Caution - Marina - Do not drive in the wet

Well, lots of people describe their classics as never having been driven in the rain and I always thought it was because they pampered their cars.

Not so sure now, having just driven the green beast the 60km from my house to Melbourne's Tullamarine Airport at 5 am. Heavy rain (hail for 10 minutes) made the journey interesting to say the least.

It is mostly freeway. I don't think I'll be driving the Marina again in heavy rain, hail and dark.

Not till I have fixed:

• Windscreen wipers - the best they seem to do is leave a film of water on the screen at speeds above 70kph, which (in the dark) makes huge starring from lights - means it is hard to see if pppl are braking and very hard to see anything at all much really
• Heater - no heat to screen, only cold air, so when it gets below zero (hail this morning for a while, so it did), the screen mists up instead of clearing. Along with the point above, makes it triple-y harder to see anything at all (frantic wiping / smearing from the inside
• Brakes - As a result of both the above, I noticed very late that the row of huge fuzzy red blobs in front of me was a stationary line of traffic. Had to slam brakes on in the wet and locked up at least one back wheel. Thought I was going to crash. Can breathe again now, thanks to Ventolin

The whole experience reminded me of the terrifying/exciting times I had as a late teenager riding large motorbikes at stupid speeds through the English/Welsh winter rain storms, desperately trying to see through my smeared blurred goggles, but at the same time trying to keep going as quickly as possible in order to minimise the amount of time I would have to spend enduring the fear and discomfort.

If anyone has any smart ideas on fixing either the wipers or the heater - I'm all ears (or should that be eyes?)

Still haven't replaced the busted panel light switch - so driving in the dark means no visible instuments too.

I have a contemporary Australian road test that compared the 6 cyl and 4 cyl Automatic Marina Sedans in the mid 70s. I think they must have got a bit dispirited comparing Marinas with other cars.

Anyhow, they pointed out that the wipers were completely ineffective on both cars at any speed, with some surprise, as they had pointed the same fault out to Leyland a couple of years earlier. They could not understand how something so fundamental, yet simple had not been fixed.

Incidentally, the test seemed to conclude that both cars were extremely average, but the 6 cyl was a bit easier to live with around town...