Car blimey! Push-bike Corsa fails to make the grade-ient!
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A PAIR of thrill-seeking church ministers have ditched plans for a charity road trip round the North Coast 500 – because their lime green pedal-powered Vauxhall Corsa is not the best when it comes to going uphill.
James Bissett, an ordained local minister who does supply for Fodderty and Strathpeffer Church of Scotland, and his wife Susan Cord, who is minister for Killearnan and Knockbain churches, already had a relay team in place to tackle the stunning route in the name of charity, but thought better of it after they actually got behind the wheel.
The former civil servants from Cowdenbeath bought the vehicle – which had already been converted to be human-powered – on eBay for £500.
And that is where it has now returned after they realised it was going to be absolute murder on the uphill sections of their challenging route.
"It was going to be quite difficult," admitted 42-year-old Mr Bissett.
"When you actually get going it’s OK on the flat, but when you hit any sort of gradient at all it’s a bit of a slog."
The couple, who became the Church of Scotland’s first jointly-ordained husband and wife two years ago, had been hoping the off-the-wall challenge would be a good way of raising money for some of the good causes supported by the church.
Mr Bissett, who lives with his 43-year-old wife at First Field Avenue, North Kessock, said: "We floated the idea on Facebook and there was some support so we bought the vehicle and had it shipped up from England, but we realised when we thought about it that the local geography and getting places to stay and organising all the team support was going to be quite difficult.
"So we are selling it on and hoping to get the £500 we paid for it.
"The wheels are off two motorbikes, and it also has motorbike brakes front and back. The horn works, it’s got indicators, it’s got lights.
"If you got it onto a wee race track or 400m race track you could get a 24-hour charity race record out of it or something along those lines."
He added: "My wife and I managed to get 6mph out of it. I know what it needs to improve it – if you shrink a couple of the cogs you would be able to get it running better.
"You never know, maybe one of the bike shops might want it as their company car. We still have plans to do something for charity, and I’m working on something else just now and hoping to pull it off."
The bike car is on eBay under the search term: "Four seater pedal powered Vauxhall Corsa Carbike Recumbent bike quad quadricycle."
