As the sun belted down over Portugal’s glittering Atlantic roads, Dumball One — our noble steed, an MG ZF with all the resilience of a damp biscuit — began its slow, spectacular descent into mechanical madness.
We were cruising toward Albufeira, the land of poolside foam parties and buffet dinners with a side of existential crisis. But for Dumball One, this drive wasn’t a holiday. It was a battle for survival.
It started, as all Dumball tales do, with a bang. A loud one. Coolant exploded everywhere like a geyser of mechanical despair. I (Rick, your fearless-ish driver) and my co-driver/nephew Rafi stared at the mess. He wanted to abandon ship. I wanted to gaffer tape my way to greatness.
So we did what any Dumballer would do — we bodged it. Cable ties, duct tape, a swig of water, a silent prayer to the Monkey God, and off we went.
One hour later? Bang.
Again.
We pulled over. Again. Rafi sighed like a man halfway through a doomed relationship. I grabbed the tape. We re-gaffered, refilled, rebungled.
Bang. Again.
By this point, the MG was held together more by willpower and plastic than actual engineering. But then — salvation, in the shape of Ragnarök, a thundering blue BMW X3 with more torque than sense. As we crawled up the final Albufeira hills, they pulled up behind us and literally pushed us up the mountain. Like a gentle Scandinavian Valkyrie shoving a broken shopping trolley.
We made it. Just. Our wheels kissed the tarmac of the hotel car park with all the grace of a collapsing donkey.
The next morning at 8:30am, while most Dumballers were tangled in duvet covers or queuing for bacon, I was at a Portuguese car parts centre, trying to look like a man who knew what he was doing. I didn’t. But I bought a metre of hose, some jubilee clips, and several T-junctions that definitely didn’t match each other.
I took a knife to the MG’s coolant system like a mad surgeon on a deadline. Piece by mismatched piece, I rebuilt that thing. Five hoses, four sizes, three trips to the shop, €60 of badly translated conversations, and a near-religious amount of swearing later… the system was whole.
Tony Hogan, Dumball Aussie elder and mechanical nurse, arrived halfway through, handing me tools with all the gravitas of a Formula 1 pit crew’s grandma. Then we filled it up with new coolant. We turned the key. The engine roared.
No leak.
Cool as a cucumber in a freezer full of smug.
Where was Rafi during this Herculean resurrection, you ask? Having a lie-in. Probably dreaming about Uber.
But Dumball One lives. Lives to breakdown another day. Lives to party in Albufeira. And lives to prove that on Dumball, the car may be crap — but the story is gold.
Spirit of Dumball? Shitty Shitty Bang Bang Shield?
We’ll take them all. Just don’t ask us to drive uphill again.
— Rick
Commander of Coolant. Tamer of MGs. Uncle of Sleepy Nephews.
