We have a Vauxhall Viva HA which we call Sybil after my mother who owned the car from new in 1967. The car was passed to me in 1993 when she gave up motoring. Sybil is 42 years old with a genuine 58,000 miles on the clock! She is a very reliable car generally but let us down on an important occasion.
We were attending the wedding of my niece, Caroline and James, unate incident occurred. We decided to take Sybil as my niece and her future husband are into 60s Volkswagens and there were going to be a few at the wedding. One of which was the wedding car!
We were travelling from Portsmouth to Haslemere on the A3 London Road with my wife and her 86 year old mother in the back. Sybil was duly cleaned polished and attired with wedding ribbons and bows and certainly looked the part.
Just before the Liphook Services about 8 miles from Haslemere, Sybil began to lose power and we ground to a halt on the dual carriageway. Not a nice place to be with the traffic whizzing by!! She resisted all efforts to start again and it was evident from my investigation that there was no spark being generated by the ignition system.
At this time we decided we should call GEM as time was getting short. We asked the operator at GEM if they could get us a breakdown truck as soon as possible. They told us they could be up to an hour but within a quarter of an hour the cavalry arrived in the form of Midhurst Engineering and Motor Company.
The mechanic was extremely helpful but unfortunately Sybil was unable to be repaired at the roadside. Sybil was very ungraciously loaded into the back of the truck with us and my mother in law! Between us we decided the best plan of action was to take Sybil home and us to proceed to the wedding.
We left Sybil in the care of the mechanic at Liphook and luckily managed to get a lift, from another wedding guest, to Haslemere. We had in total 15 minutes grace to get washed, changed and appear at the Church in time!!
If it had not been for GEM I don’t know what we would have done especially with the time scale involved. GEM and the garage concerned provided exceptional service in our hour of need.