Is dust the colour of champagne?

When my great-grandmother passed away, she left my mother an inheritance—a sum to pay our first car.  The thought of a gleaming machine, ready to whisk us away on countless adventures, thrilled me. My mother spoke with fervour about trips to sunny beaches, the mountain peaks of North Wales, and holidays with Grandad. 
For advice, we visited Uncle Joe in his motor repair garage in Liverpool. We walked into the work where the air was thick with the smell of oil and the clanking of tools at work. Joe was at the back, his head under a car bonnet. He greeted us and wiped his hands on a dirty rag. 
“For a family, you can’t beat a Wolseley 1500—roomy, reliable, a powerful engine,” he said. “You don’t want a car that leaves you stranded on the roadside. Wolseley is good value for money. I know the dealer in Birkenhead. A good chap. He’ll sort you out.”
Despite being only ten, I felt swept away by the salesman’s fast-talking charm. His glossy brochure caught the light, and his quips made my mother laugh.  
“You can have any colour you like, madam, as long as it’s black,” he teased, while watching my mother’s puzzled face. “Don’t worry, madam. The world has changed. We now offer the entire rainbow.”  
My mother’s eyes gleamed while scanning a card with bright colours. 
“That’s the one!” she exclaimed, pointing to Champagne Beige.
“A wise choice, madam. Elegant and timeless. Very practical too. Did you know that dust is the colour of champagne and won’t show?”  
That comment made me think. What was the colour of dust? And the colour of champagne? I’d never seen champagne.
My father hesitated when he saw the price of champagne beige was the highest of all.  
“Well,” he said. “Wouldn’t a lighter colour show more dirt than a darker one?”  
The salesman beckoned us outside with the air of a magician unveiling his trick.  
Gesticulating towards a row of cars, he said, “Look at these black cars, sir. See how they show the dirt?”  
Clutching the brochure, my mother said, “Granny would have loved us to have champagne colour, dear. In her memory, we’ll call the car Emily.”  
With the name decided and the car ordered, and my mind brimmed with expectation. 
Back inside the office, the salesman asked to see my father’s driving license.
“Er, er, I haven’t got one at the moment,” he said. “I still have to do my test, you see.”
“That’s fine. We’ll have the car ready in June. Please bring it then.”
Neither parent had even taken a lesson, but that didn’t bother me. My father would surely pass with ease. He started driving lessons soon after ordering Emily but often came back disappointed. He struggled to grasp the required coordination of clutch, handbrake, and accelerator. To practise at home, he built a wooden mock-up featuring spring pedals, but to no avail. On the day of his test, he returned home looking distraught—he’d failed. 
The morning of his second test, he worried about how to manage in the freezing weather. I rushed to the door when he came back home.
“It was a shambles,” he said. “The roads are icy and slippery. Halfway through the test, the examiner made me do an emergency stop, right on a spot of ice. Car skidded into the kerb with a bump. He cancelled my test.”
When a letter arrived announcing the arrival of Emily, my father still hadn’t passed his test. A neighbour offered to help by accompanying him to Birkenhead and driving back with Emily. When they returned with our shiny champagne car, it looked splendid with its sparkling chrome grill. The neighbour took us a quick trip around the village. While he spoke about it driving like a dream, I studied the instruments to see how fast we were going, and my mother remarked on how comfortable the leather seats were.
But the jubilation was short-lived. Until there was a driver, Emily had to be stored in our specially built garage. The neighbour nosed the car into our new garage but stopped halfway.
“The garage is too small!” he shouted. “We can’t open the doors!”
He reversed, and we got out. After edging the car into the garage again, he could only just squeeze himself out.
Weeks later, victory at last! My father passed. The dream of a camping holiday in the Lake District became a reality. The open road lay ahead with my father at Emily’s wheel, and me thrilled by the prospect of adventure.