron is as genuine as he seems.

Roz now gets busy organising our flights to Spain (one way hopefully), car insurance and green card (£220 for 3,000 miles per year), Sea Cat crossing one way Boulogne to Folkestone (special offer as we are importing a car, 1st class £85) and the three hotels for our planned three night journey. We fly to Malaga on the Saturday and meet Ron on Sunday morning. He has all the paperwork, handbooks and service records including the original receipt for £61,950 and even the postcards Rolls Royce sent to remind him when servicing was due - enough bed-time reading for about two weeks. We hand over the bankers draft and twenty minutes later we are driving back to our house in our Rolls Royce Silver Spirit.

We spend a week at the house and leave for England on Friday at 7.45am. We get fifty yards down the road before Roz remembers she left the safe key in the safe. Back we go and sort that out and start again. Good start! Just past Malaga we see a horrific accident. A car has rolled, throwing a passenger out onto the road where she is lying, covered in blood and one person is in the car, not moving. There is a motorcycle policeman but no ambulance yet. I think, if we hadn't gone back for that safe key . . . We are heading for the Parador at Segovia, just north-west of Madrid and expect to get there about 3.30pm. Unfortunately a lorry has hit a gantry on the motorway around Madrid. This has crushed and killed a woman in a car when it collapsed and closed the road for eight hours resulting in 14km tailbacks.

We finally arrive at about 6.00pm. The Parador is modern and the room is lovely. We have driven 432 miles so we get a taxi into the centre of Segovia and take the tourist train around the city. The Roman aqueduct is worth seeing, in fact you can hardly avoid it. The locals say that it was built by the devil in exchange for a young girls soul. The devil ran out of time so Segovia kept the aqueduct and the girl kept her soul! Sounds like a good deal to me. The castle looks unreal and was used by Walt Disney as a model for the fairytale castle in Disneyland. We finally return to the Parador and sit down for a nearly brilliant meal at 10.00pm.

Saturday morning, the car is running beautifully and we are heading for our second stop at Château Lamothe, near Bordeaux. As we near the French border we are paying a toll on the Spanish motorway, when we are surrounded by five policemen. I get out of the car, but I cannot understand them. My wife has a GCSE in Spanish, I tell them, she will understand. She doesn't. One of them comes forward and says in good English that this is routine and I must blow into a machine for alcohol. I tell him I do not drink alcohol, I haven't had a drink for 54 years. He seems skeptical and insists I blow into their machine. I take a deep breath and blow, and blow, and blow. By now my eyes are bulging and my face is purple and the machine is still reading zero. This seems to confuse the local alcohol police who go into a huddle and eventually the English spokesman comes over and says "The machine says zero, you had better go now".

Having had one brush with the law, I take some precautions. I stick the last 1997 tax disc in the windscreen. Luckily it is the same colour as the current year 2000 disc. We arrive at Château Lamothe covering 466 miles without further incident at about 5pm. The castle was built in the 12th century and is fully moated. Our huge turret room and bathroom was like being in a timewarp. The breakfast next morning, with fresh baked home-made croissants and pain-au-chocolate, was truly gourmet. Véronique Bastide, whose family own and run the Château, looks like she would settle for nothing less than perfection. A £100 well spent.

Sunday morning 9.30, we force ourselves away from the breakfast table and wave goodbye to Château Lamothe. The heavens open and for ten minutes we are caught in a torrential thunderstorm, but at least we find out the windscreen wipers work, although it takes a while to locate them on the dashboard. This is the longest leg of our journey and is 514 miles to Le Touquet. We arrive at the Westminster hotel about 5.30 and I leave Roz to check in while I park the car in their car park. The bell-hop walks over to me and says "Madame asks me to bring in the black bag." I proudly open the boot and he pulls out the black bag. He eyes me suspiciously and says "This is a Rolls Royce". I agree. "It is very famous" he says mysteriously, I agree. "It is a very beautiful car" he says. I agree, suddenly warming to this young man. "Is it yours?" he asks. Forget the generous tip I think to myself, following him up to the room. We decide to push the boat out and go for the five course gourmet meal in the main restaurant. At about £80 for two it wasn't cheap, but sitting there by the open french windows, looking out onto the gardens, eating a superb meal with wonderful service and fine linen, with a Rolls Royce in the car park it seemed almost worth it, and they did have some really super smelly cheeses.

Monday morning we wander round the shops in Le Touquet and leave at midday for the forty minute drive to Boulogne where we board the Sea Cat for Folkestone. As we are importing a car and have this special first class package we get to use the first class lounge, get coffee and baguettes and are first off at the other end after a 65 minute crossing. Equally as good as the tunnel and cheaper. I was a bit worried about Customs but in the event they were either bowled over by the two year old tax disc or they were on holiday, as I never saw anyone and we were home indoors by 4.00pm.

Altogether we had driven 1,531 comfortable, trouble free miles at about 17mpg on unleaded fuel. A fair test drive. We took the car in for an MOT on Tuesday and it passed with flying colours. A service and the few things that needed doing to make it perfect came to £1,000 in total. We now have our car back, legitimately taxed and safely tucked up in our garage with less than 1mm to spare!

This was one holiday romance that did not end in tears! Long live the Spirit of Spain.

The above was written six years ago, I still have the car and have had some fantastic days out and met some interesting people, thanks to the RREC. The car has proved to be a fine car and a fun hobby. We have had the odd problem, like the times when the car would just cut out for no apparent reason, which turned out to be a loose wire in the alarm system. This is the abridged version, but the saga went on for months and warrants its own chapter!!

I suppose I should thank my mates wife for starting this adventure. She is now driving a new £64,000 Mercedes SL350, blissfully unaware that her idle remark would have such a long lasting and happy effect on my life.

Mick Abrahams