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Most of you know exactly what this is anyway already paid for it, taxed it, insured it, haven’t even seen it in person opposite end of the country! poo count: 0 running on 4 hours sleep for maximum excitement this should be a fun day

It’s been collected! oh god it’s good! Just grabbing some lunch before heading home, I’ll get more pics once home

Apparently this is my fault...

Taken from an AR Online article I was reading. I thought I'd share it here too. Interesting to hear the contrast between BL and Volkswagen at the time: Former British Leyland man Michael Wattam recalls the process of the Austin Allegro’s productionisation… And the reaction from the firm’s South African outpost when presented with the option of building the ‘new driving force from Austin’. The original sketches (above) and clay for the Allegro looked pretty impressive, but things changed as the car made the transition from paper to production line. The production guys took a sharp intake of breath at every panel and slowly got the design modified so that it looked pretty awful, but possible (and cheaper) to make. For instance, door swages which were designed in and needed to add strength and cut panel vibration down, were eliminated and the extremely bulbous door panels productionised. The reason was that the press tools on which the doors were to be pressed, were fairly light and could only cope with simple bends and not deep, clearly defined 3D draws. The press dies themselves were made of a low-grade steel material which wore quite quickly and would have needed relatively frequent renewal. This applied throughout the car – all because there was no cash to buy heavy presses and quality, deep draw steel dies. There was a huge amount of manual selectivity and compromise ‘fitting’ required of panels on production, with manually-applied spot welds at the absolute minimum. At the same time, Volkswagen Group was investing heavily in cutting-edge automated whole-body production. The above and the inherent lack of torsional strength implied by a very lightly engineered and simplistic bodyshell design, led to all those problems with doors stuck when the car is jacked, and the terrible acoustics when driving, particularly with the most powerful E-Series motor. I remember getting into a 1750 Sport and being appalled by the poor drive quality, drumming and general thrash. What a disappointment… Finance Controller John Barber wasn’t that clever, either. Had he simply been a ‘car guy’ and not a fanatical bean-counter, he would have instantly cancelled the whole bloody thing and sat on his hands. I was unfortunate enough to take pictures and tech details to Leyland South Africa in 1973, pretending to be all positive about the new car. Clearly the first question we were going to ask them is, ‘will you take this car in sufficient numbers and at a unit contribution, which would make assembly there a worthwhile exercise?’ One look at the first pictures of prototype cars (perversely all photographed very nicely in a muddy quarry?) and their decision was already made, no need for any viability study. In about 15 minutes, said they would not build it. They were on good terms with Stokes so, when I got home, I was given a right royal rollicking by senior Longbridge management – anybody who knew Harold Musgrove would understand the expletives used! Other more ‘tied’ organisations such as BL Italia and BL France took a more pragmatic approach and asked for complete cars with unique low specs which they could sell in budget market niches, and when BL found getting cars registered in the UK profitably and in decent volume just wasn’t happening, acceded to their NSC requests for ‘specials’. Nobody really wanted to know whether making Allegros was ever profitable – the marketing and financial systems used at the time were aided by sticking a wet finger out of the nearest window.

Spotted next to where I was working today. A lovely Jap sports car and some beige, shite kit car.

Some more pics Bloody hell this drives well 150 miles left to go

I done a buy! Thanks again @ruffgeezer, top car, top fella, safe journey home to you!

In fact spot on. I'm home! Thanks to @ruffgeezer for this lovely Volvo V70 It's blue!

To hear they are struggling makes quite pleasing reading when you saw them price gouging during COVID. Some of the absolute dog turds you see peddled for £2,000 these days is unreal so I can take no small amount of comfort in seeing Mr Bombsite Trader having the arse fall out of his business.

I've been here a while. What are you saying?

1985 ERF C Series tractor unit 290 Cummins | eBay

More people were buying used - but that stock is reducing, interest rates are rising and bills... ugh. The thing is July and August were always slow times commercially for advertising and car sales after the plate change moved. People have holidays and shit to deal with, and overheating on motorway jams aside, older cars tend to behave better in summer - winter brings out the bad starting, arcing in damp, car's soggy and miserable inside, another year passed and my car looks older mentality. The cynic in me also suspects whichever tory cu... candidate wins, the party and policies are engineered to keep the stress and perceived pain "high" until that is decided. Then when they get chosen and chucked into Boris's faeces-smeared wine-stained office and the last bits of wallpaper have been thrown away, they can "make it all better" and make the tories look like the good guys for the voters again with some bizarre backwards handout while still being the party that decided that actual people facing poverty should lose £20 a week they'd been given as a tiny uplift to already relatively much lower benefits support.

It's that time of the month... The Patisserie breakfast isn't all for me. However, that fact remains that I'm logging my breakfast on social media, must be time to collect a car.

I'm far from the most perceptive person in the world, and I've never been particularly great at reading other people. Having said that, if I joined a forum and within a couple of weeks pretty much everyone on there (including people who normally can't even agree about the colour of the fucking sky) had decided that I was a massive cunt, I would like to think that even I would have the sense to realise that it's probably not the place for me and beat a graceful* retreat.

My MGB has been sitting getting a fresh rain wash on my drive while it thought about itself breaking. In truth at least it did it now rather than on the way to the MGB60 event next month. Put it in its usual configuration Checked the new roughly matched the old. Bolts go into captive nuts, so a simple job of whizzing them off with my Milwaukee stubby. Engine side is clean. Front is filthy. This looks like the side that potentially has failed but then it also will get all the grime stuck to it. I elected to remove the hoses and cooler in one. They connect to the block and the oil filter housing here: And here: I chose to remove the rear hose first as it'd give me better access to the front oil filter hose. I removed the oil pressure gauge hose as gave much better access. Wish I bought a replacement hose for this gauge though. On the oil filter housing, the coupler came undone before the hose. This used a crush washer to seal the gap. Same one as used on the sump. New hoses checked. The right angle side attaches to the cooler. Much more flexible than the old and I'm glad that I did replace them. Not least the fittings on the old oil cooler were seized on. Refit it all. Hoses are a bit of a pain to get through the radiator shroud. Used the original rubber grommets as in good condition and modern rubber can be shite. The hoses have a rubber strap to hold them together. Original fabric coated one unfortunately perished. It broke a few months ago. There was two straps so I put one each side. Ran the engine and checked for leaks. Oil was low, so topped up. Took pretty much a full two pints. Handily what was remaining from the last oil change. I used this oil. Don't think it's got much or any ZDDP in but it doesn't thin as badly as some oils with heat. The engine seems to quite like it .

Some progress , it's the front OS abs ring that's causing the problems

A Skoda Superb "Edition 100", I still shudder thinking of the fucking thing. It was five metres of stretched B5 Pisshat shite. Very top spec, had EVERY toy you could imagine in circa 2004. Interior was a lovely place to be and the seats were very comfy, that's where the good news ends. It suffered from chronic water ingress which I was constantly chasing, seemed like I fixed one leak and it came in somewhere else. As a result the body electrics had a mind of their own. The rust was pretty dire for a reasonably young car at the time, the bootlid and front wings dissolved rapidly. The front end suspension was a knockfest. After a few months I'd replaced absolutely everything including wheel bearings and it was fine for about two weeks, then it started again. It burst about 4 coil springs in the space of six months. The ungrateful cunt got some other works including some rear bushes. About six months after I bought it, it lunched it's reverse gear entirely, a forwards only motor from this point. I sold it to Arnold Clark, their thorough test drive consisted of one forwards lap round their car park. I bit their hand off for the sum offered, turned tail and got the fuck out of there. In hindsight I persevered with it far too long, I'd cut my losses far earlier now. It's fine though, the interior didn't rattle. VAG quality*.

This.

At least you know and appreciate the fact that you're a cunt 🤣

After reading the Escort Base model thread I thought I'd share my Escort 1.1 Popular that I have owned for nearly 10 years now. Its proper chod spec and I love it!! I always wanted one of these. When I was a kid my dad had a Sunburst Red Base Model 1.3 (x reg) until about 1998 followed by a mk4 1.4 GL. I always assumed I'd own a Red 3 door Escort mk3 when I passed my test but, that was 2005. My folks helped me with my first shit box which was a £900 Saxo and they wouldnt help to buy an Escort as they thought the ones they had were shite. I was stuck for a while until I was making my own money. Saxo died one Friday and I was looking for a mk3 in Red in a hurry. Didnt happen but I landed a mk5 3 door in Red for work on Monday (2008). I also test drove a Capri 1.6 but we'll come back to that later. During owning this I went to view a mk3 (sunburst red 1.3) that a scrap yard in Manchester had put to one side. Went along with £300 which was what it wasnt selling for on ebay. Fell in love, was told to go home and bid. When I got home they'd taken it down and I was gutted! Even drove back and pleaded with them to sell it me. The bosses son wanted it apparently. Anyway... had the mk5 for years, followed by a Focus when that died, then I was in a position where I was about to make some decent money as a touring musician which meant I could own a second car. Although I was always looking for one of these (still do to this day) one hadnt popped up in Red for 3 years and during the rehearsals for said tour a C reg 3 door 1.1 in Red popped up for sale on ebay. It seemed like it was meant to be so I went down to Peterborough and had a look/test drive. I loved every minute of it and thought it was hilarious at the same time. The steering wheel was so thin, the gear stick really long, the seating position was less sporty than my old mk5. I had to have it. The seller said you've checked it over havent you and happy with it a few times... alarm bells should have rang but it looked fine and solid. Put my fingers under the arch and they seemed solid (should have looked harder as you'll see). Anyway I bought it with my heart and not my head. Enjoyed the summer of 2013 with the medium wave radio cranked and the single centre speaker working its bollocks off then it lived in my Dads garage in the winter. Apologies for the Photobucket watermark on these early pics. As stereo upgrade from medium wave to Cassette medium wave. The following year as I remember it went for an MOT and they poked the little hole I'd found at the bottom of the driver sill, all the way around. Gutted!! This is the time I should have put it back on ebay, especially as on a now defunct Escort forum a guy couldnt sell a Base model 1.6 3 door in terracotta for £600. After a while I found some guys in Stoke-on-Trent who could restore it for me for a reasonable price so in it went... as you can see they found more rot than initially thought. All done! with some new wheels off a Capri, probably killing off all the wheel bearings. This is probably 1/3 of story. Its 2014 at this point. My girlfriend had moved to Glasgow for a new job so I was occasionally using it to go up there (Still had my Focus Estate too). Mainly I used it to listen to the Smiths and Tom petty cassettes round Manchester when back from touring with various bands. At some point it was kicked out of my Dads garage when he bought a Spitfire 1500 in early 2017 and then I took it to London with my later that year when I moved. I'll continue this later on when I have more time. As a long time lurker on here I thought I should maybe share my own tails of automotive woe with you... we havent even got to the Capri yet.

Never mind. The spare carb from the Pontiac fits. To put it in context, that's like having the carb from a Standard Ten fit a Chevette.

Then photographed on an £8 digital camera by an amateur before uploading to here 😀. Here are the last few, hard to tell as it's very much in the background but might just be a Cherry Turbo in picture 7? Also love the old school spares shop with the pre-facelift Mk2 Granny outside and the shonky beige Cortina outside the Prudential.

This is my take on it, too. Here's the worst I 'owned' (press fleet blag, admittedly)... My expectations were so high! The Aston was brand new, but had some weird brake/electrical issue, sounded good but didn't feel fast, was ungainly to drive, heavy, ridiculously ostentatious, stupidly expensive and just plain horrible to drive. I gave it back a day early as I felt like a twat driving it. I thought I'd feel like James Bond. And the best? My 299 quid Metro which I drove to Africa, as I expected it to be crap, but it was brilliant.

Actually it's less of me collecting, rather I sit here and wait for a shitter to deliver and then I return him to the station, which is a good 45 or 50 mins away.

Going up that hill, very quickly.

I found an old Barnard Marcus property auction catalogue from 1989 and the photos of some of the lots captured some period street scenes and old shite. Sorry for the picture quality.

It feels and smells like a new car! think I’ve stolen this one tbh absolute bargain

Here you go

New view

It's got street cred

Absolutley shite advert with no detail but it's MOT'd until December. Looks like it had a 12 year rest between 2006 and 2018. I think the show really went down hill since he started concentrating on Escort convertibles though . https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1113944376173336

Just about halfway there! this modern Toyota is absolutely lovely!

Is that a posh poo count?

Gotta pay the gas bill somehow, avoiding buying a new(er) car is one way I guess.

It's only Colin Mcrae in a Nova on Brook Lane, Chester! The petrol station is now a Vets4pets Someone crashed into my dad's Talbot Alpine once by pulling out where that blue car is coming from.

I'll tell you my idea when you start making an effort to communicate clearly.

I have done research and if the information I have is correct, I have now found out more about the first owner of this. He was born in 1926 and died in 2016. He ran a bus/taxi company which his son still runs. The son was born in 1962 so he can mayby remember this car. So I wonder if I should contact him, has to think about this. But for someone interested in history like me, this is fantastic.

Stanley Matthews of Stoke City on his 50th birthday in Stoke, England

Good holiday the last couple of weeks 🙂 Highlight was visiting a delightful small town on the edge of Exmoor which boasted a proper traditional Subaru garage with not only an immaculate 55 reg Legacy for sale, which I was tempted by, but a matching pair of red Daihatsu Sirions as courtesy cars (one even had a private plate the other was about 10 reg) This must be unique, I only wish I had my camera with me. Any other courtesy cars to rival this?

Needs a bit more than the Cat. Exhaust manifold, middle box, both 02 sensors, new wiring. The Mrs is quite ill at the mo, so I want least amount of hassle possible. Going to take the cash.

What do do while waiting for car? Have chain saw party with your mate who happens to be a tree surgeon.

Grey Street, Nut, 1961.

Don't feed the troll, every time you quote the twat I can see what he's written despite him not having made 5 posts before making my ignore list. It'd be ace if he could just fuck off, but so long as folk keep engaging with him..

Bit more mediocrity from the 1980s. Not sure if 20% of a CF justifies tagging @eddyramrod 😀

I’m just back from a holiday in Turkey. Temperature was brain meltingly hot so didn’t often venture away from the swimming pool but I did manage to spot the following: Tofas Sahin - there were a lot of these - based on the Fiat 131 and made in Turkey Renault torus - a turkish built renault 12. Our hotel featured a beach party one night and the mobile stage used was set up on this old truck.

I probably missed it when someone else posted the Reliant Salamander?

Just needs one of these and it'll be fine.

Lifts getting there. The floor is all kinds of cattywampus so its been a mare to line up. Its also bastard heavy! It was Wired up last night and now just needs some tweaking.