doubleyeller

A R20 and a R25 spotted yonks and bonks since

Evening each! DY have been searching the archives of car spots begun by our glorious founder back in approximately 2005! Photos of varying qualities will be posted on a frequent basis - these differ from the lazy spotters content: Doubleyeller actively sought out these cars using leads, rumour and various algorithms! Many of the cars featured have long ago ceased to be. To start us off on our merry quest: an A reg Mazda 323 spotted in more recent times....

HAHAHAHA never SUED them again!!!! HAHAHAHAHA

I often wonder why people discuss the finer points of the demise of BL Rover - it's really nothing to do with Unions, bastardy management, terrible cars - or even a combination of those factors. Put simply, Britain de-industrialised after the war. We invested the Marshall plan money in housing (and our entire economy is now based upon that and the service sector). The Germans used the money to invest in industry and the rest is history. Coal, steel, ship building, car manufacturing have all seen massive decline. True there were many dreadful jalopies on the roads in post war years - the introduction of MOT tests was really motivated by getting rid of those - so there was a surge in demand for British cars for a decade or so, and then the manufacturers on the continent began to export to the UK in dead earnest. The number of old crumblies who would only buy British declined with natural wastage and the passing of the years. Add into that the 1976 arrival of the MK1 Accord and the Renault 20 - like, you know, affordable cars with decent parts availability, that would actually start every morning, and had more gadgets as standard than you could have as paid for extras in a top of the range Rover VDP or Jag.......and you can see where BL fell down So by the time the 1980s came round, who in god's name would choose a Metro over a Renault 5? An SD1 over a R30? A Montego over a Peugeot 405? A Maestro over an Escort? I could go on and on, but BL Rover survived many many years after it's time and should have died without Government bailout in 1980, and the money spent on the pits.

It's all very well having a go at Doubleyeller which is a collective, and collectively does not give a shit about your nasty opinions. Fact is, as is known from previous incarnations as an individual member under a different name, bullying by you - and others - is rife on the beige. So how are you going to feel when one day you make a sniping comment, and a week later someone's relative posts on here to say that they have killed themselves. You will wonder if your comment was the last drop for that person. Not a nice feeling to live with. Autoshite has recently lost Bollox, Bornite and other bullies. Good riddance, we are well rid of them! Don't fill the void. I look back at the way Renault20tx was abused back in the day only for posting what he pleased, doing no harm to anyone, and none of you "morally outraged" shiteists come out of that at all well. Autoshite's lowest hour IMO.

What makes you say that?

Loads of the bloody things in Bulgaria and Albania, Moldova also has a few.

Yeah but how crap does it look as a saloon? Someone updated a R9 which is just proof that you can't polish a turd

Yes but there were a lot of those gearboxes around, it was hardly the end of the world to pick one up for like £100 (1990s prices) and get it fitted. Most the 25s still in existence are autos, but most are on their third fourth or fifth gearbox by now. According to that accurate* source of such data HML, only 49 are still on the road, but a further 300ish are on SORN - surely there aren't that many 25s in hibernation??

For those that know Huddersfield, there was an automatic one of these always parked on John William street between 'Spoons and Coffee Evolution about 15 years ago. I remember thinking it was literally the most beautiful car I had ever seen, gaping rust hole big enough to put your fist through in the NSF wing did nothing to detract from that. To this day I have not seen another Monaco in the wild. One day, probably around 2007, a For Sale sign appeared in it, they only wanted £650 for it, but the insurance quote was terrifying. According to HowManyLeft, the auto Monaco went extinct around 2012 so it didn't last long in the big wide world! Would like to think it is mothballed in a garage somewhere....

My word!

What became of this elusive beauty? Where is it now

Rover 214 SLI Bought for £225 in 2016! “Like you say mate, these engines are known for head gaskets going, but as you can see, this one is ok, and I can tell you really want one so....” Yeah. I didn’t actually want one, but was living in an insurance black spot with no NCD means £3k plus car insurance for a 24 year old, and Footman James used to have a policy of insuring anything as a classic providing it was 20 + years old. Which meant you just had to accept whatever 1994 horror came up for sale cheaply, warts and all! The head gasket certainly was going, however this never caused FTP oddly enough! It used about 2 litres of water every week. The valves were also knackered, and it was getting through so much oil I ended up just getting the waste oil from changes at the local garage to put in it! A week after buying it, I suddenly got a flat battery while out and about. Dead alternator, £150 bill. The next week the battery also died, £60 bill! I battled on with it for 6 months or so. The exhaust down pipe disintegrated and I ran it forever roaring like a Lancaster, never got stopped amazingly! The cunts at work kept asking me when Thunderbird One was going to be replaced by Thunderbird 2? Some knob kept leaving bricks behind the wheels and piling rubbish on the roof, altering the mirrors etc. Because yeah, someone with an old car is not a human being..... Knowing it was on its last MOT I reluctantly replaced the down pipe for £70 odd quid, it rewarded me by getting 3 punctures in as many weeks, another £150 spent. All these costs are probably easy to reduce / avoid if you are flexible in your transport arrangements, but I needed it to get to a job with awkward location away from public transport and so just had to pay up. As mentioned, everyone at that workplace was a total bastard. I spotted the finance director behind me on the dual carriageway one morning and decided to just go for it. For some reason, if you got up to speed and used third to slow down with engine braking, you got the most wonderful plume of stinky blue smoke behind you. So that’s what I did for 8 miles all the way through the traffic. At work, I got a call to his office..... I opened the door and he said “I just wanted to thank you for giving me the full benefit of your oil this morning!” with a wry smile. We got on famously after this, it just goes to show that you can never tell. Maybe he looked at his Nissan Duke that morning and realised he was living someone else’s expectations? Something changed, who knows..... With the MOT expiry looming I put it up for sale on here at £125 just to see if anyone wanted it. Without making any contact, some dimwit from Halifax turned up outside my house one morning. He claimed to be a mate of someone ‘Off Shite’. Who he was or how he got my address I will never know. He was like a cross between Selwyn Froggit and Fred West! He spent like an hour and a half looking in imo irrelevant places and asking questions like “What’s been the average rust expansion since you last drove it?” He then decided not to buy it “Because there are better examples out there” - let’s not forget, it was £125! I offered it at £50 just to be rid, he asked me to give him £100 to take it away “And not complain about anything” !!! I drove it over the bridge at Arthur Brothertons that very day!

Wakey tha ses? Run a garden rake down the side Mash half a packet of choccy digestives into ribena and spread liberally over the rear seats and door cards. Shove a 20p in the cassette player Get a cheap plaque made up, "Family car by Henry Moore", and park it in the sculpture park. I bet nobody says anything for fear of not looking intellectual and recognising "art" when they see it!

just racking my brains as to what sort of photoshoot involves a graffitied Pug 405? Probably some sort of top-shelf mag for Francophile shiteists!