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The Tale of the pistachio green Polo, by A. Wallace. Well, there was this one time... at Monza... when it all went a bit smelly. Quite literally. It was after a test or race in the GT1 "Harrods McLaren". It was also pre-Tom Tom and my sense of direction was, and still is, spectacularly pathetic. I set off early from the hotel in the general direction of the airport with some scribbled notes from the front desk and the assurance that it was "very easy Mr. Wallace", or more accurately, "Mr. Wol-arch-ee". The mechanics had an identical pistachio green VW Polo hire car and set off at about the same time in the opposite direction. Ha ha, I thought, they'll never get to the airport that way. Great with spanners, rubbish at pretty much everything else save  for drinking too much and falling over, I chuckled to myself. After about 20 minutes I passed the hotel again... what, no way, how did that happen? Bugger! Then out of the corner of my eye I saw an airport sign. It was a very sharp right hander onto the autostrada on ramp. I was bowling along in 5th gear and immediately identified said corner to be a "stand on the brakes and flick into 3rd" type bend. Years of experience as an International Racing Driver, you see. We can just tell these things. I hit the brakes, yanked the wheel to the right, delicately smashed the lever into 3rd, and just for good measure I nailed the throttle in readiness for the charge down the hill onto the autostrada. Then a strange thing happened... The tacho needle seemed to do two laps of the dial. There was also this strange 9,000 rpm type of noise, followed by not much power and a sort of "faff faff faff faff" sound from under the bonnet. Quite a narrow gate on the Polo, apparently. Luckily it was quite a steep hill giving me enough time to weigh my options. They were not great but if I held full throttle it would just about pull 2nd gear and around 50 km/h maximum. Everyone was passing me but at least I was still running. A bit like the walking wounded at the end of a tough Le Mans. Then up ahead a challenge. One of those toll booths. I just needed to keep the thing running. I fumbled for a handful of Lire to give to the lady and somehow it stopped. Mildly irritating to say the least. No chance of it starting again since it wouldn't run at all under 4,000 rpm. I had to get out of the car and push it through the  barrier to a place of safety. What a terrible smell. A bit like smouldering Wildebeest if I remember correctly. Then, as luck would have it, a pistachio green Polo stopped at the toll booth carrying my dear clever intelligent mechanics. I flagged them down and after a few minutes of hilarity as I regaled them with my tales of woe, we had a plan. They pushed me bumper to bumper with their car until I got up enough speed for mine to run by itself. Success! They followed me all the way to the airport at snails pace. But there was one more sting in the tale. The hire car company (who shall remain nameless) were situated on the third level of a multi-story car park. No way did I have enough thrust to get up even the first ramp. Mechanics to the rescue again, as they pistachio green Poloed me up each ramp and into a nice space as far away from the key drop office as we could find. I handed the keys back and when asked how the car had been, I said perfect, thank you, and hurried inside to find the British Airways desk.
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