HMC Quattroporte assaulted

[HMC]

Late evening chod arrival : 1999 primera 2.0 SLX 4 door saloon. Options of note- various mobile phone antennae plus rear wiper/ 4 door saloon thing going on. Better pics in daylight. Especially of said wiper.

 

[wuvvum]

Is that rear wiper factory?  I don't recall ever seeing P11 saloons thus equipped.

[loserone]

Ah excellent.  My brother had a green one when I was learning to drive, I did enjoy it at the time.

[tooSavvy]

Heyy..... 4door + booted! NO Spoiler 😕

...... No Toyota style, eh

 

[RobT]

On a cold, wet Monday evening many people would get a Pizza delivered.

Nah, HMC gets a fuggin' Primera.  Brilliant.

 

[loserone]

Thinking about it, his had a spoiler, and it was a company car with presumably no options.  Did the PO sell the spoiler to Savv for his* toy yoda?

[jonathan_dyane]

Gorgeous! Junkman used to witter on about 1986 and all that but I maintain the P11 Primera was the pinnacle of vehicular development.

[Angrydicky]

They’re quite thin on the ground now, that generation of Primera. Do they rust as badly as the Almera? Look forward to seeing the daylight pics.

Childhood memory of these was a daft old neighbour having one (R126 AVX) driving home  drunk from the pub (as he did all the time) and clipping the front bumper of my granddads Fiesta Ghia (P739 LEV) as he was reversing onto his drive. Grandad, taking no shit, saw it, went out and confronted him, smelt the booze and called the cops, who then came and breathalysed him. 3 times the DD limit IIRC. He obviously received a nice long ban for that.

Not sure what happened to the Primera but it was in surprisingly good condition. The silly old duffer had some stickers on the middle of his garage door (presumably) so he could line the car up in his car port as he was reversing in while pissed.

Someone else in the village had a Cabstar which was R127 AVX.

[Angrydicky]

That’s a nice old 1956 Glamorgan registration on your Audi (assuming the previous owner hasn’t kept it). Would have looked good on your A30!

[dollywobbler]

  On 12/10/2020 at 21:59, wuvvum said:

Is that rear wiper factory?  I don't recall ever seeing P11 saloons thus equipped.

Expand  

Yup. Entirely  factory. So many JDM saloons had rear wipers in the 1990s judging by what I saw in NZ. Very odd that the Primera brought such technology to Europe, where it was more like a five-minute fad (Mondeo Mk1, Dedra, some Imprezas).

[bangernomics]

I suggest a white bonnet and boot so it looks like a negative of a Bradford taxi cab.

[Lacquer Peel]

  On 12/10/2020 at 23:24, jonathan_dyane said:

Gorgeous! Junkman used to witter on about 1986 and all that but I maintain the P11 Primera was the pinnacle of vehicular development.

Expand  

I think the peak of functional, reliable car design is the late 80s-mid 90s era. 

The P10 Primera is a better car in engineering terms, eg the P11 has a torsion beam rear axle instead of the P10's multi link set up. I also think the P10 is better built. 

But good luck finding a nice P10 now, this thing looks great. Nice find and buy. 

[HMC]

It was at a main dealer part ex disposal place in Essex that looked like the last stop before the  bridge for most. Muddy puddles, rusty storage containers and miscellaneous plant machinery in the background etc.

The sellers were a friendly unpretentious bunch, who seemed convinced I was an export mogul as apparently that’s the destination for lots of end of life petrol primeras of this generation. Where was it bound? Ummm west Devon. Does that count as export?!

It seems to have been bought by a person from the Far East who owned it from 2002 untiL now, who seemed to live around Harrow/ Tottenham. It’s spent it’s life street parked, it’s a bit battered n some places but I haven’t found any rust yet. It also came with  some cassettes to listen to on what I think is the original radio. 

[holbeck]

  On 13/10/2020 at 08:07, HMC said:

It was at a main dealer part ex disposal place in Essex that looked like the last stop before the  bridge for most. Muddy puddles, rusty storage containers and miscellaneous plant machinery in the background etc.

The sellers were a friendly unpretentious bunch, who seemed convinced I was an export mogul as apparently that’s the destination for lots of end of life petrol primeras of this generation. Where was it bound? Ummm west Devon. Does that count as export?!

It seems to have been bought by a person from the Far East who owned it from 2002 untiL now, who seemed to live around Harrow/ Tottenham. It’s spent it’s life street parked, it’s a bit battered n some places but I haven’t found any rust yet. It also came with  some cassettes to listen to on what I think is the original radio. 

Expand  

To be fair, that doesn't look bad at all.

[Out Run]

@tooSavvy spoiler donor located. 😁

[tooSavvy]

  On 12/10/2020 at 22:54, loserone said:

Thinking about it, his had a spoiler, and it was a company car with presumably no options.  Did the PO sell the spoiler to Savv for his* toy yoda?

Expand  

Mine was silver, came from yorkshire @£30..... Fuckkin Barganeous

[cort1977]

My MIL, who is an old school Irishwoman in her sixties, doesn't really notice or care about cars but she will still speak fondly of the P11 Primera she had 20 years ago. 

So well bought, these things can please the harshest critics.

[Lord Sterling]

Great cars. Fatha_Sterling had one in Brussels in that Burnt Orange colour they did.  But it was the more popular hatch version. Similar to this:

When it was sold it was exported to Africa.

[SiC]

Has Aircon. Posh. 

[beko1987]

A bloody good vacuum and some driving with the windows down and heating on will sort that rear windscreen (hopefully!) 

I've always liked this shape, certainly nicer than the one that came after it

[Out Run]

  On 13/10/2020 at 10:22, SiC said:

Has Aircon. Posh. 

Expand  

These things were great. Nice to see another on here. 😎

I had a 4dr P11 1600 Si as my first car. Converted it to SR20DE, GT rep, coilovers, GT-R brakes, wire tuck, thousands on mods etc as was the way then.

The A/C was useful in traffic jams. Cos just pulling itself along in 1st gear was 7mph, but A/C on mate it roll at the same speed as creeping automatics. So 12mph iirc.

I weighed that car in, after absolutely minting it by removing all underseal etc @60K miles and keeping I garaged for years before that.

There won’t be many cleaner than that, which were scrapped. R.I.P. S732 DBR/ L14 MN(Issan)P(rimera).

[wuvvum]

  On 13/10/2020 at 06:49, dollywobbler said:

Yup. Entirely  factory. So many JDM saloons had rear wipers in the 1990s judging by what I saw in NZ. Very odd that the Primera brought such technology to Europe, where it was more like a five-minute fad (Mondeo Mk1, Dedra, some Imprezas).

Expand  

Didn't some early 406s have them as well?  And the Tempra obvs.

[wuvvum]

I've had a few P11s over the years - a dreadful turbo diesel ex-taxi which wouldn't go into 5th gear, a rather nice GT and a facelift 2-litre with the CVT gearbox.  The latter two were very pleasant to drive (the diesel was totally gutless), and the GT was actually quite good fun to thrash, although none of them stuck to the road like the P10.

[michael t]

That is superbly grim. I love that BT Cellnet aerial thing, bonus retro chod points

[HMC]

Boot contents

Tow rope; 1 of. Used

Lidl Tottenham receipt 

CD multichanger: untested

verdict- proceed with caution

[Out Run]

  On 13/10/2020 at 06:49, dollywobbler said:

Yup. Entirely  factory. So many JDM saloons had rear wipers in the 1990s judging by what I saw in NZ. Very odd that the Primera brought such technology to Europe, where it was more like a five-minute fad (Mondeo Mk1, Dedra, some Imprezas).

Expand  

@HMC’s P11 has one because it’s an SLX. IIRC that and the non GT SE  were the only models where you could have a rear wiper - in the U.K.  Something like that, anyway.

I owned a JDM import 4dr saloon with an SR18DE automatic. That had a rear wiper.

I bought it for the folding door mirrors and black dash/door cards. The whole car was very different. Handbrake offset, digital climate control.It’s the only one I have ever seen that had plastic headlights. 

When I broke it for spares, I could barely get rid of the front bumper, bootlid etc. This is when the P11 was deeply uncool to most and the JDM thing wasn’t anywhere near as strong.

This thread takes me back. I was the first one to fit the P11-144 boot lid and tail lights to a P11e. Those ‘in the know’ said it wouldn’t fit. It was a facelift. Of course it would fit.

[Marm Toastsmith]

ah tottenham lidl. i know it well.

[HMC]

Our former keeper was truely skilled at sellotaping smashed up rear light clusters (and reversing into lampposts) think my first port of call will be some replacements
 

 

[wuvvum]

OK, so we've ascertained that it had a rear wiper from the factory, but is that wiper arm the original?  The angle looks very odd.

[HMC]

Agreed, it almost looks like a front wiper arm. Pass.