Macscrooge

Great looking cars these. Though I’d have had the blue!

On the E411 just south of Brussels today: a lovely blue Citroen DS21 mixing with the moderns at about 10kph above the speed limit!

Still love for old Fords here in Diekirch, Luxembourg….🤪

Great stuff! By coincidence there was an even older Panda next to us in the passport queue at Rotterdam Europoort last week, clearly in daily use by a lady rather younger than her car.

Hateful Wheeltrims Grommit….

Spotted on a tram ride from Delft to Den Haag this morning: Merc W123 wagon with much later and very ghastly plastic wheel trims. 3x Mazda 626 wagons and saving the biggest ‘till last….Peugeot 504 wagon in mid-blue no photos ‘cos it was pissing rain.

G720HWG. A 16RS ‘Pilot’ (GTi seats in black velour - hmmm) I owned for about two years from mid ‘96. It had its share of glitches - mostly engine/electrics. The much feared (by some) suspension was just fine.

That looks a cracking wee thing.

I recall that in the late '70s Chrysler claimed that the Sunbeam was "a small car to beat the world" or some such rot.

I did rather like Volvo's mid '90s "a car you can believe in" strapline. I could and did!

Love driving, hates garages. Citroen BX TV ad. later 'borrowed' by Autocar(?) for their long-term Montego review - Hates driving, loves garages....

When I attended a lot of corporate meetings I used to rather enjoy the sight of my slightly tatty Saab in among the sea of black Audis. It was probably the only car there not owned by a finance company....

This thread makes very interesting reading and is I'm sure an issue many of us have and do agonise over. So here's my $0.02 worth: For business purposes I need a reliable and presentable car and I'm fortunate enough that I can have something rather nice. Luckily I don't feel the need to have the latest, shiniest of fastest. Image has been mentioned above and particularly for those of us in a client-facing business it is a thing - my RX says dependable, quietly successful an probably a bit dull. Job done! (Hence previous ownership of various Volvos, Saabs etc). I paid cash (c£18k) for the Lex 2.5 years ago and extended the warranty to 3 years. So by my reckoning I got essentially a new car for rather less then a third of what Lexus wanted for an actual new one. Result. It replaced a BMW 435d on a PCP. I calculated that in terms of just owning the car, if I run the Lex for 3 years and then push it off a cliff (I wont!) it'll have cost no more than the BMW over the preceding 3 year period. My best value car ever was probably the 2004 Saab 9-5 Aero bought in August 2009 for under £4k, sold with an additional 70k miles in Jan 2013 for £1k, and maybe had £400 spent on repairs over and above routine servicing in that period. Or the Volvo 945 bought for £250 and sold 18 months (and about £150 later) for the same £350. Those were the days. My only recent shiter was a Saab 9-3 floppytop. Run on and off for for a year, broken in various ways and then laid up awaiting fettling which never happened due to lack of time/talent/inclination. Trailered away last week. My financial hit on the purchase/sale values was equal to about 12 days of BMW ownership. I'm not sure that gets us any closer to a conclusion - and I don't think there is one! Just as many views are there are of us here 😀

In Gainsborough yesterday: a Vauxhall Nova 4-dr saloon. Like a tiny Senator.

Saw an Opel Ascona (Mk2 Cavalier stylee) on a transporter in the A1 in N Yorkshire on Wednesday.