Metrosexual experiences

[HMC]

So I've been browsing metros/ rover 100s (henceforth to be known as "metros" due to my laziness) And inevitably, window shopping very quickly became a RAM RAID and I've ended up with a giffer-owned-from-new 22k miler, which is due to be delivered to HMC reserve collection (West Country branch) next weekend......

 

All of which got me thinking about my first metro, a £300 e bay job in 2007. It was a " VP500" with 500 being made in late '83 to celebrate 500,000 being made. In many ways this time was the high water mark for LC8- uno and 205 were about to be launched and the fiesta on paper was a 4 year older model. Mine was great fun to drive, the bus like wheel rake being at odds with the leather and wood clad interior. I must say it never really ran right and the following year it was rear ended by a hgv coming off a roundabout. Sad face.

 

I swapped what was now the only SWB vp500 for a 115d. This was somehow rustier than the decade older vp, and was not kept for long. So good, bad, ugly- what experiences can you bear to recall of "the British car to beat the world"?

 

[bub2006]

I bought a van den Plas auto on a F plate from a so called friend. They lied to me about the issues which I didn't find out about till I got it running then told folk I stole it! I think if the gearbox wasn't kippered it would have been a decent little motor. Seats were comfy and when it did drive it seemed quite nippy.

[stripped fred]

I bought a rover 100 with the 1.1 litre engine, whatever that was called from BCA measham. It also had an LPG conversion as has been owned by a local authority. It was pretty cheap to run but very slow, particularly on gas. I was forever driving round trying to find places to fill up as the gas tank was quite small, which probably deleted any saving I made in hindsight. It was trouble free, handled well but was a bit dull being the bog basic version. I was a bit worried that no-one would want to buy it off me but in the end it sold the day I advertised it.

[Zantimisfit]

1989 black Studio 2. Loved it very much - 60k in 18 months. Drove to Italian Grand Prix in it. Only new car I've ever bought. 

 

Wooed* future Mrs Misfit in it and it became hers when I got an utterly shit Fiesta Popular Plus as my first company car.

 

I owe that little car a lot. Theres a picture of in on another thread somewhere.

 

(Wooed - great, and sadly underused word)

 

 

[dave21478]

I bought a very tidy rust-free Metro Sport about a year ago, and have driven it probably less than 500kms.

I want to like it, but the ride is horribly bumpy on local roads, and it has the annoying habit of boiling up and sharting its coolant everywhere, despite not being a K-series.

 

I dunno....the suspension is sagging again, so I need to pump it up again, but think that just adding more fluid makes things worse and it really needs more gas, which means rebuilding and re-gassing the displacers.

 

Apparently adding the linked system from a later Rover Metro is a big improvement to the ride too.

 

[catsinthewelder]

I remember one teenage friend being the first of us to spend a grand on a motor. It was a nightfire red Metro which he proudly proclaimed had no rust, a statement I disproved within a minute or so. It replaced a gold Nissan Sunny that had a foot high tidemark in silver Hammerite. In fairness it did last him a while and still looked tidy the last time I saw it unlike another friends Metro GTa which was the same age but hanging with rust.

[Skizzer]

Here's mine:

 

 

 

I spun and crashed it near Builth Wells, then it got repaired, then the exhaust fell in half on the M3 on the night of the Michael Fish hurricane and got patched up in a shed behind Fleet services using a can of Lilt and some jubilee clips. This was all in its first three years. Then I traded it in for a breadvan Polo which, I'm sorry to say, I found massively preferable in every respect.

 

The early ones are pretty things though. I could imagine having another now. The post A series Rover badged ones don't do it for me, I'm afraid.

 

 

Edit: On reflection I'm now feeling guilty and disloyal to my poor abused little car. I did 50k miles in it in about two and a half years, almost all of them driving like a twat because I was 19. It was a fun thing to chuck about, I moved house in it twice and we had all sorts of adventures together.

[Fat_Pirate]

I had a 1.1C as a company car in '91, I loved it and bombed about everywhere flat-out.  My colleagues had Fiesta Populars and I constantly rubbed it in that my car had an extra 15bhp.

[Keymaster]

I bought a While 3 door M plate Metro Rio Grande for Mrs K to learn to drive in back in 2004. It was a one owner main dealer trade in & near mint, complete with old bat spec floral cushions on the back seat and a massive plastic no smoking badge stuck to the dash. The front suspension was very low & the remote central locking was temperamental. I didn't do anything about the suspension but I had to re-solder the remote sender circuit board a couple of times... except I only had a knife and a gas hob to do it with

 

We had it a year or so & it was great little steer... so good in fact, that I was confident enough to sell it to a mate who then ran it on a shoestring budget for a few years while she was in uni. The only problem she had was when my pro bodger soldering predictably failed

[Timewaster]

Around 2005 I gave £50 for a 115D in splendid kingfisher blue with about 40k miles and no MOT.

I suspect someone had started to scrap it as there were several bits missing. None of which were vital for self propulsion.

A patch and a second hand tyre and somehow it was on the road and pressed into service as a mobile skip.

I tried to tidy up the gaffer wobbled arches and most of the filler fell out. I was supposed to be driving to the NEC the next day so out came the P40 to rewob the arches. It got dark pretty quickly, and I was running out of filler. I even had to reuse the lump that fell off the scraper onto the floor.

Next day (cold light) you could see the grit and grass mixed in with the filler. From then on it was known as the Metro with Fibre Grass arches.

I drove it flat out everywhere, particularly over speed humps.

I'm not advocating speeding. Flat out was nothing impressive.

About once every two months I'd stick £30 worth of diesel in it and never lifted the bonnet once.

The meaningless private plate that came on it was advertised for £450 but I never got a single sniff of interest. As far as I know it is still for sale somewhere.

6 months on I sold it to a guy at work for £350. He drove it to work for another six months, somehow got another ticket on it and sold it for £500!

 

H14ACW apparently lasted until 2009

[Ghosty]

I almost bought a white CVT 5 door 114 as my first car...

[robinmasters]

I had a base model, Y-reg 1.0. The one with the little headlights. It was my first car, in 1994, and it cost ~ £800. I could have had a burgundy & silver Chevette instead. Being an A-series not a K, obviously the had gasket was indestructible. Until it blew. First big job I did on a car, with just Haynes to help. Wonderful thing it was, I could keep up with a friend on his 100cc bike. The clutch went eventually.

 

About three years later I had an MG worth a crispy floor.

 

I'd have another.

[Rusty_Rocket]

I had two Metros, a 5-dr 'D' reg 1275 (33,000 miles) and a 3-dr 'F' reg 998.  The F reg took me all over the place, I did many happy miles in it and even polished the Targa red paint once.  It started rusting in the roof, to the point that when it rained, you got wet.  Scrapped.

 

The D reg was a donor from the day I bought it, the sills were fixed* with pop rivetted plates, inside and out.  It too died a rusty, hiab-y death.  I did however keep the 33k 1275cc engine and gearbox though, which, 20yrs later, still reside in my shed

[timolloyd]

A mate of mine had an MG Metro as his first car. Fairly respectable first wheels in 2000. It was really smart when he got it, despite being from Jersey (where I assume everything rusts really quickly).

 

The poor thing got ragged and little care or attention. It had a cross threaded spark plug, with an adaptor of some sort on top, which needed an occasional readjustment*. Like, 3 times on the M40/M25 on the way home from Oxford.

 

The red seat belts and Minidisc head unit were real features

[NorfolkNWeigh]

1987 and MrsN gives birth to our first child, I get all sensible and sell this

 

For £200.

Get strapped up for £3000 of finance on this

She hates it, I hate it .

After 6 months , I sell it to a local used car place, who settle the fiancé and give me £150.

Which I invest in this

 

Everyone is happy and my aberration is never mentioned again.

 

Metros are horrid. All pictures are example photos.

 

Edited to add; I meant finance not fiancé ,although it did settle my fiancé, as she was at the time.

[FakeConcern]

I'll just leave this here! http://autoshite.com/topic/19999-austin-metro/

[Six-cylinder]

Drink and E bay don’t mix.

 

It started with C1am selling me a brochure and Mrs Cyl seeing it. Next Mrs Cyl expressed a wish that I buy her a certain Mk1 MG Metro .

 

A year ago I got home from a beer festival and curry and it was its due time, but Mrs Cyl was having second thought that it might not be the model it was described as, nor the condition we imagined and reduced her max she would pay. Now this is where the alcohol kicks in, I reassured Mrs Cyl that the DVLA matched the description and if she did not bid a bit more she would never get it!

 

So there we are we won it for double what I think it should go for.

 

Because the car was described as brakes locked on I knew I needed help recover it. I asked a friend who runs a professional vehicle transport business to do the job for me and because he is a long time friend included him in trying to get the brakes freed off. Three wheels were locked, one released easily, one with some effort and we could not get the last rear one to unlock on the sellers drive so trolley jacked and skidded the car onto the trailer.

 

Unloading it we wondered if we would have to tow it off but disconnected the winch cable and tilted the trailer bed and the car gently rolled off on its own safely stopping having cleared the trailer. It now roles freely.

 

Yes it is a 1984 series one MG Metro 30k one owner not run for a number of years. An inspection revealed the body is in great shape, yes some odd rust spots but nothing major. The interior is great but the original owner did not like the red carpets so had them replaced with grey, the good news the red carpets came with it hardy used. The BIG disappointment was the engine is seized.

 

A year later my favorite garage are still working it!

[trigger]

Your an unstoppable machine at the moment HMC! Keep it up!

 

I've never owned a Metro though i wouldn't mind a MG or GTa model now, my dad bought my mum this one back in 1990 and they absolutely hated it and quickly sold it on.

 

[Six-cylinder]

The start of the story is I sold cars for a living from 1985 so I have had plenty of experience of Metros and many years pasted without me giving them much thought.

 

Then I have wanted a Metro of my own and while I thought about it, the price of early 1.3S models that had become my favorite rose dramatically. Also MG Mk1, which I quite like so I felt I could not justify spending so much money on an extra car that I would only use occasionally and started looking at Ks. Even the best model Ks had risen so I was delighted in January 2016 when I was given a scruffy silver GSi 5 door from this forum with HGF. With the help of a friend we did the head gasket but it still overheated very quickly and I became disheartened and it sat around.

 

The airlock did clear on the GSi but by then I had gone for instant gratification. I sold it HG fixed but still needing hand brake cables and bits for the MOT.

 

The desire to drive a Metro had risen and I just bought an up and running 114 SLi 5 door in Nightfire 36k. That car has been with me a little over a year now and is lovely with the pep from its 1.4 75 bhp 8v engine it is fun to drive. What next, I guess when the MG metro is finally on the road I will have to part with it.

[RobT]

I've got a separate thread for it, but here's mine parked at a show surrounded by giffers.

 

 

I bought it in 2008 for £90 and it'd been off the road, stored in a heated garage for 11 years. Even then the bottom of the OS wing was rotten, so I did a filler bodge as a temporary repair that's still there...only had 28,000 miles and one previous owner, now at 34,000 so I don't use it enough really. I'll never sell it, even if destitute, as the likelyhood of buying something this old and in this condition for pennies is now long gone. Plus I enjoy driving it. Took it out for a drive this evening and the 998cc runs so sweet (even after being laid up for months) and the smell of cheap BL plastics can't be beaten.

 

When I had the Senator I parked them side by side. A Senator is this much longer...

 

 

I've also had a Rover 114 CVT which was great fun, always quickest off the lights, but was thirstier than a normal auto and a bit rotten. Rear arches were shite as unlike earlier Metros the double-skinned arches were only spot welded in three places rather than 9, or something.

[kinkersaab]

That appears to be a volvo 340 "redline" driving past........(triggers pic)

[wuvvum]

My first Metro was an A reg 1.3 auto in metallic green, bought from the local auction for a fiver.  32k on the clock but no MOT.  Gearbox was also knackered in that it had no first gear, so the car had to be put into 2nd to pull away, then into D once it was moving.  I roared around in it for a while, it actually went quite well once it got going.  I managed to fry the electrics one day by connecting jump leads up the wrong way round, after which it wouldn't turn over, so ended up getting scrapped.  It was probably something simple wrong with it but I was fairly clueless back then.

 

That was my only Austin Metro - I had two Rover versions, a white H-plate 1.1C bought off my pikey neighbours, and an M-plate (I think) 1.4 Si, which was a semi-sporty version with wide wheels which went and handled well but had a much worse turning circle than the base model.  I don't have photos of any of them.

[Station]

There's an early Metro parked near to my house, it never moves from the spot.

 

I bought this one a few years ago for £100, a 'full fat' 16v GTi. It hadn't moved for 10 years.

 

 

Seller had promised me the log book Ina couple of days, and checking vin number revealed the car had a possible dubious history (was 'imported' from IOM, changed to plates that said it was a GTa).

I really couldn't put it back on the road, but someone who didn't care about where it came from bought it. He towed it home 60 miles behind his mates car and he got pulled by the police about 40 miles into the journey.

I never found anything up what happened to it, or why it was on the wrong plates.

[Richard]

.

[Six-cylinder]

I bought it in 2008 for £90 and it'd been off the road, stored in a heated garage for 11 years. Even then the bottom of the OS wing was rotten, so I did a filler bodge as a temporary repair that's still there...only had 28,000 miles and one previous owner, now at 34,000 so I don't use it enough really. I'll never sell it, even if destitute, as the likelyhood of buying something this old and in this condition for pennies is now long gone. Plus I enjoy driving it. Took it out for a drive this evening and the 998cc runs so sweet (even after being laid up for months) and the smell of cheap BL plastics can't be beaten.

In my opinion RobT has short changed you and failed to show you the best bit of his Metro!

[DSdriver]

I hired a Metro many years ago as my own car had ftp and I needed to get to my nightshift in that there London.

It was horrible and then it ran out of petrol in the northbound Blackwall Tunnel. I was towed out by the old bill who fortunately had a sense of humour and was only about an hour late for work.

Never again.

[New POD]

I and my wife have owned 2 metros. One was a C reg face lift turbo in white. In 1991 - It suffered from typical BL underdevelopment and was fairly unreliable, and rusty.

The other was an E reg 1275 sport. Rusty but reliable.

[Chris2cv]

I had a C reg bright yellow metro for a couple of years. It was really fast (compared to my 2cv, as it was a !.3) and still holds the record for the local mad mile - my brother and i used to time trial between two points, when we did it in the Metro, the brakes didn't even start to slow it down until we were about half a mile past the end point! Don't know how fast that was, possibly not even illegal, as it was a 60mph road then, but I have not tried it again since!  Other than that, it was a great little car, with very few problems other than leaking like a sieve.

 

That got traded, (being pushed half a mile to save putting petrol in) for a 6 month old Rover 100 which was shared around the family. Another great little car which we all enjoyed. It eventually moved up north with my sister, regularly coming up and down the M1 and M25 until a "friend" of hers bodged the head gasket with sealant, charging more than a garage would have to do it properly! It sat around for ages as I tried to persuade a mechanic  friend (not the same one) to buy it as a cheap project. Eventually went to a man called Big Vince for use when not in prison - this is not even a joke!

 

  I would have another, but as I am soon to have 3 cars and a moped, probably not at the moment. 

[r.welfare]

I learned to drive in my mum's Rover 1.1S. In fact I'd steered her towards buying it a year earlier as there was no way I could stomach doing the same in the Lada Samara it replaced. Through my rose tints it was superb, although no doubt I would find it tinny and horrible today, nearly 25 years hence.

 

As I recall it was a nine-month old ex daily rental with about 9000 miles on the clock and a third less than the cost of a new one. Being sold by the Lada dealer helped - I would otherwise have started my driving career in a new Citroen AX 1.0 Neon had the Cit dealer given more than a derisory PX offer for the Samara. My parents were long term customers of the Lada dealer, Peach's of Bucklebury. They loved my folks because they never haggled.

 

That little car put up with some serious abuse from teaching two teenage boys to drive. I crashed it at low speed (crossed up and locked up) into a stone wall, but was able to kick the unpainted plastic bumper back into position and no-one was any the wiser. I drove it from Newbury to the centre of Bristol in under an hour - sat in the outside lane of the M4 all the way at full throttle with the speedo not budging from 96. Lots of wheelspins and handbrake turns - my mum never did enough driving to wear out the odd-sized Dunlops anyway. The Rover 800 front seats were comfy, but buggered the chance of any leg or footroom for rear passengers.

 

My brother was even worse and launched the car off a dropkerb at 40mph, which required a new sump. Other than that it was mechanically hardy in the decade my mum owned it, although it didn't crack 40,000 miles. Needed two sets of rear arches though.

[Timewaster]

My brother learnt to drive in a driving school MG Turbo.

His instructor was a bit of a loon who used to tell him the quicker you get there (the test route) the more practice time you get.

Sadly he lost his life in a motorbike accident shortly after. (The instructor that is.)