Continental chod collection capers - tell us your tale

[John F]

Inspired by the Dacia thread... tell us your story.

 

I'd driven over to a German beer festival in the late '90s with a lass called Sophie, in her car (a 1988 Polo Fox 1.1, iirc). We ended up having a blazing row for some reason, and I basically sent her home. I stayed on an extra week, wondering how I was going to get myself home with the crates of beer I'd already bought, before me & all the alcohol I'd drunk at the time hit on the idea of buying a car.

 

Couple of things you need to know, if you don't already. Some of these things may no longer apply, but they did at the time.

 

- The German MoT (TÃœV) lasts 2 years.

- Vehicles are insured in Germany, not drivers. And if a vehicle is registered, it's insured.

- Many Germans can be a bit snobby about old stuff, often preferring newer & shinier consumer goods
- It actually costs money to scrap a car in Germany, so people will sell off old and/or knackered cars quite cheaply when their TÃœV is about to run out

- In Germany, you have to transfer motor vehicle ownership in person at a special office called the Verkehrsamt which is open Mon - Fri.

 

Plan was, therefore, to buy the most interesting (i.e. fastest / cheapest) thing I could find in the free ads paper on a Friday afternoon... that way I was technically covered on the previous owner's registration and therefore insurance, since the earliest I could change over ownership would be Monday morning.

 

Enter a chocolate brown 1979 Audi 80 1.6 Saloon, manual, with no radio and a borked front wheel bearing, 6 months' TÃœV remaining, advertised for DM 100,- (£40). I'd only just arrived to inspect this paragon of Teutonic engineering, and had barely opened my mouth to say anything at all, when the lady seller told me that she wouldn't allow me to beat her down to less than DM 50,- on price... OK then...I'd have paid the full DM 100,- tbh, but if you insist...

 

The car was pretty good apart from the wheel bearing, to be honest. Not a scrap of rust on it, tyres were fairly good, everything worked. I had to do a roadside wheel bearing swap to get the Audi fit for action, this resulted in one loose track rod end (but a spot of weld from a mate's MIG ensured that it wouldn't unthread en route).

 

The trip home was eventful... at bang-on 70 mph a combination of slightly unbalanced wheels and the loose track rod would fire the car into the adjacent lane without warning, a state of affairs I corrected by driving everywhere at 110 mph. Then the driver's side wiper flopped uselessly over the side of the car in a torrential downpour, meaning I had to drive whilst looking out of the passenger side of the windscreen, this was remedied by borrowing a spanner from a helpfully-disposed yet entirely monoglot Dutchman at a truck stop ("Heeft U een tien-millimeter werktuig, menheer?").

 

That Audi was an ace car. I sold it to a scrapper's for £35 over a year later, and still miss it.

[castros_bro]

I was in Germany where plagerism is rife and

 

- The German MoT (TÃœV) lasts 2 years.

- Vehicles are insured in Germany, not drivers. And if a vehicle is registered, it's insured.

- Many Germans can be a bit snobby about old stuff, often preferring newer & shinier consumer goods
- It actually costs money to scrap a car in Germany, so people will sell off old and/or knackered cars quite cheaply when their TÃœV is about to run out

- In Germany, you have to transfer motor vehicle ownership in person at a special office called the Verkehrsamt which is open Mon - Fri.

 

French Boss said (sorry about the Frog/German accent) go to field near Sailsbury and fix their broken British Exponggillators.

 

200 of your best Euros later I proceeded westwards inna Audi 100 (raise you by Audi20) complete with the registration plates  and paperwork of the previous owner and a 7 day grace period.   A week and many Exponggillator repairs later the Audi 100 goes to a scrappy for £200, the car plates go with me back East.