Test passed in 1990 at first go after twelve lessons. By the time I had been at university for two years and had worked for one of them full time, I'd pulled enough together to buy a white 1989 Metro 1.3GTA out of the classifieds. 1275cc overhead valve out of the Mini GT, MG Metro seats and wheels and a close ratio gearbox in the sump. Went pretty well and apart from a new ball joint for the lower nearside front arm, it never required any mechanical repairs.
However, after some happy months, I was stationary, waiting at a T-Junction and someone in one of those noddy Micras of the time hit the offside front of the car. I was third party insured and Endsleigh refused to fight it as there were no reliable witnesses.
A mate was a mechanic and laboured over it for three months in the corner of the workshop that he worked in, straightened the chassis out and got it rebuilt.
The week after I got it back, it was stolen for its VIN and number plates and its tax disc. Unfortunately, it was recovered.
By that point, I suspected that it was cursed, and sold it to a dealer, and bought my Mother's 1990 Rover Metro 1.1L. That was a great car and again never needed anything doing to it, and saw my university time out and through my first year of work.
At some point, however, the Curse of the GTA reasserted itself, when I had a call out of the blue from its then owner. He'd tried to part exchange it, only for that dealer to HPI it and discover outstanding finance from the person I had bought it from. Luckily, I was off the hook as it had passed through several hands since, but it was a salutory lesson.
From then on, I had company cars; a Mk2 Mondeo 1.8TDLX which was basically good to drive, but the engine was too heavy for it and it needed a lot of work over the years. I then got a Rover 75 1.8 Connoisseur in Arden Green with SatNav and a telly in it. It was absolutely superb, even though my boss at the time, when asked to sign off the purchase, sent a memo (yes) back asking if I'd forgotten to select the thatched roof and horse brasses optional extras. Great car.
I then went to work in the motor trade, and for the first few weeks had an Astra Coupe (fourth generation) which I loathed. I then had a quickfire succession of Vectra C's, replaced usually every three months. I liked them about as little as the Astra, although the SRIs we generally got looked OK. I had a couple of Elites, which were a bit less wooden to drive but not much. I memorably jetwashed one of them and the paint blew off the wing mirrors.
I then had a few years of Jaguar X-Types; mostly 2.0D saloon SEs. They were all nice cars, but the faint whiff of underlying Mondeo was always lingering. The best one was a 2.2D Estate, which I thought was a really good car.
I left the trade and had to buy a car again; the snag with working in the trade but not actually being mechanically-able is that you find out everything that goes wrong with every type of car, and how much it costs to get someone else to fix it.
Despite that, with my own money, I bought a brand new Land Rover Discovery 3 in 2007. It's never done particularly high mileages, but is without a doubt the best all-round car that I have ever used*, and still has under 80,000 on the clock. I intend to keep it until it's twenty, or they come for me with pitchforks and ever higher emissions-based taxes, despite the fact that it emits almost nothing (1200 miles and three tanks of diesel last year).
*Although I had the same kinds of cars assigned to me continually when working in the trade, I drove hundreds of different ones every year, from the then brand new Renault Modus to a prototype Aston Martin, to Jaguar XKs, to Puntos with leaky sunroofs to Focus LXs, and I still drive a fair selection of rentals (or did until March last year).