The 2000 Fuel Crisis

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Christ, was this 18 years ago? ????

 

It was pretty epic.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/924574.stm

[warren t claim]

Being a naughty taxi driver back then I was running a Montego Diesel and had a stash of about 50 gallons of red diesel bunkered in my shed. Not because of the fuel shortages but because I always ran on cherry back in those days.

[warren t claim]

It looks like the Montego thrived running on cherry. It outlasted my ownership by a couple of years.

 

 

Ex military police if you were wondering why it wasn't registered until 1999.

[New POD]

I'd just started a new job in Burnley with a return commute of 110 miles. I had an Ax1.4D for that so was expecting to be in the shit within days.

[solid61]

I was driving an Astra 1.7d at that time,L790JBM in carabic blue.Had 2x 205 litre barrels of white diesel in a mates garage so plenty fuel for me,driving about was great for a few weeks cos there was very little traffic on the roads.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

My 635CSi ran on LRP and 4-star leaded, so there were no queues for those!

[nigel bickle]

I filled my Buick Riviera (67 boattail) then used it to run various tinies.

 

Worked for me.

[Royale80]

My 635CSi ran on LRP and 4-star leaded, so there were no queues for those!

 

I had a 3500 SD1 manual at the time and ran that on lrp. Roads were nice and quiet and used to zoom past modern motors trying to conserve their petrol.

[Snipes]

Our works Transit is doing 150 miles a day currently - about 1/3rd tank a day. Paid for by the office, though I have to wonder how they're making any money on the job.

 

Imagine that during a fuel crisis!

[Timewaster]

Working in the spares place, we sold hundreds and hundreds of plastic petrol cans.

 

Which is odd, as there was nothing available to put in them!

[Jerzy Woking]

I worked for an "essential service" so could obtain fuel for my job car at any station by showing my work ID. Girl living next door to me had a BMW M3, so I took that a few times to fuel up for her. Was only allowed a maximum of about £15 I think, hence the need to take it a few times. It did go well!

[Richard]

The main effect, which I suspect was the intention all along, was that it finished off all the small petrol stations and left the supermarkets free to jack up the prices as much as they wanted.

[eddyramrod]

We had a Lada Riva and a Proton, both 1.3; and my first Cadillac, the 7-litre 1979 Fleetwood.  Which was the only one with any petrol in it, because I'd filled it up just before the news broke, and it promptly decided to FTP.  After a few days I managed to fix it, which meant I could drive around in the Cadillac while everyone else was walking!

[Mr A Lawrence]

I was running a cbr600f back then so 4* saw me rocking along.

 

I worked in a bike shop then next to a shell garage and the biker owner let us jump the queue with a handful of 5ltr cans to keep everything running. 

 

Can't imagine anything like that week happening again  with the terror laws in place. 

[Shep Shepherd]

As soon as I saw the protesters gathering at Stanlow refinery on News At Ten, I drove my Rover 214Si (L913 OWG) to Whitfield Services and filled its tank to the brim. As my commute was only a four mile round trip at the time, I was fully mobile for the duration

[Bren]

We had an E reg granada 2.9 ghia x.

 

I liked driving past the lines of angry motorists and filling up with LRP 'cos there was no one at the pump.

[bolognasal spray]

carabic blue.

 

read that as cardiac blue for a second there

[egg]

I drove my Uno FIRE around very slowly, and was also mobile for the duration.

[GrumpiusMaximus]

My Mum stopped taking me to school.  So I had to walk.  That continued for the four years I was there and did me an absolute World of good.

 

The worst thing was that I played Rugby on Saturdays and Sundays and the first bit of the walk to school was a up a steep hill.  My legs felt like burning every Monday morning.  The walk back was also uphill, apart from the last bit back down the steep hill.  There was a fuckoff hill on the way back that when I felt particularly energetic, I would run up.

 

I'm a fat bastard now.  Where did I go wrong?!

[Richard]

I was, and still am, convinced that LRP would have been fine for cats, what with it not having lead in it.

[bramz7]

I wasn't driving as I was 8, but we lived opposite a BP in Slough and I remember it being non stop traffic in and out.

My parents commute to work was a staircase downstairs, as we lived above the shop at the time, so the car probably didn't even use any fuel during the whole crisis.

[bolognasal spray]

I couldn't remember what I was driving - I thought it was my Cordoba beige mkii escort (skinned sills), but mrs B says it was my mk v escort 1.8 LX which looked a bit like this and got nicked from outside our house (I never used to lock it - in fact I rarely lock any of my vehicles, which is stupid, wrong and unfathomable - for one thing, I've had several of them stolen, never returned, and also, insurance isn't going to pay out)

 

[M'coli]

I was alright, Jack - I had a mk2 Cavalier so it was given LRP and I had stuff in the cupboard that allowed me to bake my own bread.

[purplebargeken]

Nurse so just showed ID and off I went. 

 

I remember the first evening of it. I was riding something two wheeled, I just rode past all the cars and went to the nearest free pump. no-one in the vast queue of cars said anything at all lol. Now I'd likely get stabbed, shot and then stabbed again just because the shooting may not have been fatal. Oh how I yearn for the simple times. 

[barefoot]

I worked as a feeder despatcher for UPS at the time. There was a DAF 75 with twin fuel tanks which used to bring up the airtrailer from LHR and then refuel all of the smaller 45's and Sprinters. I used to have daily information as to where the nearest fuel was and working nights, used to nip out and fuel up during my break in the wee small hours. Never a bother to me.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Being a naughty taxi driver back then I was running a Montego Diesel and had a stash of about 50 gallons of red diesel bunkered in my shed. Not because of the fuel shortages but because I always ran on cherry back in those days.

Snap!

I took my Ullysee off the road and got my Montego Diesel ,that was rented out , back for the duration and discovered it ran great on red, cooking oil, paraffin , the odd gallon of LRP. Anything I could get my hands on.

Didn't seem to do it any harm, even at 250k miles, the driver that was renting it bought it off me and used it for at least another couple of years in Buckingham( no age limit)

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I had a 3500 SD1 manual at the time and ran that on lrp. Roads were nice and quiet and used to zoom past modern motors trying to conserve their petrol.

1983 520i on 4 star and a 1989 524td running on filtered cooking oil. Fuel crisis?

[Felly Magic]

I remember it well, in the September I was on the Isle of Wight for 2 weeks, and the hotel in Shanklin I was staying in, he knew the owners of the Nissan garage on the island that had a petrol station on, I had to go damn early on a morning to get petrol for when I was going home, the duration of the stay I used the grossly overpriced Southern Vectis bus service, I had a 1.3 Felicia GLX at the time, I also resorted that time to using my car as little as possible, even for work

[Tamworthbay]

My father in laws partner's mother died in the middle of it and lived at the far tip of South Wales. At the time he had a ropey old Volvo 760 that did about 20 to the gallon so He borrowed my Xantia which we loaded up with every petrol can we could find and pumped his tank out, begged borrowed and acquired enough to fill up about twenty gallons. He got down there no problem, they had to stay because of the fuel crisis and sorted the funeral and got back ok. If they had been rear ended it would have been a hell of a shit way to die.

[Datsuncog]

By September 2000, I'd sold my Datsun Sunny B11 Coupe as I couldn't afford the insurance renewal (quoted £2650 tpo) and my Viva HC was standing stripped and engineless on axle stands... so my sole transport was a BMX bike I'd built up from a frame I found in the skip at Halfords.

 

Consequently, the impact of the fuel protests on myself was minimal... I was in my own wee world at the time and had just had the telly nicked from the flat in Belfast, so although I had some vague notion of fuel issues, I was woefully underinformed.

 

Probably my main source of info was a flatmate who worked in the BP garage on the Lisburn Rd. I was just aware that people were Not Happy.