The old A13 dealers

[andrew e]

I had a stroll along the old A13 famous old heap Mecca last week. Little by little all the bomb sites are being back filled into flats and convince stores. Once prestigious dealers are now homes to purveyors of old knackers as the street scene changes slowly. All pictures shot in glorious grey damp-o-vision.

 

First off the pitch Dominic Littlewood made famous on the “Faking It” Vicar episode.

 

 

This has been a proper back street (yet in plain Main Street sight) garage for years - it’s days look numbered. There was a Early 90’s Passat in the back next to the Accord too. Bonus LDV Cub too.

 

 

The home of Westleigh Mazda - now the home of J Sainsbury’s. That corner shop opposite was the White walled Kia Pride franchise.

 

 

 

How about that view.... Goona’ love - £4999 for an 8 year old time bomb - spot the future shite DS5 in the background.

 

 

 

This was once a nearly new prestige specialist - be flats next year I’d guess.

 

 

Parkstone Suzuki franchise is now a Tesco... sold SEAT at one time.

 

 

 

Essex vulgarity all summed in a single picture! (Resale death red bit is mine).

 

[andrew e]

Getting a bit more interesting now, Estuary Cars had an Alpina D3 and a Capri 2.8 injection inside the showroom! A pair of Abarths on the front too!

 

 

However those after a great Sportscar with an AWFUL gearbox were in luck!

 

 

On the other side of the road (BONUS: C5 missing plates!)

 

 

Round the back they had these beauties - A priceless (literally no price) Fiat Uno...

 

 

AND A MILLENIUM FOCUS WITH CATS PROTECTION LEAGUE STICKERS. Da bomb eh? Two stickers in the windscreen alone I got quite emotional at this point, and then scarpered before the dealer battered me.

 

 

 

[andrew e]

Next up Continental Cars, now just Mental Cars as the Focus CC Nissan Z and MG6 confirm.

 

 

 

Could the stock levels get any worse? Yes they could:

 

 

This has been like this years was a Nissan franchise (possibly Glynn Hopkin in the end) but I’m sure it was an actual Octav Botnar AFG Nissan once. Bonus blurry shots of an Sunny.

 

 

 

[andrew e]

Hmmm might need to stand upside down for Mrs E helpful in car action above.... Still more to come!

[andrew e]

Next a deviation of the old A13 into Leigh. Randomly every pitch in the area seems to stock an odd model - New shape Tigra’s on every pitch at one time, another time it was fully loaded Peugeot 307 SW. in February 2018 its the FIAT 500.

 

I have proof:

 

 

This delightful gaff still has its foldy front doors. 20 years ago my one time boss and delivery miles Ford stockpiler Rod Allen owned it. 20 years before that it was purportedly the original Fairfield BMW showroom.

 

 

I was running out time for my next port of call, so garage watch got put on hold. Still I managed to spot the only RHD Punto van not in Ireland:

 

 

 

I spotted this Barn Find Hijet too - you WILL find the contents of a barn in it.

 

[andrew e]

My final stop off was one of the better pitches on the strip... was....

 

 

 

 

Still at least I found an autoshite pain killer a few minutes later!

 

[bramz7]

Neat, this is actually an interesting thread to see.

 

I don't see many dive car dealers in London at all now, but some that spring to mind are:

 

MAC Motors in Tooting. Old Reliant dealer still selling some choice tat right outside.

 

Gilberts Honda, Catford. Old Honda specialist who sell some ancient Civics out front, but they have an E Type inside! Still have (or had) branded Actys. 

 

Baileys of Wimbledon. I only discovered this one today but they had a friggin Daewoo Korando out front for £3995. 

[bunglebus]

The dealers in Southend were always a bit posh for me - I prefered Chase Autos in Ramsden Heath or one of the even dodgier car sales/salvage places along their approach road. £125 MK1 Fiesta in multiple shades of terracotta with evidence of at least three previous shunts a highlight.

[lesapandre]

They are still about in London...I popped into one recently to look at an old Citroen...had a water leak...they said...yea through the head gasket...funny how the always know so little about cars. Tried to sell me a Mondeo based on something to do with CO2 and the Congestion Charge. They lost me there as I'm immune to any car built after 1995...but the patter was faultless.

[Kringle]

I used to spend my weekend as a kid riding up and down that road! Looking for brochures from the main dealers. My little girl got her first scar falling and hitting her chin on the concrete floor of that orchard establishment. Its now someones kitchen. Sad times...

[trigger]

I remember back in the day the Autotrader magazine and a local free garage magazine you could get was always full of dealers from London Road in Leigh on Sea, there always seemed to be hundreds of them!

 

I bought this ST24 around 2008 time from Parkstone Seat, I'm sure the garage who sold it before, Nova car sales, was also a few doors up too. I remember when me and my mate drove down to collect it there was garages literally everywhere.

 

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

 

...is that a RED FUCKING CLIO?

[andrew e]

Trigger Estuary Cars was (is?) Nova car sales:

 

http://old-things.co.uk/?tag=1751-london-road

[timolloyd]

There's a cluster of 3/4 of these all next door together on an industrial estate in Chessington. Cars are nose to tail 5 deep in each compound, ranging from £500 (shite) through to £4000 (time bomb material). They almost all have terrible bodywork masked with crap repairs and little or nothing to recommend them.

 

 

 

 

 

But I do love to check them out anyway!

[Parky]

Mr E, we should do a gentlemans tour of the fine dealers of Chadwell Heath and Seven Kings when it's not so darn cold.

 

Start at Allen Fords in Romford and work towards the City kinda thing?

[andrew e]

Mr E, we should do a gentlemans tour of the fine dealers of Chadwell Heath and Seven Kings when it's not so darn cold.

Start at Allen Fords in Romford and work towards the City kinda thing?

That does sound rather promising I’d be up for that!

[artdjones]

This is like City Road in Cardiff.It once had around 70 car & motorcycle dealers on it now there's just one.It's less than a mile long! Now full of takeaways because that area of town is studentland these days.

[Lord Sterling]

I've just been lamenting this. Those parts of England were once really very interesting parts of the world, dripping in the sweat of (dis)honest graft, a dirty, untidy place but somehow still beautiful in its own existance and a place of opportunity for others. Untaxed/uninsured cars hidden up side streets awaiting thier turn on the lot or over the auction block. It was a sight of real (dis)honest graft and place of real community.

 

Yet now what? What have they become? A staid, stale, boring town of flatpack pop-up flats and convenience stores. The lure of out-of-towners with thier busy city lives claiming space within these parts and the (dis)honest grafters of yesteryear shoved into a corner to be forgotton about, never to be remembered, thier past erased. Thier old dealerships and garages boarded up, lock up and demolished to make way for the new, the staid, the boring and for those who conform to the ideal life; in turn created by those whp don't know what real life was ever like. They (the councillors and developers) call it "reeeegeneration!" Peppering thier words with "creating jobs" "new opportunities" and "wealth". I call it a staid, boring and a cheap development creating slave-like jobs serving the slave-like consumer. No more creative/fast thinking trading.

 

Longbridge itself has become nothing more than consumer town of flatpack houses and shops with a smattering of low-paid slave-like jobs created.

 

But as long as we're keeping up appearences eh lads? As long as boxes have been ticked, targets have been reached and papers exchanged through various departments yeah?

 

Yep, this is England today chaps, a sad tale of looking back on yesteryear victories, yesteryear happiness and yesteryear ways of surviving. No more can we see the bombsite dealers, no more Arthur Daley types trying to make a few risky quids. The creative, vibrant and risky trade has all but died down. The second-hand car market to the likes of you and me is dead. It has been taken over by staid, boring shiny big-money "car supermarkets" and dealer stock specialising in "approved used" with shiny suits, shiny promises, shiny deals that look good on the outside. Yeah we'll probably be robbed a few months/years down the line but its all about the here and now. Why? Because the consumer has been shepherded in this direction. Taught that that is the way forward. Pretend to others that you have a great life when in fact inside you're drowning in debt, worry and self pity. But hey, it's all about the looks eh!

 

The £100 cars are scrapped without a second thought, otherwise they end up on the likes of "Gumtree" or somesuch social-media website.

 

----

 

My memories...

 

As a kid, I remember there being a town in Brussels that contained such a road. Rue de Liverpool in Anderlecht. A vibrant street of dark old crumbling building and immigrant Arabs, Africans and the odd Russian all jostling to buy and sell whatever old car was 'hot' at the time. Many of the crumbling buildings had large old wooden doors that lead to the yards at the rear, you could fit a few cars in there so many of the yards at the rear of the buildings had been converted into roofed 'dealerships' you'd see the noses of car of the day popping out, behind it would be a line of other cars waiting to be sold. Often the line would contain E34 5-series' E32 7-series, E36 3-series', Audi 80s/100s, W124 Mercs, I'd jump in and out of each car dreaming of owning one one day, I loved the smell of the rich leather seats and the build quality etc.... other cars such as the Renault Savanna/25s, Citroen BXs, Volvo 700s etc would be shooting up and down the street (often not wearing number plates) being sold from one street dealer to the next.

 

On my holidays from school/college, old_Man Sterling would spend a lot of time here as would I. We spent a lot of time at 'Cafe Lillo' which was a darkly, dank old cafe old by a grumpy looking old pot-bellied Italian called Lillo who seemed to wear the same clothes everyday, the cafe was decorated with that fake plasticy wood you'd normally find in old greasy spoons, it also had an old discoloured Billiards Table in the middle. Still, it was a warm place where we could sit and watch the Arabs and Africans (and the odd Russian) desperately buying and selling the next hot car to make a of a cut on it. Outside Cafe Lillo's were a bunch of dank parked up cars usually owned by a street trader awaiting to be sold. We'd sometimes pop to one of the local mosques aswell where we'd meet some other traders.

 

The Arabs had a particular well-turned out look to them, always wearing shirts, jumpers and pleated neat trousers with expensive looking shoes, a large brick (usually an Ericsson GH337) mobile phone wrapped in a snazzy leather case either in one hand or srapped to the belt. The snobbier Arabs who had the converted garages wore suit jackets, the cupboards were turned into offices where they had thier desks, reams of paperwork, leather sofas for thier clients/fellow traders to relax in and the usual office furniture.

 

I remember a large part of being there drinking the really nice Hot Chocolate as the old_man would be talking business with his fellow Arabs, thier brick Ericsson GH337 mobile phone sat on thier sides awaiting a call from the next buyer/seller of these often dank vehicles that were being traded. It was a really interesting time for me, I had an insight into a great little world that will probably never be experienced ever again.

 

Towards the final times of me visting the place (life was changing) an old abandoned building was bought and converted into Police station, as word got around the trading slowly began to slow down and stop. The links were broken and frequent visits to Lillos cafe began to stop.

 

I visited this once vibrant place of trade has slowed and shut down a lot. The surface of the street has changed to cobbles and parking has been 'uniformed' and generally 'gentrified'. Cafe Lillo looked shut the last time I passed by, but Google Earth suggests its just had quite a make over. Some remnants from the old times still remain like Azab Cars, Amouri Cars, Abou Zeid cars etc... still remain but probably not really trading at the levels they used to.

 

And to think I onced dreamed of being a back-street car dealer....

 

This is like City Road in Cardiff.It once had around 70 car & motorcycle dealers on it now there's just one.It's less than a mile long! Now full of takeaways because that area of town is studentland these days.

Penarth Road in Cardiff is a still quite vibrant with car activity, inside the market section there are still dodgy-looking car body shops and the like.

[Kringle]

Poetry

And I thought the original thread post was good...

[bunglebus]

I should have bought the £80 2.0 auto Ital being punted on a forecourt in Hornchurch way back when...

[carlo]

This thread just seems to sum up the misery of contemporary British urban architecture and the British weather.  Maybe in fifty years someone will look back nostalgically at that picture of the white van outside an abandoned dealership and go "aah!"  (?)

[martc]

No1 daughters final year history dissertation was looking for evidence of the blitz on Hull. Two prominent features were bombsite car dealers, still trading in 2017.

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.7616564,-0.3502916,3a,36.9y,216.58h,92.05t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szLYbFk4ViqtT-uU8wCSVOw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

 

and

 

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.7588949,-0.3492685,3a,75y,247.89h,97.93t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfdjldyoqTyloNV1pp7harg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

[Ghosty]

Wonderful post, LS.

[Angrydicky]

Ah yes, memories of my childhood eyeing up all the tat on the front of those dealers. There's a few more up around the Elms pub you haven't got to yet!

 

That closed down former Glyn Hopkin Nissan dealership is actually a very old building under the ugly modern hoardings, and was formerly the Stuart & Ardern Morris dealership which opened in the 1930s.

 

I wish I'd got some pictures of when the former Geoff Bray Vauxhall dealership on Milton Road was knocked down. It was a building covered in ugly modern hoardings and, although I knew it was the site of Jessups and, up to the 1970s, Woodyatts Vauxhall, I didn't know the building was the same one. Well, once the hoardings were removed, they exposed some beautiful art deco tiling, an old window and the outline of 'Woodyatts' going downwards on this kind of tower on the northeastern corner of the building, which had clearly once been the main entrance. Of course it got flattened for houses. Such a waste.

[lesapandre]

Yea its worth photographing the garages that remain about the place. Really good stuff can disappear so fast.

[tooSavvy]

Whessoe Road, Darlington...

 

... for those who know it ...

 

 

TS

[PiperCub]

Lord Stirling: Pretend to others that you have a great life when in fact inside you're drowning in debt, worry and self pity. But hey, it's all about the looks eh!

 

Sadly that kind of sums up modern life for most under 30/35 years old. It's mainly show and image - 'Look at how successful I am with my posh apartment, my gadgets, multiple holidays a year and flashy new car etc' - well yes, you look impressive but the you finance this life style with a credit debt the size if a small country and the car and flat are both rented! You don't really own anything!  - But as you say, it all looks good.

 

An excellent strategy to keep the masses enslaved to debt, keep them scared to lose their jobs so keep them under control. 

[andrew e]

Been looking for another picture but dredged my own files and found some dealerships from 8 years ago.

 

 

Tesco Express as then and now - I think you can just make the SEAT sign out too.

 

 

 

[andrew e]

O.C. Motors is still going:

 

 

*BONUS ROUND*

 

 

[andrew e]

Back to the café....