Last car you bought from the local paper. Tales of the print media.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Someone on the radio this week was talking about the decline of the local newspaper, one of the main reasons she gave was that no one looks there for a used car anymore.

Made me think about rushing up to the newspaper office on a Thursday lunchtime to get paper and the bargains first.

Sitting in that same office on a Tuesday writing out ads on printed forms,for the fewest words , because you paid by the word.

Then of course there was Motoring News, Exchange and Mart. Driving all over the country to look at a car based on a ten word description and a 30 second phone call to get the address.

The luxury of a smudgy black and white picture in the Autotrader, I used to drive to Daventry on a Friday morning , because that was as far south as the Midland edition was distributed at one time and cars were cheaper " up North".

 

I don't think I've been into the MK Citizen office to place an ad this Century , in fact it could have been an E reg 2.0i Granada in about 1995.

As for buying, that was probably a Jag S-Type in 2007 , found in the Midland Autotrader. I remember because we'd been to see another one in Coventry then sat in a pub, inexactly the same way you would today with your phone.

[Richard]

Escort estate, 2001, fugging disaster.

 

Next car was from AutoTrader website and every one since then has been friends or forums.

[Supernaut]

My first car was from Scot-Ads. A 1997 Peugeot 306 bought in 2010 for £300 as an MOT failure.

 

It needed a track rod end replaced and the handbrake adjusted, then it flew through an MOT without even an advisory.

 

Everything else has been Autotrader / ebay / scumtree.

[mercrocker]

Quite a timely topic, this....I am currently half-heartedly searching for a potential New Motah.   I used to particularly like the old Free-Ads Yellow paper and can well remember grabbing one as soon as they were available (there was a warning to sellers not to talk to buyers before a certain date, I recall....). 

 

  Autotrader as a magazine was in my opinion a lot easier to browse than t'Internet which WOULD be better if it was contrived to allow people to search for things they want the way they wish instead of being chanelled into trying to flog you other shit.   The sub-£1000 section of A/T was an excellent source of my cars back then as were the "American and Classic" pages. 

 

Gumtree is fucking hard work to be frank and I don't even go near Facebook.  Newsagent's windows were quite fruitful but haven't landed me anything since a W116 280SE for £250 in 2005.   I flogged that on by the same method....  

 

I think the last car I bought from Autotrader and the like would have been the Minor back in 2004.

[Tamworthbay]

Last car I bought was a mini in 1990, last bike I bought was a TS250 in 1995, I always nose through them but our local paper has gone from five or six pages to about half a side in last ten years. It’s a dead format. I only get the local paper for the what’s on bit but will be stopping having it soon as that section is crap now.

[Amishtat]

There used to be some gems in the Coventry Evening Telegraph but you had to be quick. I worked nights at the time so would get up about three in the afternoon, not long after the paper was delivered. Even then I was too late one day for a driveable series 3 Sunbeam Rapier in a nice colour and with its original registration. I rang up as soon as I saw the advert but someone had beaten me to it, at the asking price of 395 you couldn't be too surprised. The Diamond free ads paper was good too, some of the stuff in there in the late nineties would make you weep now. Mot'd Mark 1 Cortina GT for 795..Only thing I ever bought was a dog shit modified Manta Berlinetta off a council estate near Wolverhampton which would have been better left there but my first choice of a 2.3 Cortina Ghia had already sold when I rang. I miss those days, it was kind of more fun than ebay and Gumtree.

[Asimo]

Last local paper small ad purchase was a £3000 Audi 100 in about 1992. Private seller a few villages away.

 

1995, Renault Alpine from a private ad in Autocar and after that the internet had happened.

 

In the '80s I bought an Ambassador and then an Ro80 from private ads in a Cheltenham freesheet called North Glos shopper or something like. Both of these car ads were misplaced and in the miscellaneous random things section. They were, as a result, bargains. Enough so for me to make a (tiny, man-maths) profit on both.

 

Despite buying Exchange and Mart for about 30 years, I have never bought anything from it.

[DVee8]

The last car bought from the Autotrader in print was around 2004 was a Vauxhall Vectra 2.2 sri.

 

Out of the local paper,I don't think I ever have.

 

As for the online Autotrader of today it seem that it is only interested in how much you want to spend and how much a month you want to spend before getting into what car you actually want.

[Eyersey1234]

My Focus was advertised on Autotrader, as for the local paper I once rang up about a Fiesta, arranged a viewing then the morning of the viewing gets a call to say Fiesta had gone but he had a Peugeot 106 instead, which my sister wanted to look at so we did although I didn't like it, I suspect the Fiesta never existed in the first place to be honest.

 

After my OH wrote off her Corsa a few years ago by successfully rear ending a stationery Astra at 40mph we bought a 2001 Fiesta that had been advertised in the local paper. It was January 2001 registered so should have been X reg but for some reason was W reg, I never worked out why.

[Ghosty]

Never bought a car from a paper. 

One from C&C, one from eBay, two from Auto Trader online, two from AS.

[UltraWomble]

Loot 1996

 

Austin Mini Sprite.

 

 

 

 

Total heap.

[nebuchenezer]

Local car in press and journal 1987. Mk 1 escort 1300 GT with a 2l pinto conversion

 

£50

 

After fixing the obvious and un obvious faults it stood me for a bag.

 

Fast as a stabbed rat and lethal. I wrapped I wrapped it round a teleghrap pole a year later

 

The seller literally moved house within an hour of me buying it.

 

I miss those days

[Matty]

Zx volcane out of autotrader in 2001 then the internet really took over

[sierraman]

A 1991 Sierra from the West Britton classifieds.

[lesapandre]

Nice thread - Trade It was the London go-to for cheap cars. When I was a yoof Exchange and Mart was the then go to for 'collectors' cars - Aston Martins were still well under £1000 in those far off 70's. I cant remember the last car I bought off paper - easily the worst was a 70's Audi 100 I bought out of Autotrader - very nice until the big ends started knocking second day I had it.

[Rocket88]

Used buy all of my stuff from the "Spares or repair" segment of my local rag..............£15 Vauxhall 101 estate with a heroic oil leak, £50 '65 Ford Galaxie convertible [i would add that it had as much floor as it had hood......bugger all , virtually] Best Buy was a Fiat 124 coupe..........£30..........this was the late seventies, mind you.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Last car bought from the Autotrader was a 1977 Alfasud 1300Ti in 1995. Very low mileage and one owner but surprisingly fartless. The second choke in the Weber had seized shut. I used to buy nearly everything from the auctions. 

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Western Gazette, 1981. Fatha Bluejeans spotted a 1966 1275S for £500. Went round the bloke's house in Cross Keys near Keinton Mandeville and didn't buy it as it had a 1300GT engine and not the correct S unit. That's how it was then.

[HMC]

My last 2- Both Adtrader free ads.

 

Sept 2003- Land Rover series 1 80” 1952. Barn find/original £700. (Wish I’d kept it!!!)

Oct 2004- Saab 96 v4, 1973. £500. Mot’d and my daily for a while. A bit rusty here and there.

[HMC]

Last car bought from the Autotrader was a 1977 Alfasud 1300Ti in 1995. Very low mileage and one owner but surprisingly fartless. The second choke in the Weber had seized shut. I used to buy nearly everything from the auctions.

 

Was it white?

[clayts450]

Loughborough Echo, Skoda Estelle for £100 with MoT and tax, circa 1997.

 

Purchased from near Shepshed somewhere, bloke had a Saabnut-type piece of land with choddage in various states of disrepair.

 

This orange beauty with the vinyl roof came bouncing down from the top field. No more than a cursory glance from me cos only a ton, cash handed over, log book obtained, on my way.

 

Rewarded me by the nearside rear driveshaft snapping in the grounds of Northern General Hospital, Sheffield, and when it was fixed up grenading the gearbox into a zillion pieces.

[timolloyd]

From the Friday Ad (which I noticed is still printed): a mark 2 Escort with a week’s MOT, for £75. That would have been around 2000.

[Richard]

I've just remembered we bought our 2002 C5 Estate from the local rag in 2007. We were looking for either a C5 or a Laguna, thank fuck the C5 came up first.

[Split_Pin]

I have only used Autotrader once to sell a car back in 2005 and the experience was almost exactly as it is now, except it was telephone calls to arrange rather than messages.

 

I bought my first car in 2001 so the Internet was pretty much the incumbent medium by then.

[MrBiscuits]

2003, J reg Renault 5 campus from the Hampshire free ads. From a big posh house in chillworth. Had been left to an ungrateful grandchild by its giffer owner. Faded red paint and moss, though polished up alright and became my sisters first car.

 

December 2001 - K reg Renault 19, from the paper Autotrader. Shabby alloys and crunchy leading edge on the bonnet. Went on to do 40k in that in the next 18m.

 

April 2000. C reg Mini City E from the free ads. Only 26k as it had spent the first 12 years of its life running round Fawley oil refinery. Then given a rough blow over (in what I suspected was Post Ofice red) and some horrific welding from the bloke I bought it off. Mechanically spot on, the fastest 998 mini I Had, proper rotten though.

 

Since then it's all been online...

[solid61]

Last one I bought out of the Luton news in 1983 was a rover p6,it was badly advertised but cheap,£250.00 ono,turned out to be a 3500s in almond with tobacco vynil roof,power steering,green tints and off White vynil trim,rotten rear wings but soon put right with a pair of s/h fibreglass replacements,got it for £200 as well,reg no DOB164K,fitted a sharp ANSS cassette/radio and thought I was the bollox.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

SplitPin mentioning phoning the Autotrader to place an ad, reminds me of when someone would come round and take the picture for the ad.

Younger readers may find this weird, but Autotrader employed local agents whom they sent round to take a black and white smudge, help you write the ad. and take payment. I only used this service once , it was in 1992 for a black D reg Twin Plenum Vitesse. Advertised for £4K sold the day after publication, well worth the £17.

[Richard]

I'd forgotten about that, you used to see adverts with "example photo" on them where they had presumably been unable to visit. The example photos weren't always the right model either.

[DVee8]

I have just been reading the small ads in the back of  in this months modern classics mag.

 

A G reg Ford Sierra  for 12k  where they that much in 1989?

 

In the early 00's myself and my FiL where selling cars picked up from the local used car sales px's,cleaning them up and doing what ever repairs then selling them on.

We were on first name terms with the photo agent she was ok if a little grumpy. Always running late.

At the time you could only sell so many through the trader so we would alternate the free under 1k ads,then use the green paper or the yellow paper.

Also the free ads for sale board in Tesco.

[Six-cylinder]

MGB GT, Buckingham Advertiser August 5th 2011

 

I do still have it in good running order.