Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Theres a maroon Horizon Diesel down the road from me, belongs to a mental old boy who seems to buy up nice cars then lets them rot at the rodaside for a few months before moving them into his field, never to be seen again. It was mint when he got it about 18 months ago. 2 very nice Morris Minor vans have had 'the treatment' in thw last year or so too. Recently he's picked up a nice B-reg Volvo 240 saloon which is just festering away steadily in the usual spot.

[quicksilver]

4 hours ago, Richard_FM said:

In fairness it was the XUD engine which was the smoothest diesel around in the early 1980s.

One turned up as a barnfind a few years ago & is hopefully in good hands.

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Horizon was the first car to be fitted with the XUD.

[Richard_FM]

54 minutes ago, quicksilver said:

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Horizon was the first car to be fitted with the XUD.

Yes I believe so

[Talbot]

7 hours ago, JimH said:

I cannot imagine who drove a Horizon and thought to themselves "You know what? This would be great if only it were even more clattery"

I had three Diesel Talbot Horizons, and several more petrol ones.  I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the XUD engine-d cars were smoother on the road than the simca engine-d ones.  Idle was a bit more clattery, as they hadn't sorted out how to mount an XUD properly yet, but on the move it was a fabulous car.  I put about 50k miles on one in around 18 months driving up and back to Dundee in the mid-90's.

For a while I harboured silly ideas like putting an 1.9TD engine in one.  Would have made it even better as a car, but TD engines were still £fucking loads when I had those ideas.

1 hour ago, quicksilver said:

I'm sure I read somewhere that the Horizon was the first car to be fitted with the XUD.

It was.  Only by a few months, but it was definitely first.  It also had a completely unique engine mount on the engine side which was swiftly changed for when the engine went into later cars.  The Visa was the first car to have it in the Citroen range, with PSA using the XUD7 in the Visa and the XUD9 in the Horizon.

Having a car that is so notorious for galloping rot with such a long-lived engine as an XUD is why I can weld.

[Talbot]

3 hours ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

Theres a maroon Horizon Diesel down the road from me, belongs to a mental old boy who seems to buy up nice cars then lets them rot at the rodaside for a few months before moving them into his field, never to be seen again.

Shit.  Don't tell me things like that.  There are no more than about three Horizon Diesels left in the UK and I stupidly have a hankering for another.  I am absolutely and completely unable to buy anything more, but it would be nice to know that something as astonishingly rare as a the first car ever to receive the XUD was actually being looked after rather than just deteriorating at the roadside.

If it's the one I think it is, it sold on eBay about 18-24 months ago.  Maroon and on a B-plate, for about £800, which is cheap for a Horizon now.  Despite having all the desirability of damp crisps, they are quite an endangered species and deserve to be preserved.

Does said old-boy entertain door-knockers for his cars I wonder?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yes thats the one. I dont know of he entertains door knockwrs but he must get a few as he always has shite lying about on the roadside.

Heres the Horizon on streetview!!!! He's got it parked on his field now though.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.1150204,-1.3714416,3a,75y,279.98h,70.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-gAEYBEwtLJEKsHTvUWzig!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[Dick Cheeseburger]

7 minutes ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

Yes thats the one. I dont know of he entertains door knockwrs but he must get a few as he always has shite lying about on the roadside.

Heres the Horizon on streetview!!!! He's got it parked on his field now though.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.1150204,-1.3714416,3a,75y,279.98h,70.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s-gAEYBEwtLJEKsHTvUWzig!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

That Horizon so deserves a chance at life. Someone buy it from him, please. 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Got to be honest i wouldnt hold your breath. The guy acquired 2 very smart green morris minor vans last year, both looked shiny like theyd not long been restored. Theyre not cheap items right? Both are now on the same spot of damp ground where theyve sat for the last 6 months easily. He's got a Minor pick up festering under a tarp wedged between 2 trees that looked half decent when I moved here, it must be seriously manky now. I'm gonna hazard a guess that he's not a logical kind of dude.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

Whilst I tire of the facebook mindset whereby anyone with something festering in their drive is seen as a 'selfish twat' (personally, I normally have something festering in the drive, as do many of us on here, and would never sell to a random door knocker) the owner of the Horizon and the aforementioned Moggie vans clearly is a selfish twat. 

[Timewaster]

10 hours ago, JimH said:

In a post about gearboxes @Talbot said...

I never knew this car existed. I cannot imagine who drove a Horizon and thought to themselves "You know what? This would be great if only it were even more clattery"

They thought it would be quieter!

[Talbot]

26 minutes ago, Timewaster said:

They thought it would be quieter!

It was.

[Lord Sterling]

PGO Cevennes; a car that looks like the love child of a Porsche 365 and a Daihatsu Copen.

Just as expensive but looks like a kit car and from a manufacturer very few people, if anyone has ever heard of.

[brownnova]

Just seen this pic of the FSO Polonez Cargo on FB... new one on me

So I had a little google.... 

Wow!!! 
 

 

Would. 

[1duck]

11 hours ago, Dick Van Diesel said:

Whilst I tire of the facebook mindset whereby anyone with something festering in their drive is seen as a 'selfish twat' (personally, I normally have something festering in the drive, as do many of us on here, and would never sell to a random door knocker) the owner of the Horizon and the aforementioned Moggie vans clearly is a selfish twat. 

You say that but moggy vans will probably follow minis up to stupid cash, at which point he can post the vins to the new owner and sweep the rest into the bin for profits.

 

The guy is clearly just a very canny business man! ?

[bobdisk]

22 hours ago, JimH said:

In a post about gearboxes @Talbot said...

I never knew this car existed. I cannot imagine who drove a Horizon and thought to themselves "You know what? This would be great if only it were even more clattery"

I had one of those in the 1980s, petrol of course. It still rattled like Mums sewing machine!

[brownnova]

This popped up on my Instagram today too... an electric Yugo from 1991!! 

Now that’s an EV I’d be more than happy with! 

[brownnova]

And now....

 

On the same theme as the Polonez Cargo these 205 van type something... 

Slightly different to one another, but variations on a theme... 

[myglaren]

This just popped up on YouTube.

 

Apologies for the waffle.

[STUNO]

This shows the Timbs Special "as found" at about 1 minute

 

[jon.k]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:06 PM, Talbot said:

Having a car that is so notorious for galloping rot with such a long-lived engine as an XUD is why I can weld.

And leaving Peugeot and Citroen owners like me confused when they open the Haynes xud manual to find lots of the main pictures are of some kind of talbot no one’s ever seen.

[bunglebus]

On 3/3/2020 at 8:01 PM, bunglebus said:

Saw one of these in France today. Most exciting!

 

20 hours ago, brownnova said:

And now....

 

Didn't spot any of the modified hatchback ones but there were a few (presumably) factory ones in rural France

[Spottedlaurel]

I've seen a handful of them over the years, but they're certainly not common:

Peugeot 205 XAD by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Peugeot 205 XAD by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Neither is the 205F van for that matter.

When I was looking for them I remembered this Polo oddity, hidden behind the Mercedes:

Mercedes SEC W126 by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Apparently a Transfer model made by Gruau: https://petrolblog.com/2015/07/vantastique-volkswagen-polo-transfer/

Looks like they also did a Fiesta conversion, but I don't recall ever seeing one of them:

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:06 PM, Talbot said:

I had three Diesel Talbot Horizons, and several more petrol ones.  I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the XUD engine-d cars were smoother on the road than the simca engine-d ones.....Having a car that is so notorious for galloping rot with such a long-lived engine as an XUD is why I can weld.

Coincidentally I just stuck a photo of my dad's Horizon on another thread - he lived in a seaside village and that car was looking poor by the time of it's first MoT. There were a couple of Simcas in the area that were also rotten and, in the dark, they all sounded the same. 

Only thing I recall on the Horizon which I only drove a handful of times was that the brakes seemed incredibly hard to feather as they snatched - kind of all or nothing.

He traded that in against a Skoda Rapide (which wasn't).

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

Ah OK - reason I cam to this thread.  Vauxhall Monaro?

Reading the 'ask a Shiter' discussion on Sierras and there's a link to carcavesscotland.co.uk which (of course) I had to visit. There's a £10K Vauxhall Movano on there. Wow! There's a pricey van methinks.

Nope - looks like I'm a troglodyte, Murano - it's a thing. Even got a discussion on the forum about it. I guess I'd stopped reading car magazines by the time that one reached the UK (and I was driving a star shite car - Mitsubishi Spacewagon, 2.0l petrol - so not in the Murano league - and at £10,750 I'm still not)

 

[Talbot]

38 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Only thing I recall on the Horizon which I only drove a handful of times was that the brakes seemed incredibly hard to feather as they snatched - kind of all or nothing.

Horizons were actually remarkably high mechanical specification cars.  They had double-wishbone front suspension, independent trailing arm rear suspension,  torsion bar front springing and two-piston fixed front brake calipers on fairly large discs.  The brakes, as you mention, were astonishingly powerful for such a humdrum car and you had to be a bit careful with them.

As a Horizon was the first vehicle I really worked on, I was genuinely surprised to see that so many other cars have a "lesser" specification when it comes to braking and suspension.

[chaseracer]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:24 AM, brownnova said:

And now....

 

On the same theme as the Polonez Cargo these 205 van type something... 

Slightly different to one another, but variations on a theme... 

Top one's by Durisotti, t'other is the 'factory' version by Gruau.  I looked out the brochure just now, so that's work fecked for a while...!

[Richard_FM]

Those vans remind me of those conversions for wheelchairs that seemed to be common in the 1980s.  

[bunglebus]

 

Found images of MK2-5 wearing them!

 

[bunglebus]

 

[twosmoke300]

On 5/26/2020 at 12:01 AM, jon.k said:

And leaving Peugeot and Citroen owners like me confused when they open the Haynes xud manual to find lots of the main pictures are of some kind of talbot no one’s ever seen.

The bx manual tells you to remove the battery tray with 3 bolts iirc. Which would be fine and dandy if it wasn’t welded in on production cars.