M y car is not well. It's 12 years old and was two years old when she came to live with me. I call her Hilda. She's getting overheated and leaking water, a physical state known to afflict both flesh and mechanical objects in their more mature years.

I could have her fixed but like an old hound it may be kinder to have her put down. She's been a good old friend over the years and had everything I wanted in a car.

Number one was that she had a wheel at each corner; in my opinion the most essential thing a car could have. She also had an engine – all I had to do was turn the key and she fired up.

There were a few coughs and splutters here and there over the years, especially in winter. The frost gets quite a grip over here, there being nothing much to stop it; no warm bodies or crowded buildings keeping the cold at bay. The trees turn white and my car turns white with them.

So delicate was her constitution with regard to extreme cold that I used to take her a cotton sheet and spread it over her windshield, just in case I had to go somewhere early the next day.

I don't know if Hilda will survive her heater matrix problem. I hope she does.

Dealing with her and her woes brought to mind chariots I owned in the past. My first car, unlike Hilda, was called Minnie – because she was a mini. She was green and of 1966 vintage. I bought her without telling anyone – including him with the spanner and socket set.

Luckily, once he was faced with the little green square thing on wheels and I'd told him I could go shopping by myself and he wouldn't have to come with me, Minnie got the all clear.

She took me to work in the days when I worked in an office, took my daughter to school and was used in bad weather. Minis are very good in snowy conditions, the centre of gravity being very close to the floor.

I can't remember why I got rid of her or who bought her. She certainly didn't die on me or blow her radiator cap, though I do remember my brakes failing and me and Minnie shooting across a junction in Bristol. The handbrake saved me.

It may have been that blotting of her copy book which sullied our relationship, a bit like when a best friend makes a sarcastic comment or nicks your boyfriend – get the picture?

Cars have character, some more than others, but the ones that came after Minnie were a nondescript lot.

I never gave a name to the white Allegro I had, though I do vaguely recall him with the spanners using the kind of terminology reserved for female dogs. She was certainly temperamental. Come to think of it, I didn't have her very long at all.

She might not even have been an Allegro. She might well have been an Avenger, though without the class of Emma Peel, her namesake in the 1970s TV series.

I owned other cars that never had names; a Mini Clubman, a blue Mini van that could have answered to the name of Shabby Sheila and was very useful for bundling up with straw, hay and daughter for the daily trip to the horses' field.

I also had a quirky little car, a neat though eccentric Mini with an automatic gearbox that refused to go forward up a South Gloucestershire hill when I first owned her. We got some very funny looks from the locals as we sped up the hill in reverse.

As you can see, I liked the British Mini. I was close to the road, though sometimes thought I was in imminent danger of getting stuck beneath the juggernaut in front if I didn't apply the brake in time.

Sadly I've a confession to make – Hilda isn't British. She's French and like General de Gaulle, she's hanging on till the bitter end. C'est la vie.