Bernie Fineman, Original Motor Mouth Read online

  When I arrived home Lisa and I chatted into the small hours. We had not been apart since first meeting and although she was saddened that I would be away for so long she said, ‘You have my blessing to go, Bernie.’

  I hugged her close, telling her, ‘I’ll buy you that Merc I always promised you.’

  She just hugged me before saying with a smile: ‘Just be good Bernie, or I’ll have your guts for garters!’

  That was that then. In a few short days my life had turned from the mundane to the unknown. Was I a little scared?

  You bet I was.

  The following morning I called Dimitri. Bangla Bangers, as the show was going to be called, was on. I resigned from my job with immediate effect. I don’t like letting people down, but the contract stipulated that I had to fly within seven days. So I had seven days to get my jabs: yellow fever, typhoid, diphtheria, tetanus top-up, you name it. I also needed some lightweight shirts, headache pills, toothpaste, new undies, mosquito repellent, Diacalm and balm-coated bog-roll. No Jay’s toilet paper sandpaper for me!

  When the day came to go I was sadder than I had ever been, but excited at the same time. Lisa took me to Heathrow airport where I met up with all the crew. Hiding the tears I walked through the gate looking back at Lisa, still in love like the day I had met her, before walking with the crew into the departure lounge. For a few moments I was lost in the crowd and thought of Dad, saying to him in my mind: ‘I’ll make you proud Dad, I’ll make you proud.’ The noise and bustle of the departure lounge brought me back to earth, and there were the usual searches and questions, such as, ‘Did you pack your bags yourself, sir?’

  I’ve always wanted to turn around and point at the nearest person and say, ‘No, it was her who packed it!’ There were more daft questions: ‘Are you carrying any scissors, sir?’

  And I replied, pointing to my bald pate: ‘Yeah, with hair like this I need ’em.’

  I just had to listen to the usual bullshit.

  It was only when my arse got onto the plane that the reality hit. Fuck it, I’d left my job, I’d left Lisa behind, and the words ‘If there’s no car produced in four weeks there’s no pay’ kept bouncing across my mind. They meant it as well. But was it possible to do it? I was used to hard work but everyone has their limits. I knew a little about my co-host Leepu and had seen some pictures but I had not met him. Were we going to get on?, that was the question. Unbeknown to me, that question was part of the point of the series.

  The plane engines started to wind up and as we taxied along I knew one thing: there was no going back.

  After a bum-numbing thirteen-hour flight we arrived at Zia International Airport in Dhaka, and went through their customs to face more of the same daft questions. Some bloke got arrested for bringing in more than two hundred sheets of bog-roll – what an arse-wipe! Anyhow, jokes aside, passports were stamped and I’m off into the arrivals area where I knew Leepu would be waiting.

  The crew had so much gear to gather that it took a little time before we walked through into the great unknown. The heat hit me like a roasted cricket bat as I walked through the exit doors, and immediately I saw Leepu standing in front of me and was aware that the camera was already rolling. It’s funny but you never appreciate how much footage is shot for a single programme.

  We hugged and introduced each other before being led to a car, where we were allowed to remain chatting for ten minutes as we travelled along the streets, before being separated again.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning Bernie,’ Leepu said in an Americanised Bangla twang.

  Little did I know that this fat, one-sandwich-short-of-a-picnic crazy, whisky-drinking little Bangladeshi man would change my life. He went his way, and I left for the hotel in the company of the production crew.

  What a hotel! It felt palatial and the staff treated everyone like royalty, bags carried, absolutely nothing was too much trouble, but this was a far cry from what I had seen outside. This regal establishment could not hide the real poverty just a course of bricks away where people live a fragile existence. The evening was spent as you would expect: nice bath, dinner, a few drinks in the bar and then bed, ready for an early start. I still did not know what to expect but that was half of the challenge and I was ready, or so I thought.

  So it was up bright and early the following morning, for a quick brief from the production crew. Camera ready, soundman ready and this is it, we’re making a TV show. I travelled by rickshaw through the streets, which was life-threatening in itself. The rickshaw just behind me was shunted by a lorry, but luckily no one was hurt as far as I could tell.

  I arrived at Leepu’s garage and he invited me in to have a look round. Fuck me, there were less tools in there than in a brand new transit: just a few hammers on dusty shelves, an acetylene torch with no safety device – one mistake with that and it really is Bangla Bangers. There were dodgy electrics, and the little power tools that were to hand had no plugs and were wired directly into the sockets! The smell weren’t too clever, as an open sewer ran through the premises. If that alone wasn’t bad enough, the heat beat down like nothing I’d encountered, humidity was just off the scale.

  Still, I thought, this is what we had and we just had to get on with it. At least I didn’t live there, unlike Leepu and his family. I just kept thinking about Lisa and my home in Borehamwood and how lucky we were.

  The first thing to do was to acquire the car, and cars in Bangladesh are really expensive, even fucked-up ones. Leepu has his designs in his head so I did not have a clue what the car would look like. If he gave you a plan on a piece of paper it would be blank, literally.

  The bloke was off his head!

  After trawling around several car dealers (no courtesy coffees offered here), Leepu found the car he wanted: a two-door Toyota Sprinter. This thing looked fucked, the kind of motor that if you took it to a scrappy you would have to pay them to take it away. He asked me what I thought of it and I told him straight, ‘It’s a piece of shit!’

  The greatest shock, though, was the value of the car. Sixteen hundred quid was exchanged before it was loaded and taken back to Leepu’s garage. Sixteen hundred quid and it didn’t even run! Still it had a full service history… behave! On arrival back at the garage it was pushed in by Leepu’s brother and co-workers, and we started to strip it down. The clock was ticking. The Discovery Channel wanted the first series, or they’d have our blood.

  With all the major body components off, the car was tipped on its side. No health and safety here, no fancy jacks or body roller. No, chuck it on its side and get your head in. When we had a look at the underneath it was truly shocking, rotten as a pear, and I mean rotten. In the UK the car would be gone, but these lads just get stuck in, and over the course of two days they chopped the rot out from underneath and, using handmade panels cut from sheet steel, they remade it. I was amazed by what they managed to achieve.

  We left them to it and went looking for new wheel rims. By the state of the car it seemed a bit early to be thinking of things like that, but we needed the parts. Leepu led me all over Dhaka until he finally found some alloys he liked. The price was good at around £300 but God we needed so many parts. We eventually had to wait for two hours for the wheels but at least we had them.

  Now I’m Jewish and keen on saving money, but Leepu certainly taught me a thing or two about how to barter. The shopping spree lasted well into the night with row after row of small auto parts vendors who had everything you could imagine offered for sale. At one point I was buying shock absorbers by candlelight due to a power cut. I called it romantic and in a way it was.

  The final purchase of the day was for the sheet metal. The plan was to buy two gauges of sheet steel – a thinner gauge for bodywork and a thicker one for structural work, and every panel was to be made by hand. The steel was loaded onto a rickshaw as well as into the arms of both Leepu and me. The chap riding the rickshaw had some power to shift our fat arses and all our cargo, bless him. On arrival we worked until late in
to the night, which would become the norm, because double-money meant double-hours. Still, we were both fired up, although we realised it was going to be harder than I thought, much harder.

  The following morning Leepu started dancing around the car with a bit of metal in his hand flapping it up and down. Clearly the design was being imprinted in his mind. In his own words: ‘You have to get into the design to get it out.’ He gave me a rough idea of what it would look like: a low slung, wide two-seater. It sounded good but still I had no visual idea, and the mechanics were down to me. The car’s body was stripped of paint by using nothing other than old hacksaw blades as scrapers… bloody hard work, no power tools here. I couldn’t believe it, there was no electric or compressed-air powered grinder, no chemical paint stripper, just manpower.

  The suspension needed to be lowered. This is done by reducing the length of the springs and shocks, but there are limits. Without any consultation Leepu hacked seven inches off the springs and the shocks. That’s too severe and, frankly, I was livid. What the fuck was I doing there trying to help him if we didn’t consult each other before charging ahead?

  Seconds were ticking by and I really was starting to feel the strain. Time was money and so, against my better judgement, the suspension was refitted to the car and the new wheels fitted on massive six-inch spacers. Leepu wasted no time in chopping the bodywork, lowering the roof, cutting through all supporting pillars with a hacksaw and taking a section out of each of them, before welding the roof back on. I must admit the car had a nice angle to it, but at four in the morning anything would have looked good.

  We had three weeks to go before the car was due to be unveiled as the star attraction at the Bangladeshi car show. It was apparent to me that the car needed a bigger engine, so Leepu’s brother Dheepu took me to a car parts bazaar, leaving Leepu to carry on with the work on the body. At the bazaar everything you could wish for was there but it was an engine that was required, a five-speed manual, 1800 or two litre, and it had to be fuelled by carburettor for simplicity.

  Dheepu led me down these alleys, reassuring me that he knew a place where such a unit could be found. I was expecting another small outlet with a few engines, so nothing could have prepared me for what we found. On entry to the warehouse we saw that the place was full of engines, hundreds of them, all salvaged from cars from Korea and Japan. After a bit of a search we found the right unit – an 1800.

  But did it work?

  Turning it over by hand was one thing. I had forgotten, though, that this was Bangladesh and if you wanted to see something working, no problem. Two men were summoned and they picked it up, by stringing it up using a cam-belt over a pole. This reminded me of the time I dropped that Vauxhall engine that jammed in the engine bay, and my dad had to come and pull it out for me. Still, there was little time for memories.

  The chosen engine was dumped on the pavement, where a large crowd had gathered around us. One of the fellas turns up with a big fuck-off battery and a cup full of petrol. I couldn’t believe my eyes! This geezer stood on the battery to ensure a good connection as the terminals were loose, and poured the petrol in, as his colleague shorted the ignition and started the motor.

  A small child was looking on. His face was just inches from the front pulleys, and it scared me that if anything had gone wrong his face would’ve been torn off. The engine chugged into life and there was a massive roar from the crowd. I could tell it was a good one – those years in the trade give you good ears for a lemon and this was a fucking peach.

  The obligatory rickshaw was summoned and both myself and Dheepu made our way back, engine and all. On arrival the amount of bodywork that had been completed in my absence was astounding. New structural braces had been fitted across the original cross-members and new hand-beaten wings had been welded front and rear. It was a fucking ace job. Leepu was ecstatic with the engine, and I had taken an engine mounting with me, so I knew that the unit would fit in the space with very little modification needed.

  Leepu continued to work solidly for three days on the bodywork but I could not get access to the mechanics and I was getting fucked off. This wasn’t just a car, it was my mortgage, my wife’s home! At this point I might just as well have just stayed at home. Days went past with me getting nothing done and words were being exchanged. I got the engine in but, disregarding my needs to form a bonnet scoop, Leepu welded the thing shut. I watched in horror as they managed to ignite the engine underneath the closed bonnet with the dodgy acetylene torch. It was panic stations to put it out.

  I had to source a new radiator and spent hours waiting for the part, only to arrive back and find that the radiator needed to be modified – one of the outlet ports needed moving. My temper was starting to fray. Leepu couldn’t care less as long as the bodywork was done; the trouble was that he was taking me for a prat – a bad mistake.

  Yet again I travelled with Dheepu to a local specialist and in time-honoured tradition the radiator was modified on the pavement, soldered, pressure-tested, the lot. Guess what? On my return he still wouldn’t let me gain access to the engine and we ended up having a stand-up row. Fuck ’em, I thought.

  I went back to the hotel, returning in the early hours of the following morning and found to my delight that Leepu was asleep. Great, I thought, the cunt’s in bed so let’s get to work! Radiator fitted, coolant added – and the engine started. It was running a little rough but a quick hand on top of the open carb and any crap in the fuel chamber was sucked, banged and blown out – it took me back to my lads’ holidays to Thailand!

  Then I worked bloody hard on the engine to get it running right but I wasn’t in for any praise, far from it. Leepu, having woken up, just stood there with his hand on his chin. I tell you I was close to putting my fist on it. I was unhappy with the mechanics of the car, especially the suspension, which I considered to be a potential deathtrap.

  The following day Leepu was off buying the finishing touches, steering wheel etc. It was while he was away that I spotted another potential killer. The prop-shaft (a huge revolving shaft that runs under the car from the back of the gearbox to the differential between the back wheels, thus transferring the power) was not aligned with the gearbox, and the constant velocity joint (positioned part-way along the prop shaft) could have exploded, sending the whole prop through the car! To rectify this we managed to raise the gearbox within the body to align the shaft. At the end of all this work I was fucked.

  Leepu returned with his steering wheel and a piano accordion which he started playing. Now if you can’t understand what’s being sung it doesn’t matter if it’s in tune, but to me this instrument always sounded like they’ve dropped an anvil on someone’s toes. In any case there were more important things to talk about and it was my turn to hurt his ears.

  I explained about the difficulties we’d had with the prop-shaft and my feelings regarding the suspension, e.g. the lack of it, but Leepu appeared oblivious. The car had many mechanical problems but the test drive was looming. For a start the petrol tank couldn’t be filled because the filler neck was obscured.

  Shouting and swearing appeared to be the order of the day with both of us getting in each other’s way – that was the bad news. However, in the early hours of the following morning, while the roads were quiet, guess what? The beats hit the road.

  There are no worries here about insurance, MOT, road tax, you just get out and drive. Leepu flew down the backstreets of Dhaka with me sat in the passenger seat, and the few locals who were about at that time of day just looked on quizzically. The car looked and went great but my God it was rough to sit in – the rear end was hopping about like Bugs Bunny on acid.

  The result of the test was yet another row between me and Leepu. Basically I dressed him down for not listening to me with regards to the suspension and he went off in a huff after I suggested lifting the rear slightly. Leepu sarcastically claimed that I wanted a monster truck. Saying that lit my fucking fuse and I told him that if he had spoken to me like this in
England I would have fucking killed him.

  I was not happy.

  We made up the following day but the pressure on us both was building. The crew wanted the footage to cut for Discovery and time was running out. We managed to compromise but it was still tense. But at least I was allowed to do some fucking work.

  This time around Leepu worked on the body and I worked on the mechanics, and at last we were working in some form of sync, but, fuck me, we had only days left. Leepu’s lads had covered the whole car in body filler, it looked like cement and it needed sanding down, applying the primer and paint, let alone doing the detailing. With hard work, and I mean bloody hard work, the sanding and paintwork were completed.

  I would never have thought it could be done. Never. Just goes to show what can be achieved when a group of guys put their minds and determination to it.

  The detailing was done including putting in modified headlights that Leepu cut with a saw. The end product was truly amazing, in fact it was more than that – it was a miracle. With just sweat, a few tools, arguments and persistence, the impossible had been achieved. The only question now was: How were the public going to perceive it?

  On the day of the ‘Big Reveal’, like a bride to her wedding we were late, but the polite and dignified people of Bangladesh stood in readiness as we arrived at the show in the nick of time. Their reception for us and their anticipation was incredible, totally different to any crowd you would get in the UK – they were so excited.

  I gave a speech to the crowd, most of whom cheered without understanding my native tongue. Or was it just my Cockney accent? To them it didn’t matter, for they knew what we had achieved. The crowd started to cheer as I told them: ‘It gives me great pleasure to reveal Leepu’s creation.’

  It was awesome. It looked like a Ferrari and as the wheels rolled, so did the tears down Leepu’s face and mine. It wasn’t just a car; it was a collaboration of culture, religion and faith.