MisterH

"Concise History"
Cracked me up that did

"Concise History"
Cracked me up that did

"Concise History"
Cracked me up that did

Good Evening Shiters 
My name is Ben and for most of my conscious life I have been a fan of the unusual and quirky in the automotive world. 
I am a young classic enthusiast, I passed my test last October having learnt in my Volvo 480ES
My passion for cars was started by my late grandfather's Audi WR quattro that he bought new in 1986, I wrote an article for PetrolBlog on it. As a result of this I have a taste for the quirky, left field vehicles that are often nearly extinct. 
My eBay saved search list is extremely long, but includes a raft of odd 1970s,80s and 90s cars, most of them performance intended* 
Currently the cars that I drive are the aforementioned 1988 480ES and a 1994 Rover 220GSi 3dr, the latter of which I am considering selling to make space for an Isuzu Piazza, of which I harbour much desire. 
The Piazza is my goal for the year, though a Mk2 Cavalier SRi hatch would be nice and an Audi 80/90 quattro still beckons me in my dreams. 
 
Anyway, I greatly look forward to contributing to this community, and continuing my Tat filled automotive adventure!
Cheers
Ben
https://petrolblog.com/2021/02/1986-audi-wr-quattro-ben-hooper/

Lada Tarzan:


For some reason, Lada decided to put a Samara body on a Niva chassis to create a sort of car bodied, road going monster truck. The off road abilities would have been prodigious, but the on-road manners lacking, one assumes.

It's the bastard love child of a Volvo 480 and a Lambo Diablo.

Ligier Renault 14 

Well it has been one year since the Audi appeared on the eBay tat thread and I snapped it up, driving it home exactly one year ago. 
This car has weaselled its way into my identity, especially with the quattro out for the count until the engine can be rebuilt properly. 
This has been the car to take me on my first foreign adventure, has underpinned a real broadening of my horizons and prospects, from my admission to Classic.Retro.Modern, to passing my IAM advanced driving test, to university. 
It has broken down a couple of times, it has even been pranged by an errant Skoda, but it has never let me down - as it has always either been at low speed, or easily fixable. 
So with 10,000 miles done in 12 months, adding to a total of just under 160k miles, it truly is a daily classic. People seem to love it, even with self confessed non-car types at uni appreciating its unique presence. 
So where to next? I haven't got the funds or space to take on another classic, but this car and the Volvo I don't want to let go of really, so I guess it will be a case of continuing to improve their health and enjoying them...
 

...And hoping no one with money decides they really like the idea of a Colt Galant GTO, Isuzu Piazza, Celica ST165, Allegro 1750SS or Saab 99 EMS...
 

'For quickness and ease we put a fuel cell up front'
Yeah I can see how fitting a non-standard tank in the front of a rear engine car is much quicker and easier than replacing half a foot of rubber tube!

thats a genuine 130 sport,  not many of those about. 

And waiting for me when I got home...

 

Well it has been some months since I last updated this thread, for a variety of reasons. To summarise what the remainder of the French Trip entailed, here is the rest in 6 pictures and a couple of GIFs: 
Revelation as I discovered the CD jack in my newly fitted Blaupunkt Memphis could plug straight in to my phone allowing me to play music and render Bluetooth completely unnecessary, of course, when the phone wasn't overheating, which it was often doing...

A dear friend of mine who lives locally decided to guide me up the route des Crêtes from La Ciotat to Cassis, a mesmerising trip which allowed me to take what many have said is my best car picture ever, and with a bit of touching up could have come straight out of a CAR magazine test feature 

After a few more days it was off to Lyon, by the long way. Heading north via Sisteron and Grenoble, I tackled the most spectacular roads I had ever come across in my limited driving career. Though the Audi really didn't like switchbacks (some of it was my cack-handedness in fairness) the sweeping valley roads were a dream, mixed with some a-ha cassettes, the atmosphere was incredible. Even if the traffic build up did prevent total enjoyment...

Lyon was beautiful, a city I had never really considered before as it as the traffic equivalent of the Small Intestine. However taking a couple of days to explore a small part of it was really refreshing, pipped by this sublime Citroen C6 that was wafting around the centre. 
 
After a couple of days, it was time to hit the road. While it was my original plan to explore more of Europe, it didn't work out like that. However that doesn't mean I couldn't enjoy the run. The Audi lapped up the miles, effortlessly cruising at 80mph, this time with no rain or crosswind to test my biceps. Many cassettes were spooled from end to end, Simple Minds, Duran Duran, a-ha, Roxy Music and Fleetwood Mac all gracing the speakers. Oddly, the only thing that actually needed resting was my phone, which got biblically hot running the navigation software. After 8 hours though, I arrived at the Eurotunnel. There I followed two lost BMWs into the  brexit theme park   Freight terminal, and after being chucked out, managed to get into the car terminal. There I was intercepted by HM BORDER FORCE as I had ignored an inspection order. After being threaded back to the inspection pit my interceptors were chastised for getting me and not the silver BMW convertible they had been told to find 🙄. I made my way back and then missed the flexi+ queue I had paid for, but at least I was there. 
The UK
Now All I needed to do was navigate the M25 at rush hour...
.
After 8 hours driving non stop in France, this was the biggest challenge of all. Compared to France, I felt as if I had taken a wrong turn, gone forward through technology, crossed the world, and ended up on the set of the next Mad Max film. Whether it was 130mph drug dealers, or people who had BMWs on Finance and wanted to pretend they were 130mph drug dealers, it was a melee 
 
However I was able to get through and on to the relative sanity of the M3. A short blast and I was back in Hampshire, having completed what wasn't the most ambitious trip of my life thus far, but certainly the longest and most complex...

 
 
 
 
 
 

As a small aside, during the event with my guardians, I got talking to a relation of theirs who was into cars. He told me of a mythical version of the Citroen GS called the GSi (Or GSI, GS I, GS i) which was basically a Citroen GS "hot hatch" for the UK market. I thought he might have been referring to the X2 and X3, but I don't know as he said they were the epitome of rare. Can anyone enlighten me as to what he may have been referring to? 
Anyway
Chapter 2: From Tat to Tatty
During my first week of staying with my guardian, who is himself an enthusiast of classic cars, though mostly not of the sort we are about, tasked me with finding him a classic while I was down here. For some context, he cut his teeth working as a salesman in the BL dealership in Soton from around 1979-83, and was really quite good at it. Although he still thinks that buying and selling Triumph Heralds are the key to financial success in the classic car world, something he hasn't been able to reasonably explain to me yet. 
Anyway, the first car I found was a tasty looking Renault 20TS. I explained that while in France these were two a penny, in the UK, even in LHD form, it would probably drum up interest, especially with FOTU getting dangerously close to almost being fashionable. However, even though it was a 1 owner car, he wasn't convinced. He wanted something pretty, a soft top. Then he wanted a Mehari, then a Renault 4, then a Toyota Celica. I was getting to the bottom of Leboncoin at this point,  when suddenly a Triumph GT6 came up for sale in the same town as us. It was a runner (just) but it was so close it would be rude not to go and see it. So off we went. 

The Triumph was a Canadian import. The paint was flaking, it leaked, and the doors didn't open or shut properly. There were age related issues too. The interior was knackered, there was no clutch pretty much, and there was a bit of rust, though the car was solid. It was a sorry sight, as in the boot there was a picture of it taken way back when, in a time when it was clearly loved. It was a dog, but surprisingly, after a jump off the Audi, it ran!
 
But it was far too much for what we wanted, so the search continued. 
Obsessed as he was with Meharis, I drove him down to Toulon to go and look at the cheapest one he could find. It wasn't actually that bad, but the plastic around the tailgate hinge was cracked and there was blue smoke coming out of the exhaust. He decided to think on that one, but at the price it was, it didn't hang around for long.
Wracking my brains, on a total chance, I typed in Innocenti into the Leboncoin search bar, and found a pretty soft top known as an 1100S. Now this was a car I knew about anyway because I really don't have much else to do with my life   my father had once seen 3 strange Fr registered convertibles on the M27 and he tasked me with finding out what they were, as he had no idea. Eventually we settled that the little Innocenti 950/1100S was the likely culprit.

After seeing this red one for sale, my godfather was immediately smitten. Only he had no idea what it was. Ironically, given that he had told me he didn't want anything unusual, he was considering buying it over the phone. His son suggested it was probably the picnic basket on the back*. However, sense prevailed, and we soon found ourselves on the TGV up to Lyon to go and see it. The guy selling the car was the honest sort, he was a trader, but he could tell within minutes that we weren't messing around (I think he might have been more than a little relieved). 
The car itself was presentable, but tatty. There was a hole in the roof, it had the strangest paint job I had ever seen, but it was straight. The paint could only have been done outside in a dusty environment, as it was orange peeling but only in specific random places. It wasn't uniform at all. But importantly for an (Anglo) Italian car, it had no rust. The indicators didn't work, nor did the handbrake, and the head gasket may, or may not, have been iffy. But the seller was good and we decided to think on it.

It was up for 14k, but it needed at least 3k taken off that to be viable given their values. After thinking on it, my godfather decided to low ball it. 3k off the asking price. Somehow, he got it. AND with an agreement to get it registered, all faults fixed, and ready to go. I do not know how he does it, but he has that touch. I need to learn.
I had made it very clear that it would NEED a respray to have any long term viability, but he was smitten. And to be honest, just looking at it was enough to start Matt Monro singing in my head, so I could see why. On Days Like These Indeed...
*In a move that made me laugh, the seller (who normally imports 500s from Italy) said that every time he advertises a car with a picnic basket on it, the phone falls off the hook. Except in this case, well until my godfather saw it!
I think that wraps up this leg of the trip, more capers to come...
 

It has been quite quiet on my page for a while, this might offer some explanation...
Chapter 1: The Run du Soleil 
Due to a family event in the South of France where my guardians live, I felt it would be a good idea to make a trip out of it and get some experience driving on the continent. Given the Volvo's predicament, my only choice of transport was my still relatively new (to me) 1986 Audi 80 Sport, with 150k miles under it's belt and possibly some faults hiding, probably not.  My parents had to get there and back, as they couldn't stay, so they took the Nissan 370Z Nismo bought as a bit of fun (without* the asterisk) last year. Before departure I was fastidious in my checks, far more than normal. The fluids had been recently changed, but they were topped up and the tyres inflated to slightly over their recommended pressures to give better fuel economy on the motorways. Finally, the cars were cleaned, and I spent the best part of a day polishing the Audi with zeal. Yeah...
 


The morning came and to say it was pissing it down was an understatement. In the dark on the M25, there was a lot o
f spray, putting paid to all my armwork the day before. To make matters worse, due to a huge geopolitical shift that shall go unnamed, the M20 was closed to park lorries all down it, so it was almost impossible to actually access the Channel Tunnel. Eventually following his nose, my father carved out a route taking us through the Kentish country lanes and we were able to sneak on to the motorway for the last stretch to get us where we needed to be. Once we had been through customs we were ready for the adventure to really begin. 


Our route was pretty simple: Head around 800 miles south, at 80 mph, going through the automotive intestine that is Lyon. With my father leading in the Nismo, I duly followed, and quickly found the Audi to be far more capable than I had bargained for. My father was dawdling around at 70, which actually began to really hinder my concentration. So much so, that I had to goad him to speed up to the legal limit of 130kph. There was some good reasoning behind his actions though, as for about 600 miles, the motorway was covered in standing water and with crosswinds for large parts. This was going to be a fight. 
Passing lorries with zero visibility. Crosswinds really knocking you for 6. The famously smooth French roads, so often the envy of British drivers, became akin to an ice rink, but with lorries whose spray always blew exactly where you had to go to pass. Keeping the car in a straight line was a battle, mile after mile. I found myself wishing I had got a quattro instead, before reminding myself that 4WD cannot cheat the wind. But the only thing that was faltering in the equation was me. The car was astoundingly good at long distance, high speed blasts. The engine was willing and had plenty of go in it whenever I was at the limit, and it cruised at 80 all day with little fuss. Halfway in however, I had to take a break. My father was, quite annoyingly, totally relaxed in the Nismo, the tuning shop Sportscar GT proving more comfortable than the family saloon, even if you couldn't get as much in it. I had to give a series of flashes denoting whether I needed a break, or the car needed fuel (spoiler alert, the latter was only needed twice), as he would just plod on through. We certainly made an interesting combo though, and the continental drivers were quite perturbed to see a 36 year old saloon overtaking them in the outside lane. Just doing what it was designed to do.


But 3/4 of the way to Lyon, the weather dried up a bit, and the roads opened out, and we could have some fine cruising. Many cassettes were played, from the likes of Duran Duran to a-ha, even a bit of Roxy Music, and of course I had the cassette adapter for my phone. Then we hit Lyon. 
For those who do not know, Lyon is like the small intestine, but of roads. Lots of congestion, lots of illogical layouts. A world of shit if you are a driver. A Huge tunnel with about 5 different entrances and exits, and we had to get the one that would take us to Provence. And we hit it as rush hour. N'ertheless, we waded through, and feeling extremely thankful I drove to Somerset a couple of days before to fit a new cooling fan. Then, after getting past an accident, we were able to get close to our goal. But in spite of how close they may appear on the map, Lyon is still 4 hours from Toulon, our target. France is Very Big. 
As night fell we went on, my concentration buckling under the strain. The French lack of cat's eyes really playing with my mind. But we went on. If I hadn't been exerting myself so hard earlier in the trip, I might have been better off. But then given my age, and this being my first automarathon, I shouldn't have really been surprised. Still, I flipped cassettes, kept the fan at full, and tried to focus on my IAM skills*
Not long before our destination, in the dark at around 21:30, I put the special magic cassette in. This allows me to play music from my phone through the cassette player. And next on my playlist was that anthem by The Sisters of Mercy, The Temple of Love (1994). This song seems to be the music equivalent of caffeine, and keep me awake far longer than other songs do. When I heard the opening I turned the volume up and prepared for the power. Shame the cassette wasn't prepared for it though, as it promptly gave up the ghost a minute in and left me in silence. It simply couldn't handle it. 
But by this time, I was close. So I decided to forgo anything else and try to concentrate. Though not before some questionable in car attempts to salvage the music.
The last few miles went by, and by the time I arrived in the picturesque walled village of Le Castellet, I had been going for 18 hours, and the odometer had climbed by almost 900 miles. 
  
 
And in the back of my mind I could hear echoes of Craig Armstrong's Ruthless Gravity, as featured in the 2003 Top Gear race to the South of France...  
 
 
Tune in next time to find out how through my trying to explain why a Renault 20 was a good idea, my godfather bought an Innocenti 1100S. And my first EV experience *gasp* 
But there can be no more tonight, I have just had to navigate the M25...
 
 
...And drive 3/4 of France

Well it has been one year since the Audi appeared on the eBay tat thread and I snapped it up, driving it home exactly one year ago. 
This car has weaselled its way into my identity, especially with the quattro out for the count until the engine can be rebuilt properly. 
This has been the car to take me on my first foreign adventure, has underpinned a real broadening of my horizons and prospects, from my admission to Classic.Retro.Modern, to passing my IAM advanced driving test, to university. 
It has broken down a couple of times, it has even been pranged by an errant Skoda, but it has never let me down - as it has always either been at low speed, or easily fixable. 
So with 10,000 miles done in 12 months, adding to a total of just under 160k miles, it truly is a daily classic. People seem to love it, even with self confessed non-car types at uni appreciating its unique presence. 
So where to next? I haven't got the funds or space to take on another classic, but this car and the Volvo I don't want to let go of really, so I guess it will be a case of continuing to improve their health and enjoying them...
 

...And hoping no one with money decides they really like the idea of a Colt Galant GTO, Isuzu Piazza, Celica ST165, Allegro 1750SS or Saab 99 EMS...
 

Well it has been one year since the Audi appeared on the eBay tat thread and I snapped it up, driving it home exactly one year ago. 
This car has weaselled its way into my identity, especially with the quattro out for the count until the engine can be rebuilt properly. 
This has been the car to take me on my first foreign adventure, has underpinned a real broadening of my horizons and prospects, from my admission to Classic.Retro.Modern, to passing my IAM advanced driving test, to university. 
It has broken down a couple of times, it has even been pranged by an errant Skoda, but it has never let me down - as it has always either been at low speed, or easily fixable. 
So with 10,000 miles done in 12 months, adding to a total of just under 160k miles, it truly is a daily classic. People seem to love it, even with self confessed non-car types at uni appreciating its unique presence. 
So where to next? I haven't got the funds or space to take on another classic, but this car and the Volvo I don't want to let go of really, so I guess it will be a case of continuing to improve their health and enjoying them...
 

...And hoping no one with money decides they really like the idea of a Colt Galant GTO, Isuzu Piazza, Celica ST165, Allegro 1750SS or Saab 99 EMS...
 

Well it has been one year since the Audi appeared on the eBay tat thread and I snapped it up, driving it home exactly one year ago. 
This car has weaselled its way into my identity, especially with the quattro out for the count until the engine can be rebuilt properly. 
This has been the car to take me on my first foreign adventure, has underpinned a real broadening of my horizons and prospects, from my admission to Classic.Retro.Modern, to passing my IAM advanced driving test, to university. 
It has broken down a couple of times, it has even been pranged by an errant Skoda, but it has never let me down - as it has always either been at low speed, or easily fixable. 
So with 10,000 miles done in 12 months, adding to a total of just under 160k miles, it truly is a daily classic. People seem to love it, even with self confessed non-car types at uni appreciating its unique presence. 
So where to next? I haven't got the funds or space to take on another classic, but this car and the Volvo I don't want to let go of really, so I guess it will be a case of continuing to improve their health and enjoying them...
 

...And hoping no one with money decides they really like the idea of a Colt Galant GTO, Isuzu Piazza, Celica ST165, Allegro 1750SS or Saab 99 EMS...
 

I have a real thing for these, but would only really want one of the uber rare turbos (only if it were completely standard so I know it is a pipe dream) 

Tragedy, hope, love, despair: All of human and canine condition captured in these examples of image perfection. 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/155278996612?hash=item2427597484:g:Nq4AAOSw14ljg7ET&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoIfvZojZHiOfKOkp1Z010bKuNuq3dsfQHUjKvHw7jfAUExaMqu%2F866SkA6IctAaZNCaIqPcNS%2FCd5aTn0KxFB9ofb20zmLw8yDJoCEutBT2bmIF%2FRNI5FVm8N3CVW8%2FXuwCR%2BarrKZ4mwWR7sHE2qU9PlQbPggPKf2IvyjHLT5z5Q1PvGxs4xHJosKLG9xet%2BpyDvqVJK%2BE%2FMYAwtMjMvm0%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR_bDlK-XYQ

And waiting for me when I got home...

 

Quick, scarpo lads!

You've been spotted!

And waiting for me when I got home...