Search the Community

Hello dear Autoshitists(?)! I'm Schaefft, and as you can tell by the easily pronounceable name, I am not originally from the UK, but Germany! However, I've been living in the North East for almost 5 years now, and after first experiencing the wonders of the UK's used car market by buying an E38 7-series BMW for an absolutely ridiculous 500 quid, things have never been the same. I'm hoping to find like-minded people here (or maybe even in the Newcastle area?) who will help me on my way to Autoshite Valhalla, or at least can point me into the right directions to keep my shite on the road. As you can tell by the thread's title, my preferences are usually pointing me towards the larger end of the car spectrum, I'm generally interested in pretty much anything from the last 35 years though (with many exceptions for cars older than that). Here's what I currently own (I hope these are worthy of being posted here?), each of these cars has a story worth telling, for now I'll leave it at a brief description: My current daily driver is a manual 1996 E39 528i, ~170k miles, tons spent on it, still needs tons spent on it. Imo one of the best BMWs, and certainly one of the best used car bargains today. I love it! Next up is what is supposed to be my car for the summer, a 1995 Lincoln Mark VIII LSC (probably the only pre-fl LSC in the country/most of Europe) that I found in Sheffield (while looking at a totally different Lincoln Mark VIII lol) where it was "stored" on the driveway of an older gentlemen and US-car fan who had imported it from Florida in '07. Also had tons of work done on it, also still needs tons of work. Currently waiting for OEM front airride shocks to arrive, which are made from unobtanium and next to impossible to source anywhere, incl. the US. Fun times. Next we have a 1995 Oldsmobile Aurora which must absolutely be the only one in the country. Bought sight unseen on ebay (as you do) from a bigger autoshite "enthusiast" than probably most of us (I counted at least 15 US imports on Streetview parked on multiple driveways, the garden and street). Needs a lot of work including what I hope is the fuel pump. Canada spec model, apparently imported in 1997 by someone from the Canadian Airforce or something. Not driven for at least 15 years, but as the Lincoln, always been a dream car of mine, hence the instant purchase. Parts will hopefully be here soon. Next is what is supposed to be my car for the winter months. I needed something nice that wouldn't make me worry about rust anymore, yet still be desirable enough to justifying one of my valuable car spaces (makes sense right?). Since I didn't really wanna spent much more than about a grand on the initial car purchase, the 4.2l D2 A8 (benefit of Quattro) or Jag X350 XJ were my only real options. Until this 2002 Audi S8 (that later turned out to be a Final Edition S8, one of the last UK market D2 S8) showed up on Gumtree for an extremely reasonable price literally just around the corner. I don't wanna leave it running for too long (probably needs an oil change badly, also theres a power steering fluid leak and an unknown liquid in there as replacement, making the power steering pump SCREAM), I haven't started any diagnostics yet. Has the obligatory HURR-V8-NOISESESYEEEAAAHH custom exhaust, which will probably get replaced by a stock one soonish. And then there's the newest edition to the fleet, a 1991 Opel Senator CD 3.0 24V (with the digital dash!). I bought this car in Munich a few weeks ago (always liked Senator Bs and Omega As) after a friend took it for a test drive. As you can imagine, after I actually bought the car issues started popping up wherever you looked. I took it on 3-day trip through the Alps where it decided to blow a coolant hose and puke all its content all over the hotel parking lot somewhere in Italy, its currently awaiting its rescue by the ADAC who will tow it back to Germany in 2 weeks or so (they'll never make money of my membership hah!). Each of these cars has been on my must-have list for a long time, and I do not plan to part with any of them, which slowly becomes a problem considering I neither have a garage, nor a driveway lol. I'm sure joining the Autoshit forums totally won't make matters worse. There are quite a few other cars on that list that will be extremely hard to resist as well, should they show up at a reasonable price (which is very likely, damn you UK car market!). But we'll see how it goes, I think this post is long enough now.