Datsuncog

Funny that - buying and selling cars for thirty years, so at what point did George decide to stop simply making an offer of what he was prepared to pay for a given car, and start giving it all the "best price" bollocks? I swear, I'd never heard this until about fifteen years ago - buyers expecting the sellers to chip their own asking price. The seller's already stated their preferred price in the ad. Go and view the car. Make what you believe to be a reasonable offer. It's then up to the seller to accept, or make a counter-offer. Then shake on a price, or walk away. It really is that simple. Whereas trying to force the seller to admit they've overpriced their car via text message just makes everyone concerned look like a cunt.

Today's laptop lovely: Vitesse Renault Safrane V6 Initiale Series 2. It's meant to be a very dark metallic green (Abysse) but it's not easy to tell. Reasonable effort at replicating the alloys, it has to be said. Aerial's a bit odd, mind. Interior detailing is surprisingly good, though my potatocam doesn't really do it justice. Verdict - decent stab at a terminally unloved luxo barge. Top chod.

I owned a few Bburago 1/18 models too - when I was eight or nine they were awesome, the best models ever, but as I got older I stopped being quite as interested in supercars and gold-star classics and the like, and so their appeal waned a little. From memory, I had a Mercedes 300SL 'Gullwing' in black, a 1956 Chevrolet Corvette in two-tone turquoise/white, a Porsche 356A in white, and a Jaguar E-Type coupé in black. The Merc was the first 'proper' model I owned - I must have been around eight when I bought it. It seemed very special, with the 'opening everything' and the high level of detail on the engine and dashboard. I accumulated a fair number of Polistil, Revell, ERTL, Maisto and Solido models in 1/18 also, over a period of about ten years. These tended to be contemporary 1980s supercars like the Ferrari F40, Lamborghini Countach LP400S and Porsche 959, 'American Classics' like a 1956 Ford Thunderbird, 1958 Cadillac Eldorado, 1970 Ford Mustang Boss and 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS, and less exotic fare like a Mini Cooper, VW Beetle and Citroen 2CV. As a scale I felt that bigger was better, but when more detailed 1/43 scale collectors' models arrived onto the market with Vitesse, Vanguards and Trofeu in the mid-late '90s, I gravitated towards them instead. I wound up working in a model shop, and although we shifted a lot of Bburago 1/18 - models like the BMW Z3 and Ferrari 550 Maranello gave you a huge amount of detail and features for £14 - seeing them stacked up in their hundreds in the stockroom made them seem a little less special, somehow. Eventually my 1/18 stuff went into storage as I entered a fairly nomadic phase of my life, and I sold most of them around 2010 to raise money for a house move. I kept the ERTL Chevelle, the Solido 2CV and a Revell Opel Manta 400 (which I picked up cheap at my old place of work in 2006 because the base was broken) for a while longer - but the last of them went earlier this year. As Split_Pin says, they're not particularly scarce and most 1/18 Bburagos can be found fairly easily in good condition for less than they originally cost. Like Lledo Days Gone, they do tend to attract a bit of the clueless 'them's rare, them's valuable' giffer contingent - car boot sales where old duffers are trying to offload an unboxed 1928 Mercedes SSK full of dust and with a broken wheel for £50 doesn't really help perceptions of desirability. I owned quite a few of the Bburago 1/24 scale models too, but they generally felt a bit more toy-like. The subject matter was good though, with Land Rover S3, Ford Escorts, Austin Metros, VW Golfs and so on. With pricing around the £5-8 mark in the mid-80s, these were the models I was most likely to receive as a gift for birthdays or Christmases. Some of them (Lancia Delta, Alfa 33) I had as kits to build up, which were fun although the waterslide decals were pretty poor and tended to flake off. Again, I sold the majority of them in 2010. The 1/43 models were the ones I hung onto longest, as they were more easily stored and represented some top-end shite - Mk1 Fiat Panda, Saab 900, Fiat Bravo, Citroen Xantia, Renault Clio. Quite a lot of them I bought new and kept boxed, but ultimately the chunky generic wheels and so-so paint finish meant that they didn't give me as much pleasure to look at or handle, so I passed them on. TL;DR - Bburago made some very good models, but they don't do much for me these days.

Oi! I resemble that remark! (The engine was actually held together with cable ties, on this occasion.)

Well worth it! Hopefully you weren't stung too much - that Corgi Juniors SD1 is well worth having, and the pink-and-white Majorette 405 isn't common in that shade. I've a guilty liking for crude no-names like the Lancia Stratos too. Nice to have you on board for minishite; just be careful of the Slippery Slope...

Loving that Carisma - Vitesse did some cracking contemporary models in the '90s. I didn't really warm to them at the time (I was still drooling over Corgi Classics) but nowadays they're well worth a look. These three were waved off to pastures new in January. I think only the Mégane Classic had opening bits (front doors) though - even if the shut lines are a bit prominent, they're still quite charming.

Today's laptop ornament: Tomica No.28 Nissan Cedric 2800SGL Taxi. I sold off the vast majority of my Tomica a few years back - but there were a couple I held back. This is one of them. Base is oddly dulled compared to the others I had, but still - a very nice model. I believe the basic casting was introduced to the range in the early 1970s, and continued to be produced in this taxi livery until the early 1980s even though the standard sedan had by that time been replaced in Tomica's lineup. Dunno why I like this one so much - I just do!

Greater fool theory - Wikipedia It usually ends badly - but then, if you're in the market for an MGF, that's kind of a given... (other stereotypes are available)

James Ruppert's ' Bangernomics' made a persuasive case for the cost-effective nature of running an old shitter vs. buying a new car. I think it was published in 1993, so maybe the costings as set out (between a scruffy Mk5 Cortina and a then-new Peugeot 405) have shifted a little - but I believe the overall principle still stands. These days, Ruppert has a podcast on cheap motoring as well as load of other books on running an old knacker on a tight budget. Helpfully, you can get most of them as a PDF for an appropriately low amount of pennies. Books | Bangernomics

I don't think so - I had one of those Magirus Deutz cement mixers from a nipper, and the back axle had the same non-matching wheels. No idea why - I don't recognise them from other Majorettes of the era either. Mine also had a two-tone mixer drum. Still, excellent haul!

Seems to be an XM thing to get your sills back in a plastic bag... Mine was pretty flash; it even came with the bags already stuffed inside the sills to carry the rust home in. Fancy. Great to hear yours is now sorted and legal - now y'can enjoy!

That's a decent loft. I'll probably be flooring ours at some point in the new place - unfortunately it's still too low to stand up in, just like the previous place. I did store my diecast up there, until MrsDC twigged that much of the stuff occupying the attic space was diecast... hence the haphazard and bitterly-regretted fire-sale back in January. . At least the cull survivors are a bit more accessible now they're under the bed, and I can pull out one on a daily basis and look at it while I'm working. Today's pick: 1/43 Peugeot 504 Rurale.

Under a nest: protected gulls roost on roof of Dorset police car | Wildlife | The Guardian

Excellent news!!!

Heh, funnily enough that's exactly why I kept that CX on my desk in work - it really is wonderfully tactile. Glad it's still getting good use!

#clubwardrobe here also... The Matchbox stuff in the blue carry-cases used to live in a couple of wall display cases in the old house; however, I'm not sure if those will reappear in the design scheme for the new place. Also #clubunderbed... Not sure what's to become of these either. I've the recent Corgi Model Club repros in the top of the bureau I currently work from, along with some other odds and ends. But the bureau's also slated for rehoming, so who knows... Pity the married diecast collector. 😆

One of my best-ever days was going to my local primary school's May Festival, where I managed to score a big carrier bag full of fairly playworn 1950s, 60s and 70s Dinky, Corgi, Spot-On, Budgie and Lesney toys for £2. Then I got a hot dog from the barbeque in the playground, and went and watched Liverpool win the FA Cup (against Sunderland?) in the school's TV room. Later, at home, my mum put a load of pizzas and garlic bread in the oven and we watched a local girl, Linda Martin, win the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland while I cleaned up my diecast haul and tried to work out how I'd fix them up. I think it must have been around 1992 or so. I mean, I've had a lot of good days since - but that's probably the one that continues to stand out as a day I'd quite like to re-live.

Unfashionably late to the MB Capri party, but finally found one on Saturday night - right at the back of the pegs in Tesco. Not really sure what to do with it - if previous form is anything to go by, hide it in a wardrobe for a year then sell it for a quarter of what I paid - but it's nice to try my own 'then and now' comparison. As others have said, the Superfast Capri's not really a great model in terms of proportions - but it still oozes appeal. It's the only original mint and boxed Matchbox I still have, and it's a definite keeper.

Nicely played on the Corolla wagon - looks a well-used but honest wee thing. Exactly the kind of thing I was looking for two months ago, but ended up with a bugeye-era liftback instead. Hopefully it'll prove reliable for as long as you need it!

Dunno if you're thinking of my recently purchased bugeye Corolla - the seller had given the tyres a (very fresh) coat of brush-on tyre paint; it was still wet when I viewed it. Seemed like a bit of a niche activity these days, when spray tyre shine is widely available, but okay. A day or two later, once it had all dried in... Ah, they'll all be totally perished then. I wasn't too annoyed, as I'd clocked the car was wearing an ill-starred assortment of bargain-basement deathrings and had budgeted for a full set of matched replacements - it just meant this became a sooner rather than later job. I think I've already bored everyone previously about my Car & Classic advertised XM estate with sills made out of plastic bags and electrical conduit, but I'll throw it in again; I knew there was something suspect when I bought it, but I'd travelled quite a distance to view, and needed a big estate with a towbar in a hurry. It had been advertised in Derry; upon driving all the way up there and meeting the seller at the given address, it turned out that he actually lived way out in the wilds of Donegal, over the border in the Irish Republic. So I had to follow him across rural backroads for another thirty miles to see the car. He claimed it was all good, with receipts showing new spheres fitted only a few weeks previously - but having bought the car, he said he couldn't afford to register it in ROI because of the fairly hefty VRT charge applicable on a 2.4 litre turbodiesel. Which didn't sound like total bullshit, as a friend of mine moved to Galway around 2006 and I knew it had cost him a tidy sum to reregister his Rover 200 down there - maybe the guts of a grand. Anyway, the XM went really well on the test drive, quiet and smooth, although when I was prodding the sills after I did hear a bit of a crunch and a crack appeared down near the seam join. This was disquieting, but I was moving house in a matter of weeks and couldn't shift sofas in a Mk2 Polo - nor did I want to return from a 250 mile round-trip empty handed. It still had nine months MOT - how bad could it be? So I half-heartedly haggled £50 off the asking, and drove off home. Only nine months later, at MOT time, did reality bite and the horrible truth become apparent. I sold it for spares through Club XM to a fella from up the country who specialised in breaking them; it turned out mine was a 'known car', which had passed through a few owners and had a bit of a reputation amongst the Citroen fraternity for having numerous unwise bodges - including the block tapped and heater matrix bypassed using household plumbing bits (which I hadn't spotted). In fairness, even if it was a complete lash-up it still did the job of a house renovation load-lugger very capably, and was totally reliable the whole time. But you'll be unsurprised that I didn't see much of my £800 outlay back from the scrapman.

Looks a bit more like the corporate greenwashing movement of late-stage capitalism to me... ...but what do I know?

Got the new house in some semblance of order, and now watching Eurovision with a few drinks and a late late buffet dinner. Feeling alright for the first time in months.

40p!!! *Faints* (Definitely suffering tat withdrawal symptoms here)

Great haul there - the Corgi Rover P6 looks an ace find also!

Surely not oil leaks - that's the Dynamic Underbody Anti-rust System (patent pending) working to spec, no? 🙃 I tell you, my Cortinas could have greatly benefited from such a device...