It seemed to us \u2013 with our extremely limited knowledge of mechanics \u2013 that the car was running well; and we finalised the sale.<\/p>\n
The next day, we met up with Ali again first thing, around 7.30 am, at the Vehicle Registration Office in Ludwigsburg. Although it wasn\u2019t necessary for Ali to come along to help us with the paperwork for exporting the vehicle, he offered to do so and I was grateful.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d already booked an appointment online from Spain and the process went like clockwork. Within an hour, we\u2019d sorted out all the paperwork and had the export number plate. We said goodbye to Ali and off we went across Europe<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n We set off from Ludwigsburg itself and drove along the fantastic German motorways to the French border. We crossed into France and carried on. At a service station where we stopped to rest for a while, they took this first photo of the three of us (Aino, the car and me):<\/p>\n By late afternoon we had reached Perpignan, almost at the Spanish border. We stayed the night at the residence of the Spanish Consul General, as a fellow graduate of mine was serving in that post at the time. He, his wife and daughters treated us with great warmth, and the next morning we continued our journey.<\/p>\n But\u2026 as soon as we crossed the Spanish border, bang! A warning light came on \u2013 red as blood \u2013 which wouldn\u2019t stop flashing and was making a rather unpleasant noise.<\/p>\n We stopped the car and took out the manual we had in the glove compartment and\u2026 it was the \u2018engine fault\u2019 warning light. We looked at each other, feeling rather disheartened, but we had to do something. So I used my mobile to search for the nearest garage for that make of car, and right there, in the town of Figueres, there was one. We headed straight for it.<\/p>\n When we arrived at the garage, they ran some tests on the car and told us that the engine was damaged and that the best course of action was to have the engine completely replaced. For the modest sum of 8,000 euros. It would take a week to get it done.<\/p>\n I rang my partner at the time and he told me to check the engine oil level; if it was low, to buy some oil and top it up; and that we should carry on with our journey. And that\u2019s what we did.<\/p>\n And in one go (though obviously stopping for lunch and a snack, to fill up with petrol, and to stretch our legs), we reached Cueva del Hierro, our summer house in the High Mountains of Cuenca, travelling via Zaragoza and Molina de Arag\u00f3n.<\/p>\n We\u2019d done it!<\/p>\n The next day we drove down to the city of Cuenca and sorted out the import paperwork for the car; we took the documents to have the Spanish number plate made; and everything was sorted.<\/p>\n Although I got back in touch with Ali, he refused to take responsibility. And taking my case to the German courts would have cost me a fortune, so I let it go.<\/p>\n The little car continued to give us a few problems. It turned out that those engines, shared by several PSA and BMW models, had been quite faulty and consumed too much oil, which damaged the lambda sensors and the exhaust pipe. All this meant we had to check the oil levels regularly. Even so, the little car ran well, and Ainoa was still driving it.<\/p>\n In 2022, a friend who\u2019s a mechanic offered us a nearly new engine. And my partner at the time, who was about to finish the second year of her Higher National Diploma in Automotive Engineering, decided that this would be his final-year project: to carry out a complete engine replacement on our little white car. No sooner said than done.<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s now 2026 and the little white car is still going strong\u2026 And it passed its latest MOT in June at the first attempt and without any problems\u2026 Yippee!<\/p>\n How much longer will our little white car last?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Purchased in Germany in 2016<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29397,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196,197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-moncreativity","category-monstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29440"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29453,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29440\/revisions\/29453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/mongonzalez.es\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Foto-en-camino-300x169.jpg\")
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