Is your breakdown recovery service really all you think it is? Do you set off on holiday, or rallying in your classic, confident that, whatever happens, both you and your car will be repatriated at no further cost if anything goes wrong? Don't be so sure....

Our colleagues at Classic Car Weekly recently stumbled across a problem with overseas cover when a reader contacted them to say that he had discovered his European cover with Green Flag would not necessarily have brought his car home.

For lower value cars, this is quite a serious issue that could leave motorists stranded at home when their holiday is over, their car left behind for scrapping because the cost of repatriation exceeded the value of the car.

This issue is by no means exclusive to Green Flag and it's well worth checking the small print of your cover before heading overseas.

The issues are not just overseas, however. Over the years competition in the marketplace has led all recovery companies to cut back and now it feels as if every possible avenue is explored when you break-down not to give you the best possible service, but to minimise the cost to the recovery company.
Just one example is for drivers of seven-seater cars, increasingly common these days.

Not all parts of your cover may cater for you, as your Editor discovered two years ago when his seven-seater Saab blew its engine in South Wales.

AA Recovery would take us all home, but AA Relay Plus would only provide a five-seater for us to continue our journey - and, most frustratingly, the manager at AA Relay Plus flatly refused to allow me to pay the difference between a five-seater and a seven-seater.

Don't assume, either, that you have the final say in what happens to your vehicle. A few years ago we broke a halfshaft on a rare Ford Special on a European rally.

The axle clearly needed a proper rebuild with special bearing repair kits, a specialist operation that could really only be done back in the UK. We requested repatriation but were told that the Spanish garage believed they could repair the car and wanted a replacement halfshaft sent out.

It would have been costly, time-consuming and would almost certainly have broken in the same way in a day or two, yet it took several heated phone calls before repatriation was agreed.

So, read the small print, be prepared and, if in doubt, "Just AAsk"!  'By Malcolm McKay'