How do you feel when you see your old car?

[gricer]

My Beetle is ATA 193L [/pointless comment]

 

 

Pointless, but brought a smile to my face.

 

Would seriously love to find that Fiat alive. First car I ever drove, when I was 13.

[skoda_fan]

I agree it seems very weird seeing a car you used to own, like it's still yours and you have every right to drive off in it. Doesn't happen very often, probably just as well. As others have said, I usually end up finding the car has been scrapped soon after I sold it, which is always sad. It's also disappointing to buy a car back years later. I did this once and it didn't feel like the same car.

[trigger]

I saw my old Mondeo ST24 that i sold 3 years ago recently, It drove past me in Colchester and still looked as tidy as the day i sold it which pleased me as it was a bloody nice car.

 

I also saw my old Peugeot 306 Meridian in Felixstowe about 3 years after i sold that as well and it looked no different.

[AnthonyG]

Two of the cars I owned, a Mercedes 190 2.6 auto and (other end of the spectrum) a purple Nissan Micra 1.0 are both listed as exported so are presumably running around Ghana or somewhere. My aunt and her partner run two Mk2 Mondeos, both previously owned by me, this means including the Daihatsu Fourtrack and the 64 Fordson Super Dexta included, all their vehicles are ex-me or my dad!

 

A Hillman Avenger I owned for a long time has been on SORN for a while, I wouldn't mind having it back if it was still OK. An Austin 1100 I gave away in 2003 was on Ebay in 2008, although the SORNs hadn't been kept up. A 1978 Cortina I sold in 1995 to a friend of my dad gave it to his son, who got a good number of years out of it. It then went back to his dad (my dads mate), where I saw it looking pretty sorry for itself, about 5 years again. My dad's mate had started 'restoring' it by the timeless giffer method of filling the obvious holes with filler, so I wasn't really surprised to hear it had gone to scrap soon afterwards.

 

The only car I saw regularly on the road after I owned it, a Rover 820, which was sold by a local garage to a giffer owner, he got five years use out of it according to DVLA. A '92 Mazda 626 owned by my Mum, which was pretty knackered when we moved it on in 2004, was owned locally and sat in the owners' back field alongside other dead chod (this happens a lot in West Wales) for a few years but has gone now.

 

Oh, and I saw the corpse of my mother's Toyota Carina Executive (F106 GFH) on a scrap lorry bound for Crosshands Metals in 2006. It had lasted 18 years which I thought was a pretty good innings really, my parents saw it in a local town for many years after selling in 1998.

 

I prefer to think of cars having a good long lifetime rather than lasting for ever, which I think its unrealistic for 99.5% of the vehicles out there. I think if I had spent a lot of time / money on restoration of a old car, and really put my heart into it, I probably would be very reluctant to sell.

[eddyramrod]

Most of the cars I've owned have gone to scrap. I have sold a couple of cars in recent years that I would have loved to have back, and been offered them, at suitable prices too! Sadly, I simply didn't have the cash at the time; both times. Bizarrely, one car I saw frequently after I sold it was a car I just totally failed to get on with: my 1987 BMW 525e. I sold it to my mate, who loved it and bulled it up to the stars; after a year or so he sold it on and the new owner kept up Steve's regime. AFAIK he still has it. I even saw it at shows! Over here, I know the current owners of the two cars I've used and moved on: X1/9 went to a club member from Limassol so we haven't seen it since, and my Capri went to one of Andreas's sons who keeps it parked up in his driveway. I see it occasionally in passing, but never on the road, which makes me a little sad.

The one that makes me really sad is my 1978 Daimler Sovereign.

I bought it in my first week of BMW ownership, almost on a whim, and spent a fair amount getting it sorted for MoT. I used my favoured local garage for this as I knew Ken was a bit of a Jag nut himself. I enjoyed it about for 9 months or so then a Buick intervened and much as I would have liked to keep both, the Daimler had to go. Ken sent me one of his customers who bought it for what I thought was a fair price, considering we both knew it needed more work. After a few weeks it landed in Ken's yard... where it sat for at least two years. Ken wanted the space back; I believe the car was scrapped. That upset me.