Sold 1995 Renault Clio 1.8 Baccara Manual, MOT March 18 Running Project, £4.50 a go

[Rave]

You bought it then? Nice  

[Ghosty]

R8 nerd time: as it's Honda engined it'll be a 416SLi. These didn't come with alloys but 14" steels with lattice trims. 1995/N plate is as far as they go, as it's also what the early bubble cars were on, and there was very little overlap.

However the 400 Tourer and 200 Coupe/Tomcat could also be equipped with such wheels (in fact they might have been standard on the Coupe) and they were made until 1998 which could well explain the 'later model' comment.

As well as those though the wheels are a standard alloy option for the R8 2/400, as seen on late (1994 on) cars with the big front bumper, stick-on grille etc. They came on all the higher spec cars, 214SEi, 2/420GSi etc. SLi was the basic spec by the end of the R8's run.

[Rave]

Thanks! This one had a classy if slightly dull grey leather interior, and an attractive (maybe non-airbag?) steering wheel.

[Ghosty]

Leather? Hmm, interesting, that'll have been optioned in, it's not too common. They have velour as standard.

 

It's unlikely to be non-airbag on an N, it should be this one:

 

 

That's my old M plate car, but it seems like anything can happen with R8s.

 

A neat little feature is that the airbag light is on the steering wheel, it's the 'SRS' text at the bottom - it lights up red. They did that on R8s because the Honda sourced gauge cluster didn't have provision for one.