The roughest car I ever bought

[cros]

Not my best buy...

[steve_earwig]

Is Toyland selling off the estate of the late Noddy?

[HillmanImp]

What is it? If its pre 1960, you can drive it as it is these days........*

 

 

*as long as you are not pulled over. I suppose the only difference is you will not be done for failing to produce an MOT just driving an unsafe car.

[Asimo]

 

This Fiat 127: I was blinded by the N plate (it should have been on a K). Rotten as a pear and completely worn out.

 

In that amazing Fiat way it still went and steered really well despite being utterly fucked.

 

£350 to virtually £zero in less time than it took me to earn £350.

[xtriple]

Bought a Saab 99 off a very dodgy mate for £50, it was hanging! Funnily it looked great on the top - no rust or dents and the paint was all one colour (white/cream) and the interior was...okay. So I bought it....

 

No boot floor, just carpet, not much floor in the car either if you pushed on the mats, no second gear, brakes pulled violently to the left (no right caliper but I did acquire the molegrips that were clamping the flexi) passenger door fell off the first time it was opened....

 

It was a s rotten as a pear everywhere, but the body panels were fine! I sold it for a profit... got a ton for it as a 'doner vehicle'!

[hairnet]

prefect wheels on the (they say) noddy car??

 

make it run fix the brakes clearcoat - run round like aloon grinning

 

ps rough? youve met billy right??

[twosmoke300]

I think the saab 900 I took to SF14 has to be one of the worst cosmetically

[barefoot]

In 85 I bought a 72 beetle to run over the winter. £95 inc four months t&t, so ready to use, net cost about 60 quid.

Every fucking panel dented, smelled like someone had died in it.

There as no accelerator pedal, just the roller that the pedal was supposed to move forwards. Controlling the bastard was an aquired art, it had cross plies on the front and radials on the back. I was working as an agent for the Pru at the time and my round was never, ever cleared of snow in the winter and this little manky old car never bogged down, never failed to start and was even sold for £55 with a days t&t to a bloke who wanted the engine.

Those were the days, a useable, running13 year old car with a ticket for £60!

I'm going to have to lie down a bit now.

[Bren]

£300 mk 1 escort in 1991.

 

It was a 1300e but the twin choke carb was missing and was as rusty as you can imagine - moved on to a cousin who cremated it while welding.

[blakey79]

For me it would have to be a Mondeo Ghia, I needed a car there and then,after scanning auto trader this was the only car locally and within budget.

 

Problems

Rust,rust,rust, the car had been involved in such a large shunt which in my haste explained for the rattle canned rear door,and misaligned panels,when I went to clean it and started to give it a through clean but upon looking at the state of the bottom of the doors,decided to cut my losses and start again.

 

Every known mistake made

 

Purchased in haste

Purchased from a dealer

Purchased late evening

 

I must have been dazzled by the wood effect dash !

[AlabamaShrimp]

My XR2 at about £350ish from ebay ages ago. I wanted one so bad I bought the second one I saw. Lucky to get it home as the water pump was well and truly knackered.

 

As it's had 13 owners nearly everything was knackered. Had the engine messed with then paid alot for some t at to rip me off in bodywork and still the thing over heated and I'm sure it's had a giant whack on the arse. Looks good from the outside thought!

 

Sat in the garage waiting for the day I start all over again

[Junkman]

 

And this is the car today:

 

[vulgalour]

£250 F reg Sierra Sapphire from Charlies Cheapies in Chesterfield circa 1996.  Rotten a pillars, front wing bottoms, top 1-2" of all four doors, floors, sills, boot floor, boot lid, rear arches, bonnet, front cross member, all hidden with wob and rattle can.  Rear quarter had been hit hard enough at some point that it had several inches of filler in some places to bring it back to profile, my first attempt at panel beating to sort that out.  The car was really only good for teaching me some rudimentary skills and should have been pushed straight into a crusher, I certainly shouldn't have listened to my Dad and spent so much of my savings on the damned thing.

 

Cars I was talked out of in favour of the Sapphire were a Mk2 Ford Escort, a Volvo 340 saloon, a Mazda 323 hatchback (frumpy type, not sporty type) and a VW Beetle whose year I couldn't work out.

[Sigmund Fraud]

Not my best buy...

 

How can you say that ? It's brilliant, like a Dellow only infinitely more shite (plus I bet it didn't cost anywhere near what a Dellow would). I say, well bought !

 

 

My own roughest purchase has to be my old Alfetta... I was 18 when I bought it, and knew fuck all about old cars,. Unsurprisingly, I ended up with a complete heap of shite.

 

The body was freshly painted in a lovely shade of dark blue, and the chrome was nice and shiny, but that's all that was good on that car. It had more structural* fibreglass than a Lotus Elite, the engine used equal amounts of oil, coolant and petrol, not a single synchro in the gearbox was working (TADTS, admittedly) and the suspension bushings were so worn out that even the most minor pothole would produce a cacophony that could rival a Stomp performance.

[MarvinsMom]

an x-reg mark 1 golf gti.... bought off of a "mate", some bloody mate!!

 

it too smelt like something had died in it, only had 1st, 3rd and 5th gears as there was so much slop in the gear change, and once the rancid interior was pulled out, it was a proper fred flintstone car. i popped off one of the wheel arch trims and most of the wheel arch came off with it, and when taking off one of the a-panel trims i found a hole the size of my fist in it.

 

i climbed into the boot to hold the tailgate up while shifting out the back seat, there was a creaking sound and the back of the boot floor pulled off the back panel.

 

i sold it on at a maaaaahoooosive loss, before the lad i sold it to just weighted it in. the gearbox lived on, briefly in his track car before that too became scrap.

 

a huge turd, and the one and only time i've taken someones word that the car was "sound" and "mint" and bought a car blind......BIG MISTAKE!!

[saucedoctor]

81 Fiat Strada 60 (?) bought from Tommy McWilliams at Whitehead (Binhoker knew the man too). It was fucked, I was 16, the car was Ã‚£50 and he wouldn't sell me a 3500SE SD1 cos it was "too rotten". It must have been biblical, because the Fiat was absolutely hanging. I drove it home via the maze of back roads, my Dad had a fit, and I hurriedly gifted the car to my mate's big brother.

 

I had a brand new W203 C200 Kompressor which was arguably worse - it went on fire, spectacularly, on the motorway heading into Belfast.

[HMC]

Continuing the crash and burn theme; Rover 115D; a swapped it for my crashed Metro VP500.  In a very short space of time I realised the was precious little metal attaching the front seat mounts to the floor, it sank onto its suspension bump stops and finally caught fire.

 

I would normally have been sorry about the last bit.

[tooSavvy]

 

.... ^^^ like this.... Allegro/hearingaid Beige...

 

I bought a 1600E 'restored' shed and it wouldn't pass a MOT... so I went to Darlington (NO, not big Mikes...) and PXed it against an Escrote. No cash involved.

 

TOTAL SHED... but it had Ba11s >> never let me down >> I had to bolt flange/brackets to the floor, under the rear seat, cos the leaf springs were in 'free air'    & the wiring loom was nipped in the chassis leg (collapsing) so I had various lighting issues at the back...    .

 

Fortunately (well, not really...) it was stolen from the Metro Centre and never recovered... however a big tool box went with it!!! containing an engraved 25MM Micrometer I got as a prize at Vickers, Scotswood, Apprentice School. *Torch car = SAVE Prize 

 

 

I had to have a car.... so I phoned around and got a LONSDALE Estate as a cheap hire 'runaround'.... and went up to Walkerville Garage Showroom, 4 Lane Ends, and bought a Demonstrator Skoda 130LSE.... YaY!!!!

 

Bed now......

 

 

TS

[vulgalour]

That Reliant is a thing of great beauty*.  I'm actually jealous.

[cort16]

Volvo 480 bought from glasgow central train station with a crushing hang over . No locks, no ignition barrel, no shocks and no chance of starting it again it you stalled it in traffic. Grade a solid gold shite heap. I swapped it for an Audi 80 gt5 coupe , which even though it bellowed smoke from a gear box oil leak while in traffic was still a right result .

[New POD]

Those were the days, a useable, running13 year old car with a ticket for £60!

 

 

 

I feel that we should factor in wage inflation. Lets call it £200. We have a thread already. It's doable.

[derskine]

[catsinthewelder]

I'm not sure if it was the Fiat Panda I bought from a scrapyard for £30 or the Espace I bought off ebay for £205.  At least I knew the Panda was rough,  the Espace was supposedly 'just out of MOT, shouldn't need much' and had more yellow chalk underneath than the Early Learning Centre.

 

Got Ms C to drive it home for a booked MOT which it failed spectacuarly,  bridged within a week after raiding anything useful,  most of which ended up at the tip later on.

[dugong]

1978 Citroen GS Club. 

[Guest Breadvan72]

The famous* Betakoop of Krarp is well scabby.  Still drives v spiffy.

 

 

[steve_earwig]

I have plenty of choise for this but I think the worst one was the Avenger Tiger 2 I had a few years before I came out here, it was so rotten it looked like it had been parked in the sea for a few years. I thought the only way I'd resurrect it would be to find a new shell, so I stuffed it in a lock up and waited. And waited. Eventually I bought a house with a garage and stuck it in that. I managed to get it going but the cylinder head was knackered, as well as the carbs, so I sent the head off for gides and hardenened seats while I rebuilt the carbs. The machine shop quited me a reasonable 60 quid for the work but when they'd done they told me that was per cylinder - how much?! Keep it. After a couple of years I got sick of it sitting in my garage making it unusuable so I stripped it and scrapped the shell. Still waiting for a decent shell mind. When I emigrated out here I emailed ASOc (Avenger and Sunbeam Owner's Club) and offered all I had for nothing, just come and get it but I didn't hear a squeak out of them so to my shame, the whole lot went down the tip It still bothers me, especially as solid early Avengers regularly come up for sale here.

[Minimad5]

LOL.

[scruff]

No floors, no brakes, didn't hold coolant and smoked like mad. Cost £Nil, spent £40 on fuel going to get it from Hounslow with a Series 3 and a borrowed trailer, £20 on entry to a pay and play site and £25 on petrol for the day. Got £100 for the wheels and tyres from a bloke building a jago and weighed the rest in. 

 

[MrFarkinBasz]

LHD Ford Fiesta Mk 2, bought in 2001 for 150 Euros when I lived in Germany.  1.1L engine IIRC.

 

VIE SZ 51, where are you now? 

[michael1703]

Morris traveller bought unseen, picked it up with a trailer,I say picked, more like scraped up,had to smash the drums off with a club hammer, burnt the clutch out on my rangie towing it out of the garage, didn't unload it when I got home.

 

The only part that I got off it was a chrome windscreen surround

 

Took it straight to the scrappy but it shook to bits before I got it there and had to sweep up the window glass and timber that fell out