Datsuncog

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...

There's a few threads on the Open Forum about it - this is the most recent, I think. Pro tip seems to be - bring a book.

Going by the smallish wheel size/ ride height, I'd have said Transit rather than A Series as well. I'd love to know what that gothic fever-dream on the back is made of - is the coffin bed and canopy carved wood, or glassfibre?

This cost me £975 in March. It seems a great wee thing, but I can't help but think it would've been a £400 car a few years ago. The paradox is that I was willing to pay a bit more because it has vastly fewer things fitted that could go wrong compared to newer/ more luxurious models.

Definitely don't waste time trying to remove droplinks gently; after my fuckabout with such things back in December, it's angry grinder all the way in future. It seems that links don't really last long these days - the one shown was less than a year old at the point of failure, yet looks like it's spent a decade or three on the seabed.

OOFT for that Montego. Very, very nice. Seems insane that these models are so hard to find; you'd think a ready market would exist to sell them in the UK. I'm still not sure why diecast partworks like these seem common enough elsewhere in Europe, just not really here? Other than the Bond series and the fairly short-lived Atlas Dinky reissues, I can't think of any comparable stuff sold on these shores from the like of Ixo or Altaya. One day I'll nab myself one of these wondrous ARG miniatures... one day. But not for a while, I'd think.

Freshly applied - with bonus real bird shite. Yes, I'll wash it properly at some point...

Triple pack of beige wonderment received this morning - many thanks! Will stick one into the Corolla later...

Went out to Turkey in 2008; was surprised and delighted to see so much tat still in circulation. Plenty of Otosan Fords and Tofas Fiats, plus Renault 11s and 12s still blatting about - and a handful of 70s yank stuff, too. Highlights included what looked like a municipal car pound in Altinkum with dozens of dusty Taunuses and Capris lying abandoned, and a mega-rare Anadol A8 parked in a quiet residential street.

That's bloody impressive! Congrats on making it there and back again in the kind of old nail that would otherwise be wearing Heinz branding if not for your intervention. Bravo!

Yeah, the Diamond of Doom rings a bell...

Still bitterly regret selling my Viva HC. Owned for eight years - and the first car of mine to actually make it back onto the road. I was ludicrously pleased to be bombing around in this car at the age of 18. I put a huge amount of work into it. I even took it to the South of France in summer 1999. Which went about as well as you might expect. The head gasket went literally ten minutes after leaving the house, followed soon after by the starter solenoid - but I still drove it several thousand miles, with the heater going full blast and stopping every hour or so to refill with coolant. With a replacement engine lobbed in afterwards, I swore I'd never sell it - but life overtook things. After replacing the wings and rear arches, and treating it to a full respray, it was horribly vandalised in Brighton and after moving it back to Northern Ireland and trying to pull together funds to get it fixed, I lost storage twice in quick succession - and then I moved to Australia (true love). My father accepted £200 for it. Old Vauxhalls were worth fuck-all then. Once I came back from Australia (yeah, don't ask) I spent years trying to it track down again. Only a short while ago I learned that it had ended up with @junkyarddog of this parish - found behind a garage in Co. Tipperary, and sadly in a terrible state. It yielded some spares, but ultimately it was beyond saving. Not a day goes by when I don't bitterly regret giving it up. I'll never be able to afford one now - much as I'd love another 2-dr HC. Probably the biggest automotive regret of my life.

The Laguna bASe may no longer be with us... But at least it went out in style.

I think it might be a subtle hint that one of us might nip round and take it, to save him the arseache of having to hump it all back up the stairs again? Had this sort of shit an unfortunate number of times while trying to shift stuff on Freecycle earlier in the year. A user rating function might help weed out those grabby-hands chancers who say 'yes' to everything offered but never bother their hole to show up - but it's not a magic bullet...

Given the rate I've been going through cars over the past year, I'll need at least another three, please!

Oosh! July '83. Never even seen a Micra on a Y-reg - Wiki reckons the Micra only hit the European market in June '83. Your aunt's would certainly have been one of the very earliest, so she could well have had the first one in Glasgow. Also from Wikipedia: That seems to tie in with the observations upthread on whenabouts the Datsun name was entirely phased out.

That's the kind of thing I might have done when it was quiet, back in my Halfords days... I liked the place to look tidy (uphill battle). Our Hot Wheels only came as a single mixed box once in a blue moon; they just went onto clip-strips hung near the till, rather than having their own designated peg space. So there were never more than two or three of each model at a time. Generally they were bought by bored staff members to launch off the parts desk while closing up...

Glad to hear the sills are sound! At MOT time, it turned out mine weren't... Lashed up with lengths of electrical conduit, resin and plastic bags. More worryingly, it had a fresh MOT when I bought it...