THE TALES OF THE LION QUEST

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[Peugeot 403]  The Lion and the Ram

By Don Barrier (winning story)

Since 1964 there has always been a Peugeot in our family. Perhaps it was my French ancestry or maybe it was the East African Safari, which had caught my imagination. In 1964 we bought an immaculate red Peugeot 403 from Lawrence Motors in Wanganui. The previous owner, an ex navel man, had maintained the car in perfect order. He presented me with a little black diary and gold pen with which he recorded every detail of maintenance. There were records about tire pressure, battery water, carburetor adjustment etc.

Given Peugeot's record for longevity, I believed I was buying a car which, at 40,000 miles, had just been run in. The notebook and pen were left in the glove box and shown occasionally to friends as an interesting curio. Such detailed and careful attention to a car was beyond me. For me, a car is something you hopped into to go somewhere. Legends of durability caused people like me to buy a Peugeot to see if they were really true. Left out in the rain, sun, frost, enduring a paucity of maintenance, taking the family out Friday night shopping, on weekends over bush tracks and fords and sometimes returning with a wild pig roped on the roof.

The Peugeot inspired bedtime stories about a rally driver called Henri whose car was battered by rhino, trampled by elephants and stuck in crocodile infested rivers. Henri had an emergency 4 wheel drive lever plus a rocket booster in the boot.

In winter I was often getting bogged down in soft places. One of the kids would pull the 4 wheel drive lever (I think it was the air conditioning) while I let air out of the rear tires. With accompanying cheers and bouncing up and down on the back seat for extra traction we would usually slither our way back to firmer ground.

If this failed, the last resort was a hand winch kept in the boot. It was bolted onto the bumper. This did not do the bumper much good, although it was stainless steel and very strong.

Oh-for Henri's rocket booster!

We clocked up a high mileage in the 403. We often traveled through the night to visit family, the characteristic whine of the worm drive lulling the kids to sleep. Never did it let us down on those long journeys across the central plateau and down the Paraparas, in spite of limited maintenance.

When the red car finally gave up the ghost I was stunned. The unbelievable had happened. Our unstoppable car had stopped and would never go again without a hefty garage bill. A hippie with the right spare parts and mechanical know-how bought the car for a song. Hippies loved Peugeot 403. Maybe because it did not belong to the 'buy now-throw away' age. We stood and watched as his green 403 towed our beloved red 403 down the drive and out of our lives. It owed us nothing.

The next car was a 404. We shifted further up the valley onto a bigger farm. Unfortunately there was no house. I converted an ancient hay barn into a primitive but pretty two-room cottage.

At 40, I was getting too old for rugby so I took up marathon running. I ran up and down that beautiful valley, running away from the nagging problem of building a house without finance. With all the energy spent training I could have built two houses and cut all the materials out of the forest with a hand saw.

In May 1980 the Coromandel was hit by a tremendous storm. Part of the neighbor’s hillside oozed down our driveway, a yellow porridge 6 feet deep. The Rotorua marathon was just days away and our car was on the wrong side of the massive slip.

The council was too busy clearing public roadways and grader drivers could not be bribed. I could have got a ride with friends but it was also the family's annual holiday, staying in a cabin at Rainbow Springs.

A neighbor and fellow marathoner, Stan Devilch, was determined we would get to Rotorua. He cleared the drive with his tractor and loader. He worked all morning but as fast as he cleared the clay it came oozing back. But at least it was now only 2 feet deep. Stan dragged the car through it. By the time it reached the road I reckoned it weighed two tons - a ton of car and a ton of mud.

Stan suggested we tow the car back and forth over their ford. "That will sluice it out, boy. The river's running pretty high. Then we'll hose the rest out and let her dry in the sun."

Well, we got rid of the mud all right. But a lot of that river went through the car. The winter and spring that year was exceptionally wet and the car never dried out properly until summer. A garage would have been useful.

The motor seemed OK and the 404 ran sweetly to Rotorua. More sweetly I admit than I ran the marathon.

Stories abound of Peugeots being driven long distances and over terrible terrain in Africa, South America and Australia. But it would be difficult to beat some of the eccentric uses and abuses of vehicles in rural New Zealand. The Barrier household is no exception to this. One Friday night my brother, Laurie, rang from Christchurch. "I've put him on in the truck and he should be ' the carrier's yard at Hamilton on Sunday."

'Him' referred to Toll balls, a Coop worth ram of reputed aristocratic lineage. He had been picked up by my brother for next to nothing because of a slight foot defect. Phone calls about this animal caused a hefty toll bill. Hence the name, coined by one of the kids.

Gail asked how I intended to bring the ram home. Her questions always make me wild because I often cannot find a sensible answer. "In the boot of the car" was the only reply I could think of. The trailer was unwarranted, unregistered, and un-roadworthy. I knew the ram wouldn't fit in the boot. I just couldn't tell Gail that the animal would have to travel home in style. The back seat in fact.

We arrived at the yard late afternoon. In one of the pens stood an animal that looked at first sight like a small white bull.

"He's enormous," said Gail sounding pleased.

"He won't go in the boot, Dad said one of the boys. "He'll have to go in the car. We'll go in the boot."

Gail put her foot down. "The boys are not traveling in the boot, not even with the lid up, not under any circumstances."

We lifted the back seat up and leaned it against the backrest. I gripped the fleece, and sitting astride the animal rode him into the Peugeot.

I sat in the back with Toll balls, my arms around him, restraining him. Unfortunately the ram kept looking out the front window to see where we were going. In doing so he was inclined to breathe his hot, fetid breath in Gail's ear.

This caused Gail to pull over and declare that she was going no further until, and I quote, I "bloody did something about it." My solution was to wind down the back window. The old fellow seemed quite happy to put his head out and study the traffic, including a passing traffic officer.

Not knowing how to explain a very large ram poking his head out the side of a crowded Peugeot I beckoned Gail to duck down a gravel side road. We waited in hiding for some time but the traffic car did not follow. Relieved, we ventured cautiously back onto the main road.

On arriving home we drove into the paddock where the ewes were grazing. I opened the car door and Toll balls stepped out as if as a dignitary arriving at an important function then, with self important smugness, strolled leisurely towards the ewes.

I thought animals were supposed to be stressed by travel, not humans. We seemed to have got things the wrong way round.

Nearly all our Peugeots were 4 in 1 cars -family sedan, farm hack, stock transporter and back roads hunting wagon. The only exception was Gail's Peugeot 504. I was sure it would prove as rugged as the earlier models but she loved her beautiful dark green car and would not let me behind the wheel.

The Lion and The Ram won Don Barrier the trip to France as the winning story in The Tales of the Lion quest.

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