Datsuncog

Dislike. That sucks. I recognise that schools are exceedingly short of the folding stuff, and try their very best to accommodate students of all needs and abilities in their extra-curricular activities, but this is an example of how things can go badly wrong when key staff aren't there and someone without sufficient skills is drafted in on the cheap. While I was working as a teaching assistant in Sussex I often found myself bricking it as the designated SEN specialist on school trips, supporting kids with Downs and ASD despite having no actual training beyond what I'd picked up on the job. Thankfully I was never required to go overseas, or had to deal with any particularly challenging situations, but no-one's a winner here. At risk of making assumptions about a family I know nowt about, it seems to me that it was pretty brave of Parkette to put herself forward for this trip, and underlines that while her wants and desires are just the same as anyone else her age, getting appropriate support is absolutely essential for her to successfully do the things she wants. It seems DWP and the school haven't quite grasped this. Hope you all get to France and back safely, and the one silver lining may be that you'll have some fairly serious ammo to take with you into the DWP tribunal. Take care.

A strip of Green Shield stamps and a mass card under the back parcel shelf of my Viva HC. Pair of market-stall grade sunglasses and a Tesco receipt from 2001 in the centre console of my scrapper Laguna. A cassette copy of UltraSonic's 'Global Techno' and a lot of broken glass in the side pocket of my red Polo breadvan. About AUD$1.40 in 5c coins, stuck into a solid block with spilt superglue, lodged permanently in the centre console of my Corona (ergo not technically loose change). Quality items all!

I can't say for sure, but at a guess it'd be someone who originally hails from Co. Armagh. Even today, the only non-diesel vehicles tolerated round these parts are trailer queen Mk2 Escorts or shagged Impreza WRX replicas. Everything else has to be fuelled out of the big red diesel tank in the barn, or it is literally considered to be no use as a mode of transport. "Hai boy, does she diff? Keep 'er lit!"

Okay, the Shitescan Procurement Programme continues apace... looks like I've managed to secure TWO more copies of Jalopy #1, as well as some of the copies missing from my personal stash: #2 and #11. My longstanding copies of #3, #4 and #15 are also looking somewhat ragged due to time/mishaps, so I'll see whether these new arrivals are substantially better or not. #10 and #14 are effectively duplicates, so copies of these five (plus a spare copy of #1, since the other will be going to Somewhatfoolish) may well be seeking new homes in the not-too-distant future... I've had a good old read of the scan taken of #12 already up here (Allegro 20th Birthday Extravaganza), though would still be keen to acquire my very own copy. Which leaves #13 as the only 'mystery' copy, which I've never seen or read, but which I believe was likely to have had a Ford Escort of some description adorning the cover. Also - if anyone has any further information on Real Classics mag - the mildly more professional looking quasi-successor to Jalopy, involving some of its former editorial team - I'd be very interested... I have the first eight issues, but cannot now recall whether it folded after that - or if I was too busy spunking the money from my Saturday job on Super Furry Animals singles to shell out a further £1.95 for its inky delights.

Not sure whether it's a grin or a grump, but I appear to have emerged victorious from a last-second sniper attack for a pile of Jalopy magazines from 1992/93, so I guess it's a grin. The only serious casualty appears to be my PayPal balance - a jump of £16.10 in the last three seconds. But I really wanted them. Especially Issue #2 complete with sticker. Still, nine issues for £30-odd posted isn't exactly unreasonable. This very nearly completes my run of Britain's Smallest, Dullest Motoring Mag, with only #12 (Allegro 20th birthday) and #13 (Escort profile) still missing. Some of this haul will be used to fill in the missing Joypal issues on the ShiteScan thread's PDFs (if Mr Somewhatfoolish remains amenable to the task of scanning and uploading them). http://autoshite.com/topic/30704-shitescan-preservation-of-fading-old-newsprint-is-our-concern/ Duplicate issues will be offered out to interested parties at a later date! EDIT: I hope I wasn't bidding against someone here!

I feel particularly sorry for Bunglebus, uploading all those Photobucket links a mere eleven days before the company pulled one of the most spectacular dick tricks the internet has ever witnessed... Sadly I can't fix them, but here's a going-green Safrane 2 outside a manky house, to try to redress the balance just a smidge. Give it all another ten years to mature further, and I reckon this'll look mega.

Belter. If I were after another smallish hatch for buttons, it'd be one of these. Was it supplied by Philip Petersen in Bangor when new, to your knowledge? North Down plates suggest it started life at the end of my street.

For as long as red diesel is charged at a lower rate of duty, there will *always* be 306 TDis on the road - in rural Ulster, anyway. OP's ZX looks fairly borderline as a going concern - I'd agree that it's only feasible if otherwise in knockout condition, and welding skills can be procured for beer money. If not, then part it out as originally planned - it'll probably yield a goodly haul of spares. I really do like the 3dr ZXs, but a crispy Cit can be an expensive Cit... ask me how I know.

I can well believe the rarity... out of interest, whatever became of your example? Did it go out in a blaze of glory, or was it sold on and disappeared into the mists of time...? I gather the K70's uniqueness was down to the NSU design as a cheaper, more conventional stablemate to the Ro80, initially shitcanned by VW when they subsumed NSU following its rotor seal warranty-related bankruptcy - and then kickstarted it into production a few years later to shore up the unloved VW 412's market sector share. Like the Ro80, handsome cars - and not hard to see how influential its airy cabin and overall shape proved to be on subsequent Audi and VW designs (there's a lot of K70 in the Passat B1, imho). I did see a dark blue K70 at the Irish Classic Car Show at the RDS in 2016 - first one I've ever had a proper look at. Will see if I can hoke out some pics later on. EDIT: My mistake - it was actually a yellow example at the RDS. Crammed into a corner, hence crappy pics. Dunno how the hell I thought it was blue. Hey ho. There's a slim chance then that this might be the very same car I spotted seventeen years previously - it's certainly the same bright yellow.

There was one Invacar survivor conspicuously in use in Belfast until 2002 - used to be a regular sight parked outside McDonalds at the junction of Castle Place and Donegall Place. Then it just wasn't there any more. A beige 1977 Volvo 244 with a Blue Badge started parking just round the corner not that long after - I'd like to believe that the Invacar owner treated themselves to a chod-tastic upgrade using their new Motability allowance.

I can't see it either, but then my dad still can't conceive of a standard Sierra hatch being anywhere near a classic. Yet here we are - I couldn't even afford one seven years ago when I was actively looking, let alone now. I reckon it's a generational thing - a feeling with some people that they just missed something good that happened while they were too young to appreciate it. I loved my '73 Viva, but Datsuncog Snr was bemused by this, and still paints the 1950s cars of his youth when he has the watercolours out. For him, a 'classic' is a Mk2 Zephyr, an E-Type, a Mk2 Jag - not really a Datsun 180B. But curvy Jags and finned Fords and whitewall tyres don't really do it for me much. I can remember reading through the letters page in an old car magazine a few years back where a contributor was getting very het up about what constitutes a 'classic car', opining that only those with racing heritage and pedigree would ever be sought after by future collectors, concluding with "today's miserable little Fords and Hillmans will never inspire affection in future generations, and are only good for the dustbin." This particular magazine was published in 1956. I'm just having to accept that, one day, the babe-in-arms next door may grow up to be all misty-eyed upon seeing a 'classic' Hyundai Tucson TL - "cor, that takes me back... my dad used to run one of those." But we are quite a small and enthusiastic group of bods on here, and I don't for a moment think that we're representative of the general motoring public. True, an awful lot of people do have their cars on monthly PCP deals, but then twenty years ago a lot of people had their mass-market boxes on 0% finance deals, and ten years before that a lot of people drove a company car, and twenty years before that HP was common so... 90% of folk don't give their car another thought when they hand the keys back at the end of the lease/finance/HP period. They never did. It's largely another household appliance. I work with people who can't even give the make and model of their car when filling in their car park pass form. "Oh, I think it's a... oh, it's white... there's a dealer on Boucher Rd... I think it's a Daewoo or something? Dacia! Yes, a Dacia something." So it's only those rare survivors that fall through the cracks and eventually trickle their way down to weirdo enthusiasts like us... I mean, I think it's fantastic that there are a number of Suzuki Swift fans on here - but think what a terrifyingly small proportion of car owners this represents. I rather like S1 Lagunas, but I'd be very surprised to find there's more than 100 people in the entire country who give more than two toots about them. As mentioned above, thirty years ago cars were dead from rust by their tenth birthday - often before. Now, black boxes go pop and finish them off at about the same age. But some survive. They always have, always will - somehow. And some freak (like me) will inexplicably gather them to their bosom and spend silly amounts of money keeping them going, for reasons that utterly defy logic. Because we're not numbers. We're free chaps and chapettes. Just my tuppence worth.

I found that my local indie newsagent didn't always have it, for whatever reason... either they quickly sold out (unlikely, but possible) or suffered various problems getting hold of it. Unreliable publication was a bugger, though, hence several gaps in my run of copies - I was never sure if they'd gone belly-up, as was repeatedly hinted at in the editorials. NPO and (later) Easons did sell it too but there were none near me - so Rainbow in Bangor was my weekly port of call. I didn't see any copies for sale between #5 and #10, and then after finding #10 (Mini) nothing appeared on the shelves until #14 (Herald/soft-top motoring special). I did buy whatever back issues were still available with Christmas money one year, but still have some annoying gaps (which eBay may be about to help me to fill... with the intention of rehoming any 'doubles' to interested parties on these fair pages). I can recall buying my copy of #15 from a Morrisons supermarket while over on holiday in 1993 (and promptly ripped the cover in twain when it got stuck down the back of the caravan's bunk bed), so it seems there were some national distribution outlets. As mentioned upthread, I distinctly recall some readers' letters mentioning that they stumbled across a copy in the magazine section of Tesco etc while their wife was doing the shopping. It's odd that even Jalopy virtually overlooked the K70, as even though it was always a bit of a rarity there were plainly some still in circulation in the early '90s, in the banger category... I've only ever seen one on the road, and that was a bright yellow example parked up on a trading estate in Monaghan back in 1999, weirdly. It's good to know you've owned a car that managed to go under even the Japloy radar! I also seem to recall a Techs n' Mechs article on the Wankel rotary engine, but I s'pose the ethos was that content was dictated by reader submissions rather than the editorial board - no doubt if they'd received an Ro80 article, they'd have been delighted to churn it out! It's a pity that the magazine finished when it did - even though there was some recycling articles from earlier issues, as this forum proves there is no limit to the amount of time that can be spent prattling on about rubbish cars. Financial realities aside, from a content perspective Jalopy could have kept going for years.

Awesome to see that the 'Lovejoy Safrane' is still surviving - and registered in the same batch as Holbeck's. Nice bit of pop culture history for whoever owns it these days.

***Rrrring-rrrrring** "Hi, is that the Pensions Ombudsman? Yeah, I want to report the Autoshite Financial Advice Service... Sure, I'll hold. "Yeah, hi. Look, some blokes on the internet seemed to imply that there was money to be made in buying up worthless old chod categorised as 'inbetweener' cars. I mean, of course I was sceptical at first, but then I noticed how any old lumps of corroded metal dragged out of a pond and claimed to be a Mk1 Ford Escort were now inexplicably worth more than my house, so I thought, yeah, fair enough, sounds legit. "So I cashed in the pension pot, re-mortgaged the house and took out two dozen payday loans before hitting up Cannock like a coked-up sailor with a two-week terminal diagnosis on shore leave, and now I have nearly eight hundred stinking, rattly Vauxhalls, Renaults and Fiats clogging up every residential street and arterial route within a two mile radius. "But today I find out that these may not be the cast-iron, 110% guaranteed, money-in-the-bank Grade AAA investments I was led to believe. That, and the council, the neighbours and the rather large chaps representing the Golden Friendly Mutual Assurance Loan & Tarmac Associates Ltd, have been calling round for some informal chats at unusual hours. "I mean, I feel conned, I feel sick - I don't know where to turn. I feel I've been badly mis-sold this financial advice, I'm at my wits' end... "What's that? Yes, I do happen to have a Volvo estate in there. "Yes, I can certainly deliver to Scotland. "Sorry, what did you say your name was, again...?"

Well, that's my old age fucked, then...

My understanding was that while the Swiss company was always NEST-LAY after one of the founders, a marketing decision was made when entering the UK market (pre-WW1) that us Brits wouldn't understand the acute accent pronunciation, so the name was anglicised to NESSILS for marketing purposes. It's only in recent years that we're now considered cosmopolitan enough to deal with vowel accents, so ads have reverted to the (proper, original) pronunciation. Probably aided by the accursed Australian rising inflection gaining traction on these shores... As an aside, for reasons best known to themselves, Primark marketed themselves on TV ads in Northern Ireland as PREE-MARK, whereas in the rest of the UK it was pitched as PRY-MARK. I've actually witnessed discussions on the correct pronunciation of this cheerily cheap clothing retailer descend into a physical brawl. As a point of fact, the very first Primark-branded store opened in Belfast in 1971, two years before a GB store opened - so I reckon PREE-MARK scores the point based on first use. The company's very first store, in Dublin, was named Penneys (and still is) but a trademark dispute with US retailer JC Penney precluded the name being used outside of the Republic of Ireland. So Primark was the trading name chosen for UK and European expansion. This, more than anything else you may have heard, poses the greatest risk to continued unification between Northern Ireland and rest of the UK. Secretly, every NI resident (from all political persuasions) gazes across the Irish Sea and thinks "how can we ever trust you when you can't even say Primark correctly?"

'Old Frauds', the green Cortina issue, is Jalopy #8 and has a date of January 1993 on the cover... so I'd hazard that it was perhaps December '92 that you began your shiter odyssey? Either that or some newsagents in Great Yarmouth really need a stern talking-to about managing their print stock efficiently... I recently found an album of photos I took in Gt Yarmouth/ Cromer/ King's Lynn and it was absolutely chock-full of shite in 1996... absolute chod heaven.

^^^ True enough. This was the carpark outside my local Lidl last Friday night - three cars over twenty years old, in a row. Discounting Lidl's propensity to attract giffers, I can't imagine ever seeing three pre-1978 cars in a row in a supermarket carpark back in 1998. All three look capable of many miles more. Full disclosure: yes, the one in the middle's mine and I deliberately parked it there, but even so - I think my point still stands.

Is it their home insurance or their pet insurance stating this? I ask only because a colleague is in a similar situation, but from the other side - her fence blew down in high winds the other week; dog got out; dog got hit by a car; damage to car is apparently to be paid out from her pet insurance which contains a public liability component. That does smack of B.S. to be honest - otherwise anyone could dodge responsibility by claiming random persons unknown opened the gate etc, therefore NOT MY FAULT PAL, SOZ.

I have to say, once a vehicle has seen use as a surrogate urinal and shooting gallery, it's probably never going to have quite the same lustre again... and when a good one-owner car with MOT struggles to make £300, no-one's gonna beat a path to your door with a fistful of crisp twenties for a portaloo full of syringes. I hear ya.

Nah, no need to go that far - a brisk bout of self-flagellation with a stout birch rod should probably suffice. I sent one skywards too last year, so fret not. But I gotta ask... was yours worse than mine?

^^^ Ah, so that's what that was. Used to be one of these smoking about local to me. I rashly assumed it was an Avensis estate belonging to someone who'd won a trolley dash at the JDM_YO! warehouse. Haven't seen it for over a year now, but seems like I ought to have appreciated it a little more at the time. Bloody quick, no doubt. (don't think this is the same car, but it looked identical)

The Corsa B was the second car that sprang to mind in this category of 'inbetweener cars' (just behind the S1 Laguna, which was somewhat obvious to me as I've two lurking on the drive) - would agree that they've become surprisingly uncommon just in the last year or two, given that they used to be everywhere. I can well imagine the hotter ones have already started to rise in price and desirability, and rather like its Nova predecessor I reckon it won't be too long before all survivors start to fetch serious money. Fifteen years ago I had friends sending fairly clean Novas to the scrappie for the want of a dab of MOT welding, simply because it was nearly as cheap to just buy another one. Corsa Bs may be just starting to climb out of this pit of despair. Three years back my neighbour's son was running a 3-dr example in Brocade Yellow with crusty GSi alloys, bought for £150 - I haven't seen any for sale that cheaply now. The only local example I've seen on the road recently is a late Opel-badged 5-dr, engaged in a perpetual three-way-tie for 'oldest wreck in the station carpark' along with myself and the owner of a Merc W201 estate. My driving instructor had a fairly basic Merit example so I suppose I could be forgiven for a slight twinge of nostalgia - but I really didn't like him, or the car!

I've said it before, but the Series 1 Laguna has been damn near worthless for a long time - and I've noticed that they've shifted category from 'still fairly common' to 'ain't seen another one for weeks' over the last eighteen months or so. Yet they're roomy, comfortable and capable cars (and I reckon pretty stylish). With the oldest survivors hitting their 24th birthday this year, maybe that's not surprising... but I reckon there's bargains still to be had. Although KGF are now trying it on with low mileage valet victims for ££££, good solid ex-giffer examples can be picked up for buttons in the classifieds. But be quick before they do a R21 and just vanish completely...

As far as I can remember, Jalopy was a fairly mainstream mag - I was mainly buying it from an independent newsagent in Northern Ireland (we had no WH Smith, Tesco etc at that time) but readers' letters stated they were indeed obtaining their copies from such quarters... but publishing schedules were erratic and sometimes there was a hiatus of several months between editions, so it wasn't always easy to track down. It was also an awkward size liable to get obscured on the shelves, possibly prompting the last four or so issues being published in A4 size in a last-ditch attempt at visibility. I understand that Mark Williams was involved in Bike and a few other magazines of that ilk (Used Bike Guide, too?), and some of the Jalopy team went on to publish Real Classics mag, that carried similar 'real life' old car stories but lost much of the humour that underpinned Jalopy - and which I never really found again, until I discovered this place. It's great to be enjoying them all over again, though terrifying that 26 years has passed! These are still the 70s/80s cars I'm drawn to, although it's weird to think that a fair few of the 'rusty old bangers' profiled were less than ten years old in many cases.