Only a Christmas Tale…

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring not even a mouse, which was probably just as well as the mood he was in, he would have taken the advice given about getting rid of a mole and blown it’s b***** head off. He did not like Christmas, and this year was no exception, as things had not been going well. The GTE had been messing about again with non-determinate problems in the electronics and the new car to replace it was not yet ready. The Xsara he had bought had also not been greeted with much enthusiasm with, “what made you buy a Citroen?” being the most common question! Anyone would have thought that it was a 2CV rather than a 167hp clone of the 306 Gti. He stomped off to bed muttering “bah humbug” under his breath…….!
A star rose in the east and lo a sound could be heard approaching. A low rumble slowly growing into a mighty roar as into sight came a sleigh, pulled not by reindeer, but by two TVR Speed Twelve’s which where making a glorious noise, that should have had the MSA sound man reaching for his meter, but strangely nobody seemed able to hear.
Truk was at the controls. They had been on what had now become a regular run after the anonymous £1,000,000 donation to the toy fund (rumoured to have been made by the dwarf Einreb). The run had been to the central area of England to allow Nambew to drop a few surprises in the software to “liven things up” for next year with a few extra horsepower here and a few engine blow ups there. They had made good time and were on their way to Italy to finish the job off having left Nerad and Haras in the Sunny GTIR sledge to sort out a little problem with one of the Rally drivers, something about differentiating left from right.
The TVRs were running well and Truk was glad that he had managed to persuade Jaybe the bean counter not to go with the Dodge Vipers he had managed to get a deal on and at least the TVRs were English. Not that he was totally against foreign cars, indeed he had managed to get The Bearded one to take the limo sledge pulled by two BMW 750il’s for his busiest night of the year, rather than the Manta 400s he wanted to use. (This was partly because he had been practising his night driving on road rallies, which had gone to his head a bit, and they had to talk him out of giving all the kiddies copies of the blue book.)
As they cruised over Kent, Truk looked down and saw a rather sorry looking car sat in the Garage, “What the hell…?” he thought, “we have time in hand!” and swung the sledge down to a neat 3 point landing on the roof.
Truk turned to his dozing crew, who had expected at least another couple of minutes kip before they reached Italy, to tell them they had another little job to see to. Grumbling slightly, they jumped down from the sledge carrying their tools. Scud was the ace chassis man, and the tallest elf anyone could remember. Kram handled paintwork and Nambew was the computer and electronics wizard. Truk’s forte was engines although he had to admit he was not that keen on this modern stuff with it’s ECU’s and electronics and would much rather be building BDA’s. Still it was better than trying to keep up with the repairs on Bloc’s Golf buggy, which seemed to be either blowing engines or hitting trees!
Nambew quickly hacked into the Citroen motorsport computer for the detailed specifications and printed out all the information they needed.  Kram meanwhile had stripped out the damaged panels and welded in new. Scud was also in action having stripped out the drive train and started to install the three electronic diffs for the four wheel drive system while Truk busied himself with the alloy blocked 16 valve four pot (well you can’t have everything) with it’s water injection and TR30R turbo charger.
Scud put the finishing touches to the suspension and 6 pot vented disk front and 4 pot rear brakes, Truk dropped in the engine and 6 speed sequential box, Nambew finished off the management system and Kram was then let loose with his spray gun. “What colour do you want?” he asked, “I’ve got some of that Yellow we used at Eddies or the Silver from Rons”.  Truk thought for a second and decided that the Yellow might be a bit OTT so yelled to Kram to hit it with the Silver. 10 seconds later (hey this is supposed to be fantasy!) the car was Silver, along with the other elves and most of the garage. “Great!” said Truk and put the finishing touch, the new Sevenoaks sticker, in the rear window.
Scud heard a noise and scanning the sky, he wondered if if could be Lerik and Tiwehj who were out delivering toys, (well what else can you do with a Barbie pink sleigh!) He spotted a movement and sure enough there was a sledge coming in low on the horizon, but this was emitting the bark of two 4.9 V8s, and from the wedge shaped front he recognised it as Mijgib. In the passenger seat, megaphone in hand was old Noswad yelling to them in somewhat less than polite terms that they had another run to fit in before their Italian jaunt. Truk called to the others to finish up and climb aboard and gunned the TVRs to speed off to their next call, something to do with an old bloke and a couple of weeks work….
He awoke with a start, something felt strange but he could not quite put his finger on it. He got up and wandered downstairs where he noticed a faint smell of paint. It took a few minutes to work out that it was coming from the garage and he slowly opened the door to investigate. He could not believe what he saw, there resplendent in a new coat of paint was the Xsara, but it did not look the same as it had a few hours ago.
The bodywork was now pristine and had gained spoilers, larger wheel arches and an enormous rear wing. He opened the driver’s door to find that it was not just the bodywork that had altered, with new seats and a substantial roll cage. He quickly opened the Garage doors, climbed in, and fired up the engine. A muted wooshing noise from the turbo indicated that the engine had also received its fair share of modification. After a few seconds drinking in the noise, he snicked the sequential shifter into first and shot off down the drive with all four wheels trying to put down the 315 bhp. “Hey this is going to be interesting at the next autotest!” he thought, as he tried out the hydraulic handbrake and spun the car in it’s own length.
All sorts of possibilities sprang into his mind, the stage event at Longcross, Sprints and the stage they ran on the Rally of Kent. Mind you he would have to keep it out of the way of the Editor and her other half who seemed to be competing for the number of times they could damage their car on Sevenoaks events! He hadn’t felt this excited since he was ten years old opening his presents. Maybe there was something in this Christmas lark after all……..

Please note:-
The above ramblings are the product of a deranged mind and any resemblance of the characters above to real persons is almost certainly intentional. Should any of these individuals have any objection to being portrayed in this tale they should put their protest in writing (min 2000 words suitable for publication in the Acorn) and submit them together with the appropriate fee.

The Acorn : December Edition