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wilko

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Rank: Austin Maxi

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  1. Take posession of a maxi AND keep it on the road for 40 years?You'd get less for murder... I drove a 1750 with twin carbs once, it was disturbingly fast... I "smoked" an E30 BMW off the lights!
  2. I always do whatever I want with my cars and I couldn't give a monkeys what anybody thinks about it.If it gives some people pleasure to preserve them as close as possible to original then good for them, but that shouldn't have any bearing on how I chose to own/enjoy different ones!With a fair number of "originality freaks" in the world, it suprises me that more of them don't club together to preserve a collection of vehicles that it isn't practical for them to own as individuals, if that's what tickles their fancy - a bit like railway enthusiasts do with steam engines!
  3. Were the limos all 2200 like that one? The only other one I've ever seen was also a 2200 and was banger raced in 1999.
  4. Really straight old cars getting wrecked in any way is a shame in my book, but each to their own. Going down the path of condemning somebody as a "KNOB" or a "TWAT" is not that far away from turning into one of the old moaners writing in to car mags to complain about people modifying classics, or to complain about banger racing etc... & as far as I'm concerned, if you can get that upset about waht somebody else does with a ton of old metal they legally own then you need to get a life. No need to repeat yourself again, I get the message, I just disagree.
  5. Yes it was your "knob" comment I was referring to - if somebody owns something then they can do what they like with it in my book.It seems a little strange to me when people resolutely don't want to see a car back on the road, but it is suprisingly common with old cars, and often for emmotional reasons - especially when somebody dies and their family has to dispose of their cars and can't bear the thought of seeing it on the road with somebody else at the wheel.Theres loads of old giffers trying to sell rusty heaps unlikely ever to see the public road again with "NO BANGER RACERS" in caps at the end of the advert, despite the fact they are likely to be the only ones who will pay for the car - I don't mind that, by the same token, if somebody decides for whatever reason that they would rather their car got raced than restored, I am also quite happy with that too.
  6. What a knob!It's that ^ attitude that gets on my wick as a racer - your car, your choice: my car, my choice.Having seen any number of "it's going to be restored" projects that fester away only to get scrapped when they are too far gone for anybody to get any joy out of, anything I owned which I thought "fit for racing" would go to one of my friends who would race it - which is exactly where my £350 Laurel went when it eventually let me down by dropping a valve. If it was worth more to somebody to restore, I'd sell it for restoration, as it was, I swapped it for a mk2 cortina shell.Whatever other people do with their legally aquirred possessions is not for me to say.
  7. Now then...I'd like to see all the journos have to run & write about living with a 20+ year old car that costs an absolute maximum of £999 including MOT & tax. This would be called "the 3 figure rule".Next, I'd like to see lots of campaigning to up the pre-73 cut-off. When it started, this was for cars over 25 years old, restoring this as a 30 year rolling rule (in line with some european countries) would put us back to 1980, and mean in 3 years my Acclaim is tax free - woohoo!I'd like to see a section called "Impractically Classic" which would be about spending more than the value of a condition 1 car on keeping one going - first feature could be Austoshite hero China Tom throwing thousands of quid at a semi-shagged out 90's V12 jag.I'd also like to see stuff about driving old motors that is actually about driving them & bans words such as "surge", "burble" and "waft".
  8. Most Farina folks are pretty decent - I've dealt with a lot over the past few years as I have raced a few farinas & used to mechanic for a bloke who raced loads & ran them as road cars as well.They tend to fall into 2 camps - banger people, and non-banger people - even with the latter, I only ever met one who was a proper eccentric annorak type - we used to call him "mr bumbag" 'cos he always wore one! He owned oxford & cambridge estates and an oxford saloon - he drove a 45 mile round trip up to our banger yard once to get a "genuine" bolt for his alternator, but he wasn't a bad old chap at all.The most tragic waste of farinas I ever saw was the early ones that were "plate raped" - we got a black A60 cambridge saloon in once as a bare shell, the plate dealer had MOT'd it, got the plate, then sold all the trim, chrome and running gear and then passed the shell on to us, it was mint - steel wings and no filler, a real waste of a lovely car.
  9. Should do a good £400 to a banger racer if it's solid & running, which it clearly is - stupid money to smash one up, but they dominated the racing in the late 70's and early 80's and are iconic cars in banger circles.I have raced a few myself, but will never smash up one that is economically restorable. They are lovely old things to drive, I'm a big fan - excellent save!Does the illuminating badge on the front grill still work? That's one of the coolest things about Wolzy farinas!
  10. What's been peeing me off recently is the private sellers.If I'm buying a £1000 car, I don't expect any warranty worth the paper it's written on, so I don't expect a huge price differential between the sort of car dealers who operate in the £1000 car bracket and the private seller - I'd expect the dealer to want £1000 for a car that came from the auctions at £800 or less, I'd expect a private seller to want maybe £900 for the same motor.I am considering buying a BMW E46 - I've been looking at cars in the £6-8k bracket. Since I trust my instincts on buying cars, I would consider buying privately.HOWEVER, I'd expect a dealer offering a car at £7k to have card payment and credit facilities, to offer a warranty of some description, have trade plates so I can road-test the car etc... I would expect a private seller to have none of these things. SO, I'd expect to get a better price, 'cos I'm taking a bigger risk - ultimately I'd expect to get a car that is a year newer and/or 10k less on the clock and/or a better spec than the equivalent bought through a reputable dealer at the same price.Most people selling E46's privately seem to be putting them in at "dealer money". Maybe it's just me, but if I see 2 IDENTICAL £7000 cars, one at a decent dealership, one private, I'll buy from the dealer as at least I'll have a bit of comeback if it blows up next week...
  11. I once lived next door to somebody like this but worse - he actively let rats into his flat. I bought an air rifle and reguarly shot rats the size of squirrels crawling round the bins right outside our front door in broad daylight. He would shout at me when I did this.I don't mind people's "eccentric" behaviour - if they want to fill their garden with old cars, bikes, washing machines etc... or, as one former neighbour did, cover the outside of their house in billboards with carefully written and utterly barmy conspiracy theories painted all over them, but trust me, living next door to a rubbish horder is truly unpleasant.
  12. Lovely old barge - looks well in that colour as well.Original or restored?
  13. Sadly, the Izuzu 3.0 V6 has a tendency to become terminally ill and spit it's cylinder liners out - cars having 2nd and 3rd engines fitted under warranty are not uncommon!
  14. wilko

    Perodua

    But Pete, just think, if nobody buys crap cars built to a price, we'll have nothing to get excited about in years to come!?The cheapest car you could buy new in the UK was once the FSO Polonez. It was probably one of the most shoddily built and outdated as well, all things considered. Would I own one...?...in an instant!
  15. Opinions are like arseholes, everybody has one and they sometimes stink!Lets face it, other than stuff with terminally terminal design issues like early BMW V8's, 3 litre dizzler Saab 9-5's and the like, which are to be avoided unless you are an ardent gambler, most 90's onwards cars are relatively samey and not that much better or worse than equivalent choices in all honesty? The fact SWMBO just got a 206 started a mini "oh how awful 206's are!" discussion recently, but are they really? and Corsas too?Rest assured, whatever you might buy, there will always be those trotting out the alternatives, this will always involve Japanese & German alternatives to whatever you are considering. Strangely, the only engines I have ever had to rebuild in order to avoid economic ruination were German and Japanese, but you can't beat them, apparently!
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