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37th time lucky: 2023 in review


barrett

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Right, so what have I done? Well, the BMW was on ebay (it sold today) and I needed something cheap and reasonably economical to blez about in so I applied a carefully formulated equation of lowest price + longest MoT + nearest to my house and came up with a 1994 Renault 19 1.4 Biarritz with a ticket til January for £450, in Worthing. Actually the lad delivered it to me as he works in Brighton.

It's had a bit spent on it recently, including tyres and brakes all round. It's only done 57,000 miles but it looks like it's done 257,000 from the outside. I haven't been in one of these since a childhood holiday to France when we had one as a rental car. It's pretty comfortable and it drives alright, although it's pretty gutless. Probably the slowest car I've had since my n/a diesel Xantia (which, coincidentally, I bought from somebody on the same street as the lad selling this). It's a bit crashy over harsh surfaces, and the interior squeeks and rattle over bumps just how I remember 90s Renaults doing back in the day.

Interior is actually quite tidy now I've given it a wipe-over. The outside looks a million times better after a wash (it looked like it hadn't been washed in years) but the paint is really crappy and it screams 'banger'. I do have the side skirts so I'll try and attach those at some point, which I hope will improve things.

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Faults? The driver's electric window doesn't work. Motor hums away but glass doesn't move, and in fact it's dropped slightly in the frame (hence the wet seat) so I hope it's just fallen off the runner and I can get the door card off/sort it out with the minimum of fuss. It's got some crusty bits, including a hole on the n/s front strut which is a big MoT fail, but I'm not sure I'll be keeping it long enough to worry about that.

It's been a while since I've had a cheapo stopgap emergency car, and I can't say this is any worse than my previous attempts. It's got a stereo/CD player which works, the seats are nice and it drives like a dull small-engined 1990s family car should. Fine.

Oh, if anyone has a set of those centre caps please speak up now...

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Great terrible car!! It needs one of those Scrappage Scheme Survivor stickers.

The wheels look like they've come off a later model 19 16v, or maybe a Clio? They're possibly worth a bit, though a set of centre caps will no doubt be a tricky thing to source.

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23 minutes ago, Scruffy Bodger said:

It looks pretty straight, will the paint come back a bit with some renovator, polish, wax and a bit of elbow grease? My 405 looked dreadful when I bought it, it can't have been washed in years but some effort has hopefully lifted it from banger status?

Sadly it's covered in spots sort of like when you touch a car with sun-screened hands - marks which go under the laquer and can't be polished out. There's also a bit of weird paint loss on one door, and several rusty pockmarks breaking through. I did consider diging out the machine polisher but not sure it's actually worth the effort! It does look loads better than it did and if I can get the skirts back on it'll be even nicer. 'Nicer'.

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This is covered with dings and bits where bird shit has totally removed the paint but looks loads better with bumpers and trim dyed. I did it a panel at a time by hand as the lacquer on these gives people the fearz. Still a ten footer but not the shed look it did have, Bilt Hamber Speed Wax ftw. If you've got a mop why not just do a wing? It looks a very similar colour to the Magnum grey on my SRDT. I'm sure the skirts will make a big difference like you say.

A mate had a TD one of these back in the day, I remember it being quicker than the XUD equivalent?

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  • barrett changed the title to 37th time lucky: Another flippin' car!

 Wahey! Check this little thing out. It's a 2002 Peugeot 206 1.6 Roland Garros. I quite like the look of these, and enjoy the ott plush interior, panoramic roof etc. This one was local and reasonably priced. It's been owned by an old lady since it was one year old, and her daughter was selling it on her behalf as she has now given up driving. It's done 59,000 miles and seems to have been serviced pretty religiously. TBH it's pretty much near-mint compared to most cars I've owned.

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(baguette not included, but necessary for French car purchasing)

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Seems quite spritely and nice to drive. This is the sort of thing I was actually looking for, ie a modern-ish car with lots of life left in it rather than a rusty banger, so hopefully this will serve me well for a long time. MoT until March I think. I paid £900 which I reckon was alright?

Not sure WTF I'm gonna do with the 19 now, but I guess it's good to have a (third) back-up car, right?

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  • barrett changed the title to 37th time lucky: DULL MODERN has arrived

Well the BMW has gone in the worst car selling transaction I've ever had, and getting ripped off for £200 by a member of the travelling community. I'm very annoyed at myself for letting it happen, particularly because I was 90% certain he was ripping me off as it happened, but after 35 minutes of arguing I just wanted him to fuck off. Won't be selling any BMWs on ebay in the future, that's for sure.

If anyone feels like bombarding 07743 REDACTED with offers of cheap cars in fictional locations or whatever, please be my guest

Edit: actually I'm going to report him to the police first so I'll remove his number for a while!

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4 minutes ago, garethj said:

Linky 👍

 

Some bloke called Barrett said (in 2010) "they are just an 'old car' without any of the famous unbreakable qualities of things like 205s/405s or Bluebirds of the same era, regardless of what Giugiaro says. I can't see these even begin to become interesting enough to collectors or even shiteists until they reach double figure survival rates."

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3 hours ago, barrett said:

Well the BMW has gone in the worst car selling transaction I've ever had, and getting ripped off for £200 by a member of the travelling community. I'm very annoyed at myself for letting it happen, particularly because I was 90% certain he was ripping me off as it happened, but after 35 minutes of arguing I just wanted him to fuck off. Won't be selling any BMWs on ebay in the future, that's for sure.

If anyone feels like bombarding 07743 REDACTED with offers of cheap cars in fictional locations or whatever, please be my guest

Edit: actually I'm going to report him to the police first so I'll remove his number for a while!

Oh god, that bad?

I may well soon be having to do the same with my ratty Bavarian Sierra.

What happened?

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On 4/24/2022 at 1:39 PM, barrett said:

 Wahey! Check this little thing out. It's a 2002 Peugeot 206 1.6 Roland Garros. I quite like the look of these, and enjoy the ott plush interior, panoramic roof etc. This one was local and reasonably priced. It's been owned by an old lady since it was one year old, and her daughter was selling it on her behalf as she has now given up driving. It's done 59,000 miles and seems to have been serviced pretty religiously. TBH it's pretty much near-mint compared to most cars I've owned.

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(baguette not included, but necessary for French car purchasing)

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Seems quite spritely and nice to drive. This is the sort of thing I was actually looking for, ie a modern-ish car with lots of life left in it rather than a rusty banger, so hopefully this will serve me well for a long time. MoT until March I think. I paid £900 which I reckon was alright?

Not sure WTF I'm gonna do with the 19 now, but I guess it's good to have a (third) back-up car, right?

Twa randoms... when the time comes. :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good job I bought that Peugeot, as the R19 starter gave up the ghost pretty quickly and it's now beached outside my house waiting for me to be less lazy.

I've just got back from Vintage Revival Montlhéry, which means almost exactly three years ago the Palladium looked like this, about to run for the first time in 60 years

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Gotta keep reminding myself that there's been some progress since then!

I recently discovered a load of photos I'd never seen before from a 1922 road test. This is the slightly earlier version with wing-mounted headlamps, and it doesn't have the polished top. This photo was particularly evocative

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Somebody managed to ID it as Knoll Road in Dorking - amazingly the wall and the house are intact so I'll be taking my car there at some point for a reconstruction

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  • barrett changed the title to 37th time lucky: 205 MoT results in...

4000 miles in the last year in the little 205, not bad considering I work from home a couple of days a week, and usually have two or three other cars in rotation. Anyway, after a bit of dicking about it's now got a clean-ish ticket and should be all good for another year. Will be treated to a service soon!

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  • 5 months later...

Absolutely nothing going on with my cars at the moment, and I haven't bought or sold anything since I got the 206, which is working very well as An Car (circa 5k miles in so far, expenses £100 on a new back box fitted). Have been doing a bit of shuffling at work over the last week which means I've ended up commuting in a variety of unsuitable vehicles. This was quite a nice sight to wake up to this morning - I wonder how often these two have been parked together in suburban streets anywhere else in the world before?

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  • 1 month later...

2022's been a weird one, has't it? Dunno about you lot but I don't really feel like I've done much motoring this year. I guess after two years of basically nothing happening we all sort of 'eased into it' this year and I was definitely quite selective about where I went. Also, just feeling flippin' old man and not wanting the hassle of driving shit old cars everywhere, plus no money really, it's all been a bit mediocre. I only bought two cars in the whole of 2022 which I think is an all-time low but honestly some of that has lost its appeal and there have been far few occasions recently when I've been figuring out how to raise £xxxx to buy some hopeless old shed. I also smashed my phone and lost a load of pics, so my documentation of what did happen is a bit limited.

ANYWAY, with all that in mind I present my very brief YEAR IN REVIEW. I guess the first thing was fucking off to France for a few days for Rétromobile in February. This was GREAT mainly because it was the first time I'd been out of the country in ages. The show was much smaller than it has been, with less to see, and I didn't snap much but it was just so nice to be in Paris eating food and seeing people I hadn't seen in ages. This scruffy old Lago was my highlight, I think

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On the way back we went to Compiegne for the second motoring-themed exhibition in the Chateau. It wasn't quite as good as the one back in 2018-19 (which was the last thing I did as Covid struck) but seeing cars in such absurd surroundings is a total head trip and I really enjoyed it

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The unique Chapron Hotchkiss-Gregoire coupé (displayed in the coach house) was a highlight

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I think the next thing was the VSCC Light Car & Edwardian Section Welsh Weekend which is the one Vintage car thing I'll always make an effort to get to. Great cars, the 'right' sort of old car people for the most part (because nobody can take light cars too seriously) and good driving. We cheated a bit and took the Riley as the Palladium still wasn't ready (and still isn't a year later!) but I drove this thing for like 500 miles that weekend and it never missed a beat

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It met the 'other' Palladium, which sadly has now been sold to France!

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A couple of friends who were planning to come along got Covid and had to miss it, so another friend organised a 'consolation tour' in Sussex/Surrey for them. Just a handful of nice people in their nice cars going to nice places

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Inclusing to the Watts gallery with the incredible chapel in the grounds

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Then in May it was the Vintage Revival at Montlhéry. If you like prewar cars (particularly weird French ones) this is an absolute must. Once every two years, it's full of stuff you'll never see anywhere else and it's super relaxed and casual with minimal bureaucracy etc, plus you're in France so there's always lots of good food and wine etc. Went down in style in a borrowed Voisin (as one does) which was deffo the correct car for this type of journey

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Incredible stuff at the event itself, but this Airflow coupé was my highlight

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Plus loads of things like this Derby

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Apparently I didn't do anything in Summer, but September was Beaulieu time, with the usual assortment of old tat (I bought one thing only, which I actually needed!)

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I guess the same weekend Her Maj popped it, and Hampshire responded in kind with this classy display in Lymington

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The following month (?) we were invited to tag along on the annual GN Jolly, an event for GN and very early Frazer Nashes which this year was organised by some friends and based around their house in Normandy. I obviously don't have a GN, so we took the Peugeot 202, which did very well and - luckily - wasn't the only non-Vintage car there

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This was five days of dicking about, eating nice meals, drinking lots, nosing about nice bits of Northern France, all highly civilised and moderately relaxing

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Lovely stuff. Then I did LOADS of work and to celebrate, threw a party (which was also quite a lot of work). Old-car friends and colleagues all came to our office for a drink and lunch and it was very, very nice

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Since then I've basically just been trying to catch up on my sleep, but just as the weather really started to turn we realised loads of our cars (and stuff) were still stored at our old office space and needed to be moved asap so the property could be sold. This involved a 12-hour day of shifting old shite, but it did mean I got to see a few old friends I hadn't seen for a while:

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It started to snow just as we were strapping the last heap down

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It then got even colder, luckily* whilst loads of cars were parked outside waiting to find a new place to live...

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After another full day of tidying, we managed to make enough room to get everything indoors and tucked up nice and warm for winter

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I'm trying to remember if I'd driven anything interesting this year, and the answer is 'not really', but I did enjoy testing these two out (not my photos, obvs)

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And that, really, was 2022. I've done about 8000 miles in a Peugeot 206, which are words I never thought I'd be saying, and haven't really driven my old cars much at all except for the Riley. However, I think the Renault and Rover are both having some work done in January so I hope they'll be back in rotation soon. I reckon 2023 is gonna be MEGA stressful at work and just in general, but I'm gonna try to motivate myself and get to as many old car things as possible, and try and put some more miles on all of my own (roadworthy) heaps and maybe even get some more of them into use again... cheers!

 

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  • barrett changed the title to 37th time lucky: my motoring 2022 in review

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