IT’S awfuL when you find out you’re a fool isn’t it? I’ve owned four cars in my life and until someone pointed it out to me today, I’d never really given thought to the fact that three out of the four have been duds.

They also told me I might as well have a sign on my forehead that screams ‘take me for a ride’ to car salesmen. Rewind to 1990 and my very first car, a cute little white Toyota hatchback. It was perfect, well, except for its hideous murky brown interior. But, as the salesman said, it wouldn’t dirty easily.

For three years I loved that car, then came the day when I tried to part trade it for a new one, only to be asked if I knew my pride and joy had been in a major accident?

Cue dumfounded look as the Toyota guy showed me the back doors were out of alignment.

Of course, this wasn’t the worst part. That was when he showed me the four tell-tale marks that indicated its roof had been re-welded on to the car, probably after the original had been cut off by emergency services using the jaws of life.

Moving on to car number three (we’ll come back to car two in a bit). Now I can’t actually remember exactly what was causing the fan belt to shred every couple of months, but I do recall three mechanics doing that head-scratching thing and saying it would cost far more than the car was worth to repair. So, as any responsible citizen would do, I replaced the belt and part-traded it in, accidentally forgetting to tell the dealer it may have a problem. The way I figured it, they were experts, they’d work out what was wrong, and it would cost them far less to repair than it would have cost me!

Which brings me to my current pride and joy. And where do I start?

How about the day I learnt its fancy sensor locks hadn’t been locking one of the doors for more than two years?

Or the joy of discovering that when I dead-locked it, it would randomly cause the back window to go down?

Or paying four different dealers to fix the faulty front windows, which sometimes won’t go up.

Mind you, that doesn’t happen often. Only on wet days.

I’m not a particularly religious person, so when someone suggested to me that all of these problems may be karma for my slightly less than honest disclosure of the previous car’s fan belt issues I ‘pooh-poohed’ the idea.

Then I remembered car number two. An emerald green Mazda 626 which I bought purely because it had oscillating air-conditioning vents. It was the only car I never had a single problem with.

When the car dealer told me it had only been driven to church on a Sunday I laughed cynically. Then I saw the original paperwork. Registered as its one and only previous owner was The Sisters of Mercy.

The moral of this story? The only safe second-hand car to buy is one from a group of retired nuns who live in the convent around the corner.