Shite when it was just shit.

[warren t claim]

Nowadays we lust over Tagoras, FSOs, Ladas and various obscure French tat you just don't see on the road anymore so I was wondering....

 

Did you own any of the above (or similar) when they were just £250 bangers and what was the ownership experience like? Were you happy to do epic journeys in them? Were they cheap to run? Were they reliable? Were you laughed at for driving a Yugo instead of owning a owning a Sierra or Maestro?

 

The sad thing is that I'm a bit shallow and would never of dreamt of owning something like that and I fear I may of missed out!

[Mash]

We didn't have a car when I was a kid but when we moved house in 1989 there was a bit of cash left over so my dad went looking for a cheap runabout. He came back with a 13-year old Allegro in baby-poo green. I was not respected at school.....!

 

To be fair it had only done 37000 miles and was a damn good car over the 5 years we had it. It was still regarded as SHIT by all who came in contact with it however.

 

I loved it of course and that is why I am here now......

[Split_Pin]

My mate got an F-reg FSO for £10 in 1994.

 

All I remember about it was that it was rusty, shit, but went like buggery and was super for doing donuts. You could even get it into 2nd gear. After he blew it up he boshed a 5th wheel in the back and weighed it in.

 

I'd have one now though.

[Felly Magic]

Mum had a brand new Riva 1200L in 1986 (Astral blue, C508EWW), which brought on much ridicule. I liked it though.

[cort16]

I remember going to an auction with my dad when I was a nipper and seeing an FSO being pushed through and all the paint was flaking off with rust underneath.

Christ knows what had happened to it. It made £40 I think.

[eddyramrod]

Nowadays we lust over Tagoras, FSOs, Ladas and various obscure French tat you just don't see on the road anymore so I was wondering....

 

Did you own any of the above (or similar) when they were just £250 bangers and what was the ownership experience like? Were you happy to do epic journeys in them? Were they cheap to run? Were they reliable? Were you laughed at for driving a Yugo instead of owning a owning a Sierra or Maestro?

 

YES!

Starting at the top! Maestro (OK, the MG version, but still a Maestro...), emergency buy in June 2003, cost a whole 280. I'd have another tonight.

Maxi, in about April/May of 1986, cost me 90 plus a knackered old Datsun. Never again!

Lovely plush 2.0 Princess, in early 1990 cost me 140; seen with one of our Lada estates, cost 55! And, er, my mum, in her late 60s, showing a leg...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh my beloved Polonez. 150 from a scrappy. Difficult to find a more comfortable seat without buying a Volvo 740!

Peugeot 304 van, which more or less replaced a Viva van in 1984. Was a whole different world for, I think, 40 quid.

Polski 125 estate, 70 of my dad's notes while I was in hospital, 1986. GR99 for after-dark activities!

Estelle was outside Chorley Auction in 1995. 90 notes. Could almost never get 3rd gear, so I just used to go 1-2-4-5.

Another of our many Ladas. Expensive, this one: 150. This one was a brilliant car, and I had a memorable cross-country drive in it one day. 1993, which was otherwise a bloody horrible year.

Expensive especially compared to this! In 1988, it cost me 40 quid and two scrappers! Heater fan never worked, I remember... I swopped it to my dad for his Dolomite 1850 (which cost him 55).

 

250 indeed, who are you, Rockefeller? I bought these because they were all I could afford, and I've always liked variety. Sometimes (see Maxi) that kicks me in the teeth, but mostly it works and I have a good time.

The communist cars got a bad press because the journos were used to much more sophisticated tackle, and in group tests tended to match them with comparably-sized cars, like Marinas (had a few of those too!), which were usually twice the price and much more modern. To me they were the only way to drive a 7 year old car, with all the attendant non-rusting, instead of a 15 year old car, which would be largely brown and frilly. They were strong and surprisingly comfy, most especially the Polonez. They all had their quirks, or issues, whatever, but I understood that at these prices I wasn't going to get a new Bentley, so I learned to live with the ones I could, and (hopefully) fix the others. Or move the car on, usually to scrap. There was quite a bit of mobility between me and my parents, you could almost say we shared cars as I drove theirs quite a lot even when they weren't going to be mine. The Lada/Dolomite swap referred to above started them on a series, which eventually meant 3 Lada 1500 estates, two Rivas including the red one above and one Polonez. I drove all of them, and owned the two Rivas either before or after the parents.

 

Laughed at? Constantly, but I learned to shrug it off and laugh at other people's depreciation figures. I didn't have any: you buy at scrap price, you can't lose.

Epic journeys? Well yes, if it's all you have, that's what you use. Mostly they coped, and as mentioned, the red Riva was the star of a high-speed drive across Cheshire one beautiful bank holiday. Yes, a Lada doing high speeds! They can, you know. My dad's Polonez took three of us to the Lakes for a week, including sightseeing. The Maestro did a very rapid motorway run to Glasgow when my stepson's submarine came back from a voyage, as did the Hyundai you've seen in another thread.

 

I love bangers.

[warren t claim]

Christ Eddie! Have you ever owned a nice car?

[eddyramrod]

[warren t claim]

GR8MPG.

[Felly Magic]

I know someone who has one of those yank barges and uses it for weddings. It has been painted pink! Urgh!

[AndyW201]

Generally I love anything by BL, Austin Rover, Rover group et al, and I always have to fight myself whenever I see an original Austin or MG Metro with an enticing BIN! (if only to save them from possible engine-rapage by Mini owning bellends.)

 

But TRM 894X, the Metro I had as a first car really was a steaming pile of molten horseshit. Didnt look too bad from a distance, panelwork was all good for a 9 year old 93,000 miler, and the 998cc powerhouse went and sounded pretty good. Within the first couple of days though, the rear cylinders and shoes were found to be completely borked and had to be replaced. One of the front subframe bolts was missing, as was the bolt in the bottom of one of the front wings (thick underseal was used to attach the wing here!), the allternator packed in after three days.

While playing silly buggers in a gravel car park, a stone went through the sill. When lifting the carpet up to check the inner sills before replacing the outer sill, I discovered most of the drivers floorpan was made of bits of Quality Street tins covered with thick underseal. So a drivers floorpan was fabricated and welded in as well.

At least it was a nice place to sit. The PO had fitted MG seats and carpets. He'd also attempted to fit MG stripes as well, but got them the wrong way round, so the stripes covered the wings and the doors, but the rear three quarters were blank. So the guy had evidently nipped down to motor world and slapped on some '16Valve' graphics to fill the space. Nice one, are there any less appropriate stickers for a 1.0 a series powered chariot???

 

After yet more bits falling off or fizzling out and finally trading it in for a mk3 Escrap 1.1 popular (and that shitter deserves a page of it's own), I saw it in a local scrapper 6 months on with a smacked front end. No less than it deserved really...

[Pete-M]

1989, swapped a £40 TEAC tape deck for this.

 

 

I wuz robbed. It had a freshly rebuilt 1.6 with new barrels and pistons (but a leaky crank oil seal), new floorpans and an ANSA exhaust. LHD, like. Proper shite. Swapped it for a CB radio, a Lada 1500 and a SONY tape deck.

 

This cost me £350 in 1996.

 

 

5.7 V8, 145 bhp, 3 speed column auto, "You just shot Marvin in the face" white vinyl interior. It was cool as fuck, actually.

[eddyramrod]

GR8MPG.

 

True, but who cares? I don't drink or smoke, have to spend my money somehow! That was my second Cadillac, and cost me three grand in June 2008. Think about that: three grand. Which would buy what, an ex-fleet diesel Astra? No contest. Anywhere I went with the Cadillac, someone wanted to know about it. This was 1962, the end of Detroit's "rocket" phase, so it really did look like something from another planet. You can't buy that in an Astra. Also: when I went to work in it, which I did as often as possible, Mrs R would watch fom the bedroom window. She knew when I'd started the engine, not just by the bass beat coming through the walls, but also because the whole car shook and twisted, especially when I applied a bit of throttle. Then she could see it jump when I put it in Drive. I loved it, and I miss it. I only sold it because we were coming here.

 

At the time, of course, I was also driving an old banger, but a bit more expensive than previously. My 1987 Volvo 740 GLE estate cost a massive 450 on ebay. Now there was a nice car! Again, an experience I would happily repeat. Average-out that purchase price and it doesn't look so bad. Most of the cheap shit above lasted mere months, not many cars got past a year. The Volvo was still going strong after more than three years, when I gave it away to come here. Were it not for the import regs and dearth of ferries, I might even have driven that bugger across Europe. It certainly would have done the trip!

[messerschmitt owner]

my dad used to run round in jags and Daimlers he bought for £100 or so until he went on to DS Citroens when we were growing up. They were considered old bangers then too.

 

One time, he told me he had been at the car auction in Glasgow and saw a PA Cresta go through. It was right down on the rear suspension (as if the suspension was going through the boot floor - a common PA trait). Went for £20 and the guy that bought it drove it out of the pothole the rear tyres were sitting in!

 

He told me too of the day in the early 70s when he and a friend went to buy a sports car. First thing they looked at was an MG TD - dad and his pal sat in it, shoulders touching and went 'nah'. Next car they looked at was a DB2/4 with a bristol engine and one titled owner - £225! Wrong engine, not original - so they walked away! Decided to go looking for an E type and wanted to buy one for £300 - but they lowest they fell was about £350 before the inevitable rise. He did buy an XK140 for £140 though and an Allard Palm Beach for £50.

[Mr Lobster]

In about 1993 / 94 I had the misfortune to work for an FSO franchise which at the time had high hopes for the then new Caro. So lucky me got to drive them a fair bit. And they really were utterly terrible. Hopeless, vague steering, comedy squeaking from everything - seats especially, economical Peugeot diesel with a gearchange requiring superhuman stengths to change betwixt gears and probably the most hopeless, unpleasant thing I have ever driven.

 

Nasty. A short life beckoned for the few sold before a date with the bridge.

[CIH]

My dad started driving probably in the mid 80s, starting with a Dyanne and then several Estelles, Favorites and so on. I had no end of it in school. His best friend had a Carina E- I was so jealous! He drives modern Skoda VAGina stuff now.

 

I had a £150 Bluebird a couple of years ago and it was wicked.

[eddyramrod]

BTW Felly: My Cadillac had once been pink, according to the old V5 copies that came with it. It had also been blue, but fortunately someone had the sense to return it to its original Sage Green metallic before I found it on ebay.

[Felly Magic]

Eddy, to make matters worse, Greg & Alex Lawson who own the firm often dress up as Elvis to do weddings in it, along with their other drivers they have. They are both fat bastards, so do look the part for Elvis in his later years. The thing is, they have a brilliant fleet of pre war Rollers, and other oldie stuff, along with a very early REO hearse, plus a fairly large fleet of buses & coaches dating from the 40s & 50s.

 

http://www.yesteryearcars.co.uk/

 

That's their firm.

[eddyramrod]

Bloody hell, that's even the same year! Hmm, maybe when we get back to UK I should be looking for wedding work...

[Fat_Pirate]

I worked at a Citroen dealer in the mid-eighties and was required to collect/deliver lots of stuff I just didn't appreciate at the time. I wanted to drive sporty Fords and BMWs. but all I was getting was early model CX and GS' with their weird C-Matic nonsense and crazy cyclops speedos. I turned down many opportunities to buy various trade-ins for buttons; GS X2, early GS estate, even a late DS (EFI version). I'd love any of those nowadays, maybe even a Visa (I cultivated a very special hatred for those little cars). I was a typical idiot arrogant arsehole teenager, unfortunately.

[eddyramrod]

Most of us were, I think. I probably was in the late 70s. Having to tone your dreams down to fit with the free A40 that's all you can afford soon sorts you out! I followed it with a 15 quid Mini and an Anglia that cost all of 75!

[retrogeezer]

I had plenty of 'shit' between 95 and 2001, other than having my Fiesta Supersport from 93 (that I still have)

 

Starting with an 84 Renault 9 GTL that was £300 1995 that I had for about 6 months.

 

Then an 83 Nissan Sunny at the end of 95 which was expensive at £1100 quid but only had 23,000 on the clock. It still got the infamous hgf though.

 

Sometime in 96 I sold the sunny and bought an 83 Fiesta 1100 Ghia.

 

97 saw me with an 88 Escort 1.8 GL diesel for £600 which was written off after only a few months ownership.

 

Then I bought an 85 C plate Mk3 Escort Ghia which I had until 2001.

 

Had a few years off until 2006 when I bought a 94 Audi 80 Avant.....the rest of the cars you know about.

[Rod/b]

My missus and her mates acquired a Lada Riva estate for the sum of 1 x bottle of Pimms in 2005, to take to Italy on a banger rally. It was possibly the most hateful thing i've ever driven, and probably one of the few cars scrapped at the end of a banger run that should really have been scrapped way before the start.

 

The rust in it was something to behold, especially in the front wings which , it turned out, from the front edges to about 1 foot back were made entirely of 1mm thick rust and paint, something that was confirmed when someone kicked the rust out on the last evening of the rally. Gaffer tape and cardboard was utilised....

 

The engine was gutless to the point they got overtaken by a cyclist going up one of the Alpine passes, and the steering box had more play than the collected works of Shakespeare. The heater valve was seized open so the heater was always on. The stereo didn't work, and had one of those electric, stick-behind-the-rear-view-mirror aerials wired straight to the battery so it drained it.

 

Still, it made it to Naples, slowly, and had fewer issues getting there than my old Camry did that year...

[dollywobbler]

I can barely remember my dad's first car, a knackered Mk1 Escort estate that would have been about 11 years old when my penniless father had it. My only abiding memory is of my dad introducing me to the word 'shit' as he battled with the rear lamp lens screws to change a bulb. Sadly for him, I went into the house and asked mum why daddy was saying 'sheet' when working on the car...

 

We had a few years with no car at all, but then my dad got a Hillman Hunter - in that lovely Topaz metallic. This would have been around 1984 I think, so it was nine years old - but very much an old banger. The wings were rotten, the wipers squeaked all the time (very irritating!) but it did get us places, and my love of old cars was driven by the fact that it had Overdrive! None of my chums had parents who owned a car with overdrive (though one girlfriend's dad did own a bright yellow Citroen GS estate. Thus both my love of quirky Citroens and brunettes started at a very young age!).

 

I would have had a terrible childhood, especially when my parents couldn't afford a car at all. Thankfully, an Aunt had a shambolic Morris Minor convertible. It was legendarily crap, with a leaky hood, missing doorcards and that classic 'grey primer' look where restoration work had sort of been started. I'd love to have a Minor in that condition today. They're all shiny these days.

 

The Minor eventually got too rotten and was shoved in a garage (where I'd sit and pretend to drive it for hours!). My aunt replaced the Minor with an Oxford Series VI traveller. This must have been about 1986, so the car was 20 years old. Farinas definitely were not classic fodder back then! It had ill-fitting glassfibre front wings, and Halfords mirrors crudely screwed into the doors. I was gutted as it did start off with steel front wings and wing-mounted mirrors. We'd regularly trundle down from Birmingham to Devon and the Isle of Wight in the Oxford for family holidays. It only let us down once when the radiator went in a very big cloud of steam. Somehow, it still managed to limp down to Devon (with regular filling!) where a day of the holiday was taken up with fitting a new rad. I loved it!

 

The Minor and Oxford went to the same buyer in the late 1990s. The Minor has been beautifully restored to absolute concours condition (lovely, but not the Minor I remember!) while I imagine the Oxford became bean tins not long after.

[quicksilver]

My dad had a thing for Chrysler/Talbots in the 80s, starting with a Chrysler Alpine that was cheap because the reg was HVV13T and superstitious people wouldn't buy it. It was followed by a Horizon and then the first car I remember, a gold Talbot Alpine Rapier. He later had three of the original shape Mitsubishi Spacewagons including a former Autocar long-term test car that was allegedly the first one in the country. In between the second and third Spacewagons he had a Peugeot 305 estate that was sold on to a family friend, and the last Spacewagon (H reg) lasted into the 21st century before getting traded in for his current Zafira.

[Volksy]

My old man had a quirky taste in cars, which I think has led to my shite taste. He had a bright yellow Sunbeam Rapier, which he traded in for a brand new Mazda 818 when I was born, this got written off and he lost loads on the insurance claim so was followed by a very rusty Citroen GS X2, he replaced this with an Alfa Giulietta, which to this day was his favorite car, despite crunchy gears, rampant rot, and the faint smell of vomit caused by my brother and I on a long trans-europe adventure.

My Mum had a Fiat 500, which got scrapped after clinging on to a MOT for a couple of years with masses of welding, in the end our family's tame welder told them there was nothing to weld to.. Never seen my Mum attached to a car, but she cried when this one went. It was replaced by a beige Mini City, which she hated - and would never start in the damp. She then splashed out on a two year old Fiat 127 Sport, which made her smile again, but my old man wrote it off one winter in a head on crash with an Austin 1100. Once the insurance paid up, she replaced it with a new Panda 45, which for some reason ate clutch cables, but being a small Fiat still won her favour.

[RobT]

When I were a kid in the late 1970s the shittest family car we had was a mk1 Escort van Dad bought off his employer. No door handle on the back so you had to open it with a screwdriver, and old sofa cushions in the back for us all to sit and roll around in! Weekend trips involved coasting it down hills to save fuel and Dad nursing his last roll-up ciggie till he got paid Then in the 80s we went up in the world with a company Renault 18 GTL estate, so us kids finally had somewhere to sit. That one got rear ended unfortunately a few years later and was never the same.

 

My first car in 1991 was a 1973 Mini and looked nice on the outside (it had been resprayed metallic blue with a Talbot/Simca colour IIRC) but these days you’d call it a rolling project. Needed a replacement engine, rear sub-frame, welding on floors and sills and numerous other bits. I was young and easily impressed by shiny bodywork, but I learnt a lot from working on the old thing so don’t regret it. I had it 9 years before finally getting tired of all those damp winter starts.

[cort16]

I had a lot of 80's shite when I was younger BX GT, Volvo 360 GLS, 1.3 Lancia Delta but nothing eastern european.

 

My Dad was a painter and panel beater in the 80's and 90's and we went through loads of Escorts and Cortinas he'd buy from the auction and tart up as they always sold but nothing really shit.

 

Back in the 80's the guy he worked for was an "entrepreneur" and bought a whole load of mega bogo Mk 3 Escorts for no money. They might have been NHS cars but they where really shite 1.1 jobs in blue with Vinyl seats. He then bought a bunch of the crappiest looking plastic body kits for them you've ever seen, which they fitted to the cars and re-sprayed a bunch of them white with red stripes (it was the 80's). He stuck them out on the lot and couldn't sell them fast enough.

He pulled the same trick a few years later with a load of ropey ex postal Mk 4 Escort Vans, which he had resprayed various metallic colours.

[HMC]

My dad resorted to a Jewish racing yellow toyota space cruiser (C804CVR) when family planning when out of the window and he ended up with 4 kids. I wanted him to get a similarly aged cx famillliale but that never happened. The 'cruiser had a red velour interior (gr8 4 kids with travel sickness!!) althought only 7/8 years old it dissolved in the toxic northern rain pretty fast! Kids at school thought it cool/ interesting as MPVs were relatively uncommon. I remember being impressed it had 2 sunroofs, and was mid engined/ rear wheel drive! Dad eventually flogged it to a manchester minicab firm and I'm suprised to see it lasted untill 2007!

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

In 1993, I took a Yugo 45 (Fiat 128 with a snatchback) in a part ex for a very tidy X reg Alfasud 1.5 Super. I allowed £40 for it, an A reg thing in brown. I took it for an MOT and it failed on a leaky rear shock -and that's a right bastard of a job on these iirc. So I powerwashed it, took it back and it pased. Then it displayed a very nasty intermittent gearbox noise and would occasionally lose drive. I I took it to Big Mikes in Darlington, took my £100 and ran.

 

I had various Mark 4 and 5 Cortinas in the late eighties, lots of Alfas and BMW's before and after that. In 1986, I bought a metallic green R reg 728 for £900. I was a serious executive, and they were still just about current. ULF401R was the reg.