JimH

*Swoon*
 
I'd skip the fake French plates and opt for the Townsend Thoresen or even better HoverSpeed branded GB sticker for that full on "middle class wanker who drives over to their place in Provance ever since they read that sodding book" vibe.

This was the old girl when I picked it up in '07. Let's just say that the former owner wasn't exactly brassic. Nearly 200K on the clock and I'm its third owner. The first owner had it until 1994 and put most of the miles on it. I've done very little to it other than fitted some fancy pants ignition system which improved reliability enormously, drove it and left it on the lift to go dusty. It has what might be described as a very healthy engine. The lad I bought it off didn't exactly skimp on things. I have some other photos he took while it was parked outside his kids' school. I think their education cost more than my house did.
 

 
What you realise when you drive such a rip snorting, fire breathing set of wheels like this is that while new cars might be ugly, heavy and pander to the lowest common denominator, old cars are complete crap.

Been lurking/laughing for a bit and thought I'd better join. Being terminally incapable of looking after cars and being married to someone who makes me look anally retentative when it comes to looking after cars the daily runners are more stomach turning than head turning this place makes me smile a lot.
 
Even when I buy something decent it turns to mud in my hands. My VX220 was bought new and now is a 90,000 mile barn find. The Dolomite Sprint sits on the lift unused and unloved because I'm just not a polisher. There are a number of projects in the pending file that were bought to save them from rotting away on someone else's driveway. X1-9 Lido and a round dash 944 both waiting for care and attention when a suitable hole in the schedule appears.
 
So why really CBA approach to cars in general and daily transport in particular? Because most spare time not devoted to rebuilding houses is spent turning things like this:
 
 

 
Into this with our own fair hands:
 

 
And this:
 

 
 
Into this:
 

 
The current project is to make this (note Autoshite friendly LDV crew cab pick up)
 

 
Look a lot like this (except with windscreens and pneumatic tyres)
 

 
Which is progressing nicely. The question then is "why don't you just f**k off to one of those forums where they talk about steam engines then?" Well, people who are into steam engines are weird and take the wrong things too seriously and I'm not like that. Obviously.
 
It the process of digging those pictures out I found a picture of a charming Omega dog kennel which was bought a while back for very little for Dearheart and two years later was scrapped because it was a mobile health hazard. Note AS friendly LDV again.
 

 
Anyway, hello.
 
 

louiepj and his FiL's efforts at making running cars on a budget more entertaining.
 
http://autoshite.com/topic/32136-vw-passat-facebook-bargain/

They are loathed by those too thick to understand but they are the best car Porsche has ever built. Dull four cylinder and lacking the sheer joy of a proper air cooled engine possibly but as something to live with day in day out they are without equal. NIce ones cost little to run, they are well behaved, ride nicely, have a big fuel tank, emergency/child seats in the back and room enough to get building crap in the back. All dead handy things to have. Let's see you live with a 911 quite so well. Oh, and it you can find one with a pasha interior then its double plus good.
 
I had a 2.5 Lux and my old man had a very late model Turbo SE and I bought a low mileage '83 2.5 a while back just to have in the pending file to stop it suffering where it was.
 
These days rot seems to be the killer. If you are looking at a banger for naff all then I'm sure it can be bodged but then again it almost certainly has been already. From looking at this '83 one the wing bottoms go first followed by the sill/ floor pan/rear wheel arch all along the seam at the bottom. Genuine 944 wings are a bit steep (just under a grand each last time I looked) and repairing them properly is a bit of a chore which means most are snotted back together with a MIG and plenty of filler. The wings also go at the leading edges too just where they meet the bumper. Genuine sills aren't too expensive but as far as I can see you are on your own tin bashing out the panels to let into the floor plan. Doing one properly is a lot of work and it is easy to spot one that's been lashed up.
 
Early round dashes crack to buggery but there is a brilly company in Belgium (or is it Holland) remanufacturing them in both black and brown. About a grand a pop, however. On the upside you would have a nice new, round dashboard which everyone who knows understands is much better than the later ones. Oh yes it is. Cloth seats go eventually but the same company does the dashboards also remanufacture the seat fabrics so it can be all put right again.
 
Sun roofs are a bit crap and can be a fiddle to repair or you can go cheap and get some of the manual latches from 924s. I believe the peasant spec ones in Germany had these anyway. There are other things but, meh, it's not as if you are going to be paying Porsche garages to mend stuff any more.
 
If you can find a good one you'll have a friend for life. Or find a slightly crappy one and put it back together properly. The final option is sell the kids and scrape together the money together for a 924 Carrera GT which is the bestest car ever ever ever.

Chod shot of round dash 944 just after it was removed from its water tank home of a few years and before it was moved to its current resting place of waiting to become a barn find. It looks pretty good at this distance but there isn't much by way of sills left in it. The interior was horribly abused too. Still. Only 72K on the clock and a brand new engine from Glen Henderson at about 56K after a previous owner didn't realise you needed to check the oil every now and again.
 

 
It will rise again one day.

Chod shot of round dash 944 just after it was removed from its water tank home of a few years and before it was moved to its current resting place of waiting to become a barn find. It looks pretty good at this distance but there isn't much by way of sills left in it. The interior was horribly abused too. Still. Only 72K on the clock and a brand new engine from Glen Henderson at about 56K after a previous owner didn't realise you needed to check the oil every now and again.
 

 
It will rise again one day.

They are loathed by those too thick to understand but they are the best car Porsche has ever built. Dull four cylinder and lacking the sheer joy of a proper air cooled engine possibly but as something to live with day in day out they are without equal. NIce ones cost little to run, they are well behaved, ride nicely, have a big fuel tank, emergency/child seats in the back and room enough to get building crap in the back. All dead handy things to have. Let's see you live with a 911 quite so well. Oh, and it you can find one with a pasha interior then its double plus good.
 
I had a 2.5 Lux and my old man had a very late model Turbo SE and I bought a low mileage '83 2.5 a while back just to have in the pending file to stop it suffering where it was.
 
These days rot seems to be the killer. If you are looking at a banger for naff all then I'm sure it can be bodged but then again it almost certainly has been already. From looking at this '83 one the wing bottoms go first followed by the sill/ floor pan/rear wheel arch all along the seam at the bottom. Genuine 944 wings are a bit steep (just under a grand each last time I looked) and repairing them properly is a bit of a chore which means most are snotted back together with a MIG and plenty of filler. The wings also go at the leading edges too just where they meet the bumper. Genuine sills aren't too expensive but as far as I can see you are on your own tin bashing out the panels to let into the floor plan. Doing one properly is a lot of work and it is easy to spot one that's been lashed up.
 
Early round dashes crack to buggery but there is a brilly company in Belgium (or is it Holland) remanufacturing them in both black and brown. About a grand a pop, however. On the upside you would have a nice new, round dashboard which everyone who knows understands is much better than the later ones. Oh yes it is. Cloth seats go eventually but the same company does the dashboards also remanufacture the seat fabrics so it can be all put right again.
 
Sun roofs are a bit crap and can be a fiddle to repair or you can go cheap and get some of the manual latches from 924s. I believe the peasant spec ones in Germany had these anyway. There are other things but, meh, it's not as if you are going to be paying Porsche garages to mend stuff any more.
 
If you can find a good one you'll have a friend for life. Or find a slightly crappy one and put it back together properly. The final option is sell the kids and scrape together the money together for a 924 Carrera GT which is the bestest car ever ever ever.

I would refer you to the film Brothers in Law (1957).
 
Those who have seen it will know that the answer to the questions "Who was the one who knew his way round an engine?" and "Who was the one who got off with the token crumpet at the end?" was "Nicholas Parsons."
 
The defence rests.

They are loathed by those too thick to understand but they are the best car Porsche has ever built. Dull four cylinder and lacking the sheer joy of a proper air cooled engine possibly but as something to live with day in day out they are without equal. NIce ones cost little to run, they are well behaved, ride nicely, have a big fuel tank, emergency/child seats in the back and room enough to get building crap in the back. All dead handy things to have. Let's see you live with a 911 quite so well. Oh, and it you can find one with a pasha interior then its double plus good.
 
I had a 2.5 Lux and my old man had a very late model Turbo SE and I bought a low mileage '83 2.5 a while back just to have in the pending file to stop it suffering where it was.
 
These days rot seems to be the killer. If you are looking at a banger for naff all then I'm sure it can be bodged but then again it almost certainly has been already. From looking at this '83 one the wing bottoms go first followed by the sill/ floor pan/rear wheel arch all along the seam at the bottom. Genuine 944 wings are a bit steep (just under a grand each last time I looked) and repairing them properly is a bit of a chore which means most are snotted back together with a MIG and plenty of filler. The wings also go at the leading edges too just where they meet the bumper. Genuine sills aren't too expensive but as far as I can see you are on your own tin bashing out the panels to let into the floor plan. Doing one properly is a lot of work and it is easy to spot one that's been lashed up.
 
Early round dashes crack to buggery but there is a brilly company in Belgium (or is it Holland) remanufacturing them in both black and brown. About a grand a pop, however. On the upside you would have a nice new, round dashboard which everyone who knows understands is much better than the later ones. Oh yes it is. Cloth seats go eventually but the same company does the dashboards also remanufacture the seat fabrics so it can be all put right again.
 
Sun roofs are a bit crap and can be a fiddle to repair or you can go cheap and get some of the manual latches from 924s. I believe the peasant spec ones in Germany had these anyway. There are other things but, meh, it's not as if you are going to be paying Porsche garages to mend stuff any more.
 
If you can find a good one you'll have a friend for life. Or find a slightly crappy one and put it back together properly. The final option is sell the kids and scrape together the money together for a 924 Carrera GT which is the bestest car ever ever ever.

They are loathed by those too thick to understand but they are the best car Porsche has ever built. Dull four cylinder and lacking the sheer joy of a proper air cooled engine possibly but as something to live with day in day out they are without equal. NIce ones cost little to run, they are well behaved, ride nicely, have a big fuel tank, emergency/child seats in the back and room enough to get building crap in the back. All dead handy things to have. Let's see you live with a 911 quite so well. Oh, and it you can find one with a pasha interior then its double plus good.
 
I had a 2.5 Lux and my old man had a very late model Turbo SE and I bought a low mileage '83 2.5 a while back just to have in the pending file to stop it suffering where it was.
 
These days rot seems to be the killer. If you are looking at a banger for naff all then I'm sure it can be bodged but then again it almost certainly has been already. From looking at this '83 one the wing bottoms go first followed by the sill/ floor pan/rear wheel arch all along the seam at the bottom. Genuine 944 wings are a bit steep (just under a grand each last time I looked) and repairing them properly is a bit of a chore which means most are snotted back together with a MIG and plenty of filler. The wings also go at the leading edges too just where they meet the bumper. Genuine sills aren't too expensive but as far as I can see you are on your own tin bashing out the panels to let into the floor plan. Doing one properly is a lot of work and it is easy to spot one that's been lashed up.
 
Early round dashes crack to buggery but there is a brilly company in Belgium (or is it Holland) remanufacturing them in both black and brown. About a grand a pop, however. On the upside you would have a nice new, round dashboard which everyone who knows understands is much better than the later ones. Oh yes it is. Cloth seats go eventually but the same company does the dashboards also remanufacture the seat fabrics so it can be all put right again.
 
Sun roofs are a bit crap and can be a fiddle to repair or you can go cheap and get some of the manual latches from 924s. I believe the peasant spec ones in Germany had these anyway. There are other things but, meh, it's not as if you are going to be paying Porsche garages to mend stuff any more.
 
If you can find a good one you'll have a friend for life. Or find a slightly crappy one and put it back together properly. The final option is sell the kids and scrape together the money together for a 924 Carrera GT which is the bestest car ever ever ever.

They are loathed by those too thick to understand but they are the best car Porsche has ever built. Dull four cylinder and lacking the sheer joy of a proper air cooled engine possibly but as something to live with day in day out they are without equal. NIce ones cost little to run, they are well behaved, ride nicely, have a big fuel tank, emergency/child seats in the back and room enough to get building crap in the back. All dead handy things to have. Let's see you live with a 911 quite so well. Oh, and it you can find one with a pasha interior then its double plus good.
 
I had a 2.5 Lux and my old man had a very late model Turbo SE and I bought a low mileage '83 2.5 a while back just to have in the pending file to stop it suffering where it was.
 
These days rot seems to be the killer. If you are looking at a banger for naff all then I'm sure it can be bodged but then again it almost certainly has been already. From looking at this '83 one the wing bottoms go first followed by the sill/ floor pan/rear wheel arch all along the seam at the bottom. Genuine 944 wings are a bit steep (just under a grand each last time I looked) and repairing them properly is a bit of a chore which means most are snotted back together with a MIG and plenty of filler. The wings also go at the leading edges too just where they meet the bumper. Genuine sills aren't too expensive but as far as I can see you are on your own tin bashing out the panels to let into the floor plan. Doing one properly is a lot of work and it is easy to spot one that's been lashed up.
 
Early round dashes crack to buggery but there is a brilly company in Belgium (or is it Holland) remanufacturing them in both black and brown. About a grand a pop, however. On the upside you would have a nice new, round dashboard which everyone who knows understands is much better than the later ones. Oh yes it is. Cloth seats go eventually but the same company does the dashboards also remanufacture the seat fabrics so it can be all put right again.
 
Sun roofs are a bit crap and can be a fiddle to repair or you can go cheap and get some of the manual latches from 924s. I believe the peasant spec ones in Germany had these anyway. There are other things but, meh, it's not as if you are going to be paying Porsche garages to mend stuff any more.
 
If you can find a good one you'll have a friend for life. Or find a slightly crappy one and put it back together properly. The final option is sell the kids and scrape together the money together for a 924 Carrera GT which is the bestest car ever ever ever.

Two on my list to Santa would be
 
1. A better built but just as simple proper Ford Ka.
2. A proper coupe MX-5 with a nice hatch and low, flat boot floor. Just like a less bollocks MGB GT.

The low point was the '68 1200A Beetles. From memory the list of things missing was very, very long.
 
Reserve tap instead of a fuel gauge
Single speed wipers
Steering wheel with horn push button instead of chrome ring/bar
And you won't be needing that nice badge in the middle either
Moulded rubber "carpets"
Delete rear ash trays
Delete lining trims in rear luggage space. Including the ones that cover the rear arches.
Delete trims strips from waist line and running boards
Replace chrome front indicator pods with painted ones
Delete bonnet trim and badge.
Delete rear badge
Use '67 model year rear lights
Use '67 model year bumpers
Without over riders. Obviously.
Use '67 dashboard switch knobs
Delete passenger sun visor
Delete front door pouches
Delete internal door pulls and replace with earlier versions
You know those improved ventilation controls we've put on the '68 cars? Well you can't have them. Peasant.
Use earlier bonnet handle.
Use early engine deck cover
Delete virtually all headlining and pillar trimming bar one small square directly above the occupants heads. Choose your colour wisely because you get to see a lot of it from inside.
Delete passenger grab handle
Delete rear passenger assist straps
Delete the horn grille that isn't used
Delete under bonnet liner and wiring cover and replace with some folded up cardboard.
Someone with a better memory might suggest otherwise but I am sure this model year kept the single circuit brakes when the proper cars had gone onto dual circuit
 
I think the '68 car wins as the worst because all others had gone to 12 volt electrics whereas these sorry hounds kept the 6V candles.
 
It makes me smile that our poverty spec Vectra dog kennel has air con, electric windows and cruise control.

As you use or work on a particular engine its "foibles" become more and more of an annoyance so you need to be careful that judgement on the worst isn't clouded by familiarity. It is also clear that by any objective measure massively popular engines can be terminally shite. They built plenty of Dub flat fours but at the same time no one who has rebuilt a few would argue that they were anything other than pitiful pieces of aluminium and cast iron which barely held together. The Ford CVH engine may have been very popular but short of replacing it with a washing machine half-filled with bricks it is difficult to think of a more unplesant engine to hear and feel. Other crap engines were crap because they were so laughably badly concieved that the fact they bankrupted their manufacturer could be considered a mercy. In the Museum of Real Badly Thought Out Engines the NSU wankel engine is on a flood lit plinth in the foyer. There is a long list of manufacturers who ballsed up cam chain tensioners, camshafts, cam followers, cooling systems that wouldn't and lubrication systems that didn't . And then there are the dear French who will insist on giving reliable electrics yet another bash. Shabby engineering for sure but you can hardly condemn an entire engine as the worst ever just because the VP (Valve Train Systems) signed off the wrong solution.
 
I'm going to argue that in most cases the manufacturers had their hearts in the right place. Sure there was more than a hint of cynicism in the CVH abortion but at least the car was reasonably cheap to buy and reasonably reliable. They were trying solmething new, they were constrained by cash flow or they just plain got it wrong are all reasons to cut them some slack. 
 
I would argue that the worst has to be judged on the chasm bewteen expectation and reality. As far as I am aware the engines installed in any Citroen DS were not bad engines per se but they were abysmal compared with the powered by some alien space technology that had dropped off planet Moon the rest of the car lead you to expect. For me - and I am forced to declare a slight bias here because I absolutley loath the sodding cars  - surely the worst engine ever made belongs to that Brazilian built Tritec abortion they put in the early MINIs. A more wheezy, rough and downright gutless piece of shit I have yet to experience. Premium. New. BMW. Premium. British. Quality. Fun. Pizazz. BRG. Colour coded roof. Quality. Union Flags. Quality. And then you drive the thing and you would have been as well in something Warsaw Pact.
 
Oh yeah. And anything that runs on diesel. Obviously.

Things have got even sillier these days. Because so many bits and bobs are hard wired into a car's control systems they are difficult or impossible to delete so you end up with the poverty spec version with cruise control, ABS and air con. At the same time you have to do something to differentiate the models so they still treat the front fog lamp and some paint on the door handles as a luxury item.
 
Many years ago Jack Dee asked
 
 
Car manuafacturers seem to be in a similar position.

Unbelievably half-arsed felt-tip on cardboard plate made up for a trailer we'd only bought that morning out of the Friday-Ad, because it had become abundantly clear that all my sodding diecasts, books and LPs were not going to fit into a Ford Escort, when moving from Brighton back to Northern Ireland.
 
If you look in the background, you can see me getting a bollocking from my (soon to be) ex-girlfriend, because even with the addition of the trailer I still couldn't fit all my sodding diecasts, books and LPs in, and we had to leave all our furniture and other household stuff behind.
 
Thanks to my former flatmate for taking that pic. I think.

*Swoon*
 
I'd skip the fake French plates and opt for the Townsend Thoresen or even better HoverSpeed branded GB sticker for that full on "middle class wanker who drives over to their place in Provance ever since they read that sodding book" vibe.

I've been wracking my brain (instead of working) for examples at the right hand side of the table at the back of the brochure. I might be on thin ice with this one around here but...
 

 
Short of stabbing anyone who walked into the showroom it's difficult to know how the Cavalier could be made less desireable.

My recollection was that at the time of the 2.9 XJ40 BiK was calculated on list price but at some point which in the late 80s/early 90s was around about £19K the rate jumped somewhat so most manufacturers tried to get something that slotted under that bracket. Easy if you are Ford, Rover or Vauxhall but a bit harder to do if you are Jag, BMW or Mercedes. The 2.9 Jag with tweed* and hub caps and the general whiff of desperation just squeaked under that figure.
 
 
 
 
 
* I have nothing against the tweed interior personally because any one with any sense of style knows that cloth is about a trillion times better than leather for trimming car interiors. It just seems a shame that most manufacturers have forgotten this. I mean, how much better would the world be if instead of dreary black, seen it a thousand time before tan or really, what on earth were you thinking red you could buy a car that looked like this when you opened the door.
 

 
Sorry, I've wandered off topic.

I had to buy some new tyres for the smoker last night. The cheapest 235/45 17 snow tyre offered by MyTyres?
 
£35.30 for the brilliantly named Linglong Green-Max Winter Ice
 
I opted for something that had a name I recognised but it did make me smile to think about the factory gate price of these things. It's quite a lot of tyre for about the cost of a Big Mac.

I've been wracking my brain (instead of working) for examples at the right hand side of the table at the back of the brochure. I might be on thin ice with this one around here but...
 

 
Short of stabbing anyone who walked into the showroom it's difficult to know how the Cavalier could be made less desireable.

I'm not suggesting that all manufacturers get as imaginative as Gabriel got but wouldn't it be nice if we got cloth back?

My recollection was that at the time of the 2.9 XJ40 BiK was calculated on list price but at some point which in the late 80s/early 90s was around about £19K the rate jumped somewhat so most manufacturers tried to get something that slotted under that bracket. Easy if you are Ford, Rover or Vauxhall but a bit harder to do if you are Jag, BMW or Mercedes. The 2.9 Jag with tweed* and hub caps and the general whiff of desperation just squeaked under that figure.
 
 
 
 
 
* I have nothing against the tweed interior personally because any one with any sense of style knows that cloth is about a trillion times better than leather for trimming car interiors. It just seems a shame that most manufacturers have forgotten this. I mean, how much better would the world be if instead of dreary black, seen it a thousand time before tan or really, what on earth were you thinking red you could buy a car that looked like this when you opened the door.
 

 
Sorry, I've wandered off topic.

My recollection was that at the time of the 2.9 XJ40 BiK was calculated on list price but at some point which in the late 80s/early 90s was around about £19K the rate jumped somewhat so most manufacturers tried to get something that slotted under that bracket. Easy if you are Ford, Rover or Vauxhall but a bit harder to do if you are Jag, BMW or Mercedes. The 2.9 Jag with tweed* and hub caps and the general whiff of desperation just squeaked under that figure.
 
 
 
 
 
* I have nothing against the tweed interior personally because any one with any sense of style knows that cloth is about a trillion times better than leather for trimming car interiors. It just seems a shame that most manufacturers have forgotten this. I mean, how much better would the world be if instead of dreary black, seen it a thousand time before tan or really, what on earth were you thinking red you could buy a car that looked like this when you opened the door.
 

 
Sorry, I've wandered off topic.