warren t claim

14 hours ago, Rocket88 said:

Back in the eighties I worked at a provincial Fiat dealership. Back then pretty everything Fiat made was dynamically superior to the equivalent Ford…. Build quality, on the other hand…..😱

Are you saying that an Argenta or Croma is a better can than a Granada?

6 hours ago, egg said:

Well, as there are more ST24 MK2s alone than K reg Mondeos - why not!? I'm sure history will remember us 😆

We need to remember that the Mondeo was introduced halfway through the K plate year. 

3 minutes ago, warren t claim said:

A light metallic blue Zetec with the Escort GTI alloy wheels was on my want list to get plated and keep for myself. The problem was at the time they were the most sought-after model. IIRC, the Zetec specific grille cost something like £180 compared to £35 for the normal grille.

Although over the years my fleet has included Aspen, LX, GLX, Si and Ghia models there are a few gaps that are triggering off my OCD. The fact that I've never owned a V6 isn't really that surprising due to my use case. After all, no sane driver would ever consider renting a V6 from me to do 50,000 mostly urban miles a year.

I never owned a Ghia X TD either. There's a logical reason for this though. If I wanted a Mondeo with leather seats I'd have just bought a set of hide seats from a salvage yard and fitted them to a lower spec car. Other than the leather trim the only bonus of having a Ghia X is having both sunroof and aircon as the Ghia X in TD spec didn't come with cruise control. 

The only saloons I owned were a couple of Aspens and one solitary GLX TD.

The biggest gap in my Mk1/2 CV is the fact that I've never owned, hired or rented out an estate. There's no logical reason for this as estate cars rent out easily. I've got nothing against estates. After all, I've had about half a dozen Mk4 estates, it's just that no estate appeared when I was Mondeo shopping.

36 minutes ago, egg said:

With full credit to Paul Harbord on Facebook - here are the 2022 numbers for MK2's left by the way...

•  At least 2144 cars taxed and on the road (there were only 526 mk1's!)
• LX is most common with 458 variants left taxed
• Verona TD is the rarest with 1 taxed, Aspen and Aspen TD have 2 each taxed
• There were 204 Zetec/S's, 192 ST24's, 181 ST200's, 193 Ghia's, 312 Ghia X's taxed
• There were only 97 Diesel engined cars taxed.

A light metallic blue Zetec with the Escort GTI alloy wheels was on my want list to get plated and keep for myself. The problem was at the time they were the most sought-after model. IIRC, the Zetec specific grille cost something like £180 compared to £35 for the normal grille.

1 minute ago, KWhite said:

May 1993 1.6 LX seen on X/Twitter that was spotted by Jude Currie.  Last MOT expired December 2008

That looks saveable.

2 minutes ago, Popsicle said:

Oh wow, I've done hundreds of deliveries down to the Airbus/GKN site at Filton over the years and seen this many times outside one of the stores.

I'd believe the advert story to be true, it very rarely seemed to move and often looked a bit unloved, but it always looked straight and tidy underneath the dirt. I mentioned to the lads in the stores to give me a shout if they ever found out it was being let go, that went well for me! To be fair I've not worked since November last year so it would be a bit unfair to moan at them.

 

There may be a logical reason for this low mileage. The original owner may have had a company policy for vehicles that extended to on site vehicles that insisted on diesel, estate, ABS, Ford etc. I heard of a similar policy insisted on by a NHS trust that rented a Megane Scenic for six months and returned it with less than 50 miles on the clock.

22 minutes ago, egg said:

With full credit to Paul Harbord on Facebook - here are the 2022 numbers for MK2's left by the way...

•  At least 2144 cars taxed and on the road (there were only 526 mk1's!)
• LX is most common with 458 variants left taxed
• Verona TD is the rarest with 1 taxed, Aspen and Aspen TD have 2 each taxed
• There were 204 Zetec/S's, 192 ST24's, 181 ST200's, 193 Ghia's, 312 Ghia X's taxed
• There were only 97 Diesel engined cars taxed.

I very much doubt that either of those Aspen diesels were mine

The Verona TD surprises me because I didn't think that they were sold in TD variant. I'm sure that if they were I'd either have seen one advertised, bid on one at a salvage auction or known another driver who had one.

3 hours ago, Rod/b said:

The classic F1 film “Grand Prix” is about 2 hours too long. 

And Bullitt is a slow and boring film other than the chase scene.

1 hour ago, 808 Estate said:

Currently on ebay.

@eddyramrod you need this in your life!

11 hours ago, MantaGTE85 said:

That white estate would be well worth saving. I'm not sure I've seen one like this. At this late stage of the mk2 production run, was the LX relegated to base-model rank? I'm certain most colour-grilled late mk2's I've seen seemed to be Zetec, but also sometimes Zetec S, ST24/200, or Verona. I've deffo never seen any Aspens beyond around 1998 S-plates. Or even a 1.6.

It's funny you should mention that. I've had colour grilled LXs but never any of them were Aspen spec cars. All my Mk2 Aspens were saloons and I'm certain that the newest was an S reg. Come to think of it, they were all diesels as well.

There's got to be an interesting story behind this.

https://www.gumtree.com/p/ford/2000-ford-mondeo-1.8-lx-td-5dr-11500-miles-estate-diesel-mondeo-classic-with/1473877788

7 hours ago, egg said:

the only Mondeo ever to have them I think was the Base/Aspen.

I'd forgotten how colour-coordinated the Mk1 was compared to the Mk2. That pic really does illustrate the superior quality of seat fabric the Mk1 had compared to its successor. 

The coin holder was useful in these. Whenever I was fobbed off with some foreign coins I'd ram them into the coin holder and see how low it took before an opportunistic light fingered punter stole them.

Another Warren peculiarity was that I always made sure that I kept a half decent pen in the dedicated pen holder. No half chewed biro for me. 

Looking at that hardcore, held open, continental strength interior pic reminds me that if you drop anything like money between the front seat and centre console you should consider it lost forever. You will never see it again regardless of how determined you are. Using that space to slide your A to Z in helped stuff from dropping in there though.

@Minimad5 from where our former unit was.

MG6 is due its six monthly inspection and will need quite a few jobs sorting. I have this as a loan(?) car for a week or so.

265,000 miles and judging by the Cab Direct number plates, been working as a taxi all of its life.

I suppose I should let you all know what my first impressions are.

I should start by saying that my opinion so far is based on about thirty miles of gentle shuttling about on my Tradex policy. No combat miles as yet until I can swap my hire and reward insurance over tomorrow morning.

I'll start by saying that the seating position is VERY low. I'm sure that there must be the facility to raise the driver's seat but as yet I can't find it. This can be an issue as because I have long legs and therefore in Focus sized cars I like to raise my seat to allow a little more rear legroom. The seat also seems to lack any lumbar support either which means that I've had to position the backrest a little more upright than I'd like. 

It's not as fast as the MG but has plenty enough power for the job, whilst driving unladen I'm changing up the box at the same speed as in the MG. I've yet to try it with a full compliment of people and luggage. 

I can't yet gather any MPG figures as it came with a quarter of a tank.

The power steering has three assistance levels.

1. Very light.

2. Mk2 Punto with the "girly button" pressed.

3. 1977 XJ6.

The turning circle is a hell of a lot better than the MG6. In fact, the MG needs Costa Concordia levels of space to spin around so that's no surprise.

Ride quality is leagues ahead of the MG. The Kia rides as well as a modern Focus which is in stark contrast to the MG which absorbs bumps in a way that has me feeling nostalgic for my old XR3is.

Internal storage is miles better than the MG. Instead of having one flimsy pop out cupholder that eats into the leg room of a front seat punter the Kia has two sensible centrally mounted holders to not just house a coffee, but also another to accommodate a packet of Hob Nobs to dunk into the aforementioned hot beverage. The Kia also has storage under the armrest that's at least triple the size of that of the MG. It also has a large central cubby, a feature absent on the MG6.

The Kia lacks the automatic lights and wipers of the MG6.

The leather seat trim of the MG6 is more "punter proof" than the cloth seats of the Kia.

The Kia has a DAB radio. The MG6 has an AM/FM unit that doesn't work anyway. This isn't as bad as it sounds as I used a Bluetooth speaker to stream audio because the MGs Bluetooth isn't A2DP and only works for phone calls, not audio streaming. I've yet to check if the Kia is A2DP.

The MG has built in sat nav, a feature missing on the Kia. As the MG navigation unit is so awkward to input a destination into as you can't search by postcode, this isn't too much of a loss. Anyway, I'm a taxi driver who should know where he's going anyway! The only useful feature of the MG sat nav was the display automatically told me what road I was currently on.

So I suppose it's a case of swings and roundabouts. The next few days will decide which car makes the better taxi.

5 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Youngster 🤣

I often wonder how different my life would have turned out if I'd have got badged at 21.

5 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Were you never tempted to try a Sunderland T72 Bluebird? I had a 2.0d one as a cab in the late 80's, was bulletproof.

I had an ex cab as a pizza delivery car back in the day but they were too old to be plated here when I started.

Another pretender to the crown that the taxi brokers tried to punt out was the Skoda Octavia. 

Not just any Octavia, but the non turbo SDI.

Rather like Gareth Gates and Daniel Beddingfield, these heaps had their 15 minutes of fame back in 2003 before buyer's remorse hit in. They were cheap, very cheap for a new car at about £75 a week but that was about it. These things took close to twenty seconds to hit sixty with just the driver aboard. Throw a quartet of Birkenhead's chunkiest munters on board and I dread to think how slow they'd be. I remember driver's defending them saying that the Octavia is no slower than the old and missed Bluebird diesel but at least the Bluebird had toys to compensate. The SDI was equipped with keep fit windows and the only creature comfort was central locking. 

When someone phoned me asking to rent a Mondeo from me and the only one I had available was an Aspen base my reply would start with telling the driver that although I do have a Mondeo for rent I'm afraid it's only a base and doesn't have front electric windows but I'll put them top of the list when a higher spec car becomes available. The last thing I wanted was to prep a car only to have the driver fuck it off due to the DHSS spec! But at least the Mondeo Aspen came with a turbo!

Anyway, those Mk1 Octavias soon fell out of favour. It's no good having a huge boot if it struggles to cope fully laden on an airport run but their biggest fault was the gearbox and its fondness for shitting itself. Without exception, every SDI suffered gearbox failure which Skoda/Taxi Dealer wasn't too keen to fix under warranty. Plenty were laid up at under two years old while the owner tried to source a good used box.

Gentlemen that reminds me.

Taxi brokers and the local popularity of the 406.

In the early 2000s the good people of Merseyside decided to wholeheartedly embrace the latest craze for putting in a personal injury claim in for just about anything. This caused taxi insurance to rocket from £33 to £91 a week. 

About this time a taxi broker in Scotland called Cab Direct decided to offer for sale brand new 406s for a reasonable amount that included free insurance. Plenty of local drivers took them up on their offer meaning that plenty of shiny new 406 HDi 90s appeared on our streets. This was probably the first time that local lads had sampled the common rail Pug lump and word soon went round telling tales of 55 mpg around the doors which only fuelled more sales. 

When the 406 was replaced with the 407 the driver rumour mill again went into overdrive but this time it was about the 407 needing to be main agent serviced and if it wasn't it'd go into limp mode 1000 miles after a service was due.

I know that it seems strange today in an era when any scruffy driver/petty criminal can waltz into a specialist taxi broker holding a sizeable deposit and walk out with a Hyundai Ioniq on finance, but twenty odd years ago getting a main dealer to flog a new car for taxi use on finance was unheard of. It's not that taxi drivers are a massive financial risk, plenty of us have mortgages through high street lenders. The main sticking point to the main agent lenders is the fact that if the car ever had to be snatched back the residual value would be even worse than normal. Lada would take a chance if a driver signed on the line for a new Riva but their lenders would NEVER repo a car anyway. They knew that they were worth fuck all used so preferred to make a deal with the buyer. Back in my reposession agent days I was not once asked to seize a Lada!

That's not to say that nobody ever bought a new car to work as a taxi. The early to mid 2000s saw a surge in property prices meaning that quite a few drivers added the cost of a new Mondeo onto their mortgage.

The knock on effect of restricted finance opportunities meant that mass market family saloons like the Mondeo took about three years to filter down to us taxi drivers. These cars were sourced either through lenders like Welcome Finance with the help of forged payslips and a dealer happy to look the other way or like yours truly, via salvage auctions and pulled straight. The Mk1/2 Mondeo was the perfect car to source as salvage due to their then huge sales volumes sold to fleets and ergo plentiful number meeting their demise on our extensive motorway network after the rep behind the wheel suffered a carb coma after spunking his Luncheon Vouchers on one too many Little Chef Olympic breakfasts.

As a salvage buyer, a major Mondeo plus point compared to say the equivalent Vauxhalls or Rovers (believe it or not, the 400 was briefly popular as a taxi here at one point) is that the Mondeo can take a pretty big shunt without deploying its airbag. They also had the ability to be pulled straight without the need for a jib, a simple Porta Power would usually suffice although sometimes it was just easier to buy a new rear panel from Ford to save hours of labour. Although most of my Mondeo's were rebuilt write offs I can honestly say that not one of them was a cut and shut. I left that for the lads punting on 406s. In fact it wasn't unusual to see a couple of lads pushing the back end of a 406 down the back streets of Birkenhead like Smithfield Market barrow boys. 

One particular 2.0LX I had turned out to have the last owner live in my area despite me having to have the car transported from the salvage yard in the Midlands. I remember this Pepper Red (I must've had at least four Mk2s in that colour) example because the previous owner had fitted a nice set of Focus alloys.. Once repaired and back on the road I decided to knock on the previous owner's door. He couldn't believe that it was back on the road after it was hit from behind in standstill M56 traffic by a BMW which launched him into theTransit in front. If seeing his old car again made him happy that was nothing compared to his delight when I handed him his Shania Twain CD that was in the CD player when I got the car!

It's funny that the only privately owned salvage Mondeo I bought was a local car. Every other car had the name of a leasing company as the previous owner with the exception of two that had been owned by Trinity Mirror. 

On 05/04/2024 at 13:42, sierraman said:

Cable clutch’s were only on first 6months-year of Mondeo production. Hydraulic all the way then, they don’t tend to give problems unlike the leaking master cylinders on the Mk1 Focus, a real back breaker to access. 

I had two fail although I suppose my use case was pretty severe.

On 04/04/2024 at 21:57, High Jetter said:

Je t'aime, ne'st pas?

Yes they did seem to love a car without power steering. If they wanted a Triumph fitted with PAS they'd have bought a 2500, not a GT6.

Now and again a punter shows such breathtaking stupidity and ineptitude that even I, after well over two decades in the job have to question whether this has happened or not. Today such an occurrence happened.

I know that I've told the tale before about the lad who did a runner into his own house and then opened his front door on the chain to tell me that his failure to pay was a civil matter forcing me to pop the chain by using a spade conveniently left in his front garden but this "lady" earlier in today went one better. Not only did she do a runner into her own house before darting upstairs and shouting down out of an open window that she'll have to phone the office to pay, she also managed to do all of this whilst leaving her front door key in the lock! 

If it'd been a bloke doing this I'd have just let myself in and walked off with his telly but as I was dealing with what could loosely be termed a female I had to try another tactic. 

As her front door didn't have a Yale type lock being fitted with one of those either locked or unlocked types, I decided in the interests of her own home security I'd lock her in and launch the key onto her porch roof. I left a message with the operator to tell her where the key is when she doubtlessly remembers that paying for her taxi is something that slipped her mind and she phones up to pay by card.
 

Does it work well enough to make it to the nearest WBAC?

Just after someone tagged me in this post my MG6 decided to develop a similar fault.

I first noticed that the indicators and hazards along with the central locking wouldn't work. It was only when I was driving to a place of safety and got stuck behind a white van I noticed the reflection of the hazard lights on the back of the van. Thinking that this might be game over for my MG6 I decided that if this fault includes the central locking I might as well hop out and use the fob to lock and unlock it. To my surprise this worked and normal service was restored.

5 minutes ago, RoverFolkUs said:

Beware - unsolicited ford ramble ..

In my opinion the MK3 Mondeo got left behind, it seems very similar to the MK1 Focus (which doesn't come as much of a surprise...) and they didn't make much in the way of improvements or modernisation to the Mondeo as they brought out the MK2 Focus. They kept an elderly design that was intended to coincide the MK1 Focus for way too long (2007!?) and abandoned it and moved onto the MK4. Had they done a MK3.5 Mondeo to modernise it a bit (they did a great job with the MK2.5 Focus, revamping it for a couple of years before launching the MK3 Focus)

I think the MK2 Mondeo was probably too capable to justify throwing away so a lot of taxi firms kept them going until the MK4 came along. I know that a couple of my local ones did, I remember them running a few P11 Primeras and MK2 Mondeos into the early 2010s. Presumably they phased them out as they died and sequentially replaced them all with MK4's 

The Mk3 was more of a revolution than an evolution which scared us off at the time.