80’s and 90’s stuff that was unsalable

[Richard_FM]

The alfasuds were notorious for rusting quickly which was a shame because even the cooking ones handled nicely.

[Inspiral_Mondays]

3 hours ago, Richard_FM said:

I guess the cortinas didn’t have the prestige compared to the smaller BMW’s & Mercedes around at the time.  Was the rover sd1 mentioned?

Common sense would dictate that it was, but I honestly can‘t remember. I remember the other cars being listed  because:

-My dad in his patriotic efforts to support the British car industry owned a Maxi, his second in fact.

- I knew someone who had bought a new Polonez and it was a truly dreadful vehicle, I can still remember the smell of the interior.

- I nearly bought a used Lancia Beta before realising that, as good to drive as it was, buying a dissolving car was not a good idea.

- The Sierra had just been launched and was receiving huge criticism from Cortina owners who missed the four square styling, so it was a surprise to find there was a dog in the Cortina range.

 

[Steve79]

19 hours ago, Richard_FM said:

VW Golf Mk2 1050cc is called a bad joke on one of the bangernomics sites, though I guess a 3 door would be wanted these days for the body shell to turn into a GTi replica.

 

Didn't these have the 4+E gearbox? 

[rantingYoof]

BMW 518. 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/bmw/5-series/first-drives/bmw-518d-saloon-first-drive-review

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

[Scruffy Bodger]

The Espace Quadra. My old man nearly bought one new out the showroom but baulked at the end due to the price. He had 6 of us and a Wolfhound to lug about at weekends so opted for an H reg 505 GTD as it seemed the safer bet and was cheaper.

[xtriple]

Mk1 and 2 Escorts! seems strange now when they are worth mega-coin but there was a time when they had to be sub £200 to sell the bastards, even if they had 12 months ticket and a bit of rent.

[Richard_FM]

 

26 minutes ago, xtriple said:

Mk1 and 2 Escorts! seems strange now when they are worth mega-coin but there was a time when they had to be sub £200 to sell the bastards, even if they had 12 months ticket and a bit of rent.

Yes it was in the late 1980s that they were cheap & no one was yet nostalgic for the 1970s.

[artdjones]

33 minutes ago, xtriple said:

Mk1 and 2 Escorts! seems strange now when they are worth mega-coin but there was a time when they had to be sub £200 to sell the bastards, even if they had 12 months ticket and a bit of rent.

Most people recognized their true status then.That's to say crude rustbuckets that were built down to a price.

[rickvw72]

Stuff that was very cheap for ages:

205 / 309 GTi

Golf GTI (I paid 200 for mine, still got it now)

Rover R8s, I used to run these as daily’s, must have had every spec going and none were more than 200 quid.

Had a few 700/ 900 Volvos, had a legal Wentworth turbo estate and paid 150 quid.

My brother had a 2 grand Sapphire Cossie, struggled to sell it a few years later for 3.5 grand (after loads of work)

couldn’t give away:

Renault 19 16v, Allegros, Metros and Maestros, Any Daewoo, Sierra XR4i and 4x4, Carltons and Senators. Mk 2 Granada’s were cheap for years too, wanted the old man to get a V6 Ghia X estate, always 2-3 in local paper less than 500 quid.

[rickvw72]

Just found a pic of the 2 grand Cosworth!

4x4, with black leather and 330bhp.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

2 hours ago, Steve79 said:

Didn't these have the 4+E gearbox? 

I think it was 3+E, where there was a big gap between 3rd and effectively an overdrive 4th.

[Timewaster]

Re Cosworths:

There were loads about the £3 - 4k mark but they were as rough as anything. 

I paid £5500 for mine in 2003

My mechanic mate bought a really clean series 1 RS Turbo for £1900 in about 99

[Inspiral_Mondays]

37 minutes ago, artdjones said:

Most people recognized their true status then.That's to say crude rustbuckets that were built down to a price.

I had a Mk2 1.3L as my first car and my mum had a 1.1 base and a 1.1 Popular Plus. I don‘t get the nostalgia for these things. Admittedly they looked nice for the time, were easy to drive and simple to fix, but they were unreliable, rusted like hell and gave the impression of being thrown together.

[Walter White]

I had a short spell trying to sell used cars at a Ford dealership in 1999/2000. 

A customer came in with a Mahindra Jeep. It took him three visits to get a deal on an Escort. Then Escort values were falling swiftly as Focus made Escort look very ordinary. 

The Mahindra was destined to be the company car of the worst preforming sales person. 

It could have been mine but I left before it was rehomed. 

I seem to remember the trade and certainly the dealer I was at either not pricing or offering very low values on Daewoos. The reason given was that the original purchase price of the Daewoo included 5 (I think) years of servicing, so once 5 years old, all used up so what is the car actually worth? 

May just have been the trade's reaction to the no haggle, no commission Daewoo method of selling cars. 

Mind you Daewoo used CAP black book rather than Glasses guide. Then CAP was reckoned to give lower values than Glasses guide. Not a bad wheeze, offer bottom book from CAP and sell every new Daewoo full up, thanks to "No Haggle". 

[Tamworthbay]

14 minutes ago, Inspiral_Mondays said:

I had a Mk2 1.3L as my first car and my mum had a 1.1 base and a 1.1 Popular Plus. I don‘t get the nostalgia for these things. Admittedly they looked nice for the time, were easy to drive and simple to fix, but they were unreliable, rusted like hell and gave the impression of being thrown together.

Three letters - RWD, the low power helped in way as they were less wayward than the Capri I started in but anyone could feel like a Scandinavian rally driver at 20mph on a wet roundabout or gravel car park. I have another Capri now and can’t wait to get it back on the road, I would love another Escort but wouldn’t pay the premium.

As a slight aside, if anyone knows Little Eaton near Derby, as you go inTo the village from the A38 roundabout end there is a left turn, on the corner there is a bit of grass, a dip and then a house (used to be the vicarage, might still be), on the wall to the side of the house is some Ford signal yellow paint. It was put there by my mate Dave Baker in 1989 when his recently acquired (six days before) and long saved up for RS2000 sadly showed how tail happy and distinctly different to his Russett brown mini it was. The paint is still there 30 years later. The car was written off and Dave escaped serious injury with a large dent in the roof where the head of a lamp post hit the car on its way to the wall. We fitted some of the bits into the mate who lived in Little Eaton’s 5 door escort and hand painted it yellow.

[Justin Case]

Hyundai Stellar. Wind the clock back to 1992. £2000 min part exchange for literally anything MOT or not on an £8000 car. Not quite as good as the FSO Caro though. A couple of years later I went to the importers in Stafford, (looking for a trailer) and they were knocking them out BOGOF ? No wonder every taxi in Telford was one for a couple of years.

[Richard_FM]

I imagine the rwd Hyundai ponys lost value quickly especially as they were already a 7 year old design by the time the were launched in the uk.

[warren t claim]

Any big car without PAS, even the Granada 2.0i Ghia lacked it on early models.

Rover SD1 2300/2600 liked to depreciate.

Citroen CX and XM had little used value.

All big Jap stuff used to pass through the auction ring with no interest. Toyota Crown/Nissan 260 or 300C.

Any manual with a Getrag 5 speed dog leg first gearbox.

[Ghosty]

On 2/23/2020 at 12:55 AM, HMC said:

BMW 525IX (4x4- do any they exist still?)

BMW tried to reclaim any and all the iX spec cars they could for research purposes iirc. In any case, they were immensely rare in the UK from the start, probably only a few hundred brought in. 

[eddyramrod]

On 2/23/2020 at 9:31 PM, Inspiral_Mondays said:

 I don‘t get the nostalgia for these things. Admittedly they looked nice for the time, were easy to drive and simple to fix, but they were unreliable, rusted like hell and gave the impression of being thrown together.

Oh thank goodness it's not just me!  Virtual hug, brother!

Thrown together?  That wasn't just an impression, it's how they were turned out between strikes.  None of the workforce (or, indeed, management) gave a damn.  RWD is the best, in so many ways, but the car around it has to have some merit, surely?  Escorts just... didn't.  Not the ones the public could buy, anyway.

[motorpunk]

12 hours ago, rickvw72 said:

Just found a pic of the 2 grand Cosworth!

4x4, with black leather and 330bhp.

Yoinks!

[Sir Snipes]

4 hours ago, Ghosty said:

BMW tried to reclaim any and all the iX spec cars they could for research purposes iirc. In any case, they were immensely rare in the UK from the start, probably only a few hundred brought in. 

I use to know a BMW specialist near Hemel Hempstead and said he use to see them all the time. This was only about ten years ago.

[Richard_FM]

7 hours ago, warren t claim said:

Any big car without PAS, even the Granada 2.0i Ghia lacked it on early models.

Rover SD1 2300/2600 liked to depreciate.

Citroen CX and XM had little used value.

All big Jap stuff used to pass through the auction ring with no interest. Toyota Crown/Nissan 260 or 300C.

Any manual with a Getrag 5 speed dog leg first gearbox.

The rover 6 cylinder engines had a lot of problems with oil flow & were often bodged to try to sort it out.

The big Citroens always seemed to need servicing at a dealer to keep them running right, which was expensive to keep doing.

I presume some of the bigger Japanese cars ended up being exported or banger raced.

I presume that’s where the odd gears are at the bottom of the shift & evens and reverse at the top.

 

 

[Marsh]

19 hours ago, Inspiral_Mondays said:

Vaguely remember reading an article in a car magazine in the early 80s about the most unwanted trade-ins. The ones that stuck in my mind were the Austin Maxi, FSO Polonez, Lancia Beta and, rather surprisingly, the Ford Cortina 2.3.

As a car mad youngster I could never understand why the Cortina 2.3 was no quicker than the 2.0 despite having a chunk more power and torque.

Apparently they had longer gear ratios which dulled the acceleration. Throw in the much worse fuel consumption and significantly higher purchase price and you can see why they weren't all that popular.

Id still quite like a late 2.3 Ghia manual though...

[NorfolkNWeigh]

I've had 2 2.3 Ghia Cortinas and 3 Sierras, as you say not really any quicker than a 2.0, especially as most ( and all of mine ) were autos.

But they just felt a bit special  and sounded fast! They made great towcars and I never had any trouble selling any of mine on. 

Just remembered that I towed the RS2000 that my mate bought in 1987 , and still owns,  back from Birmingham on a rented 4 wheel car trailer , with my second Cortina . It was a very late ( V reg)  Mk4 in Gold with a brown vinyl roof and Capri Laser wheels. Swapped it for a 2.8 GL Granada estate when my oldest daughter was born.

[Marsh]

2 minutes ago, NorfolkNWeigh said:

I've had 2 2.3 Ghia Cortinas and 3 Sierras, as you say not really any quicker than a 2.0, especially as most ( and all of mine ) were autos.

But they just felt a bit special  and sounded fast! They made great towcars and I never had any trouble selling any of mine on. 

Just remembered that I towed the RS2000 that my mate bought in 1987 , and still owns,  back from Birmingham on a rented 4 wheel car trailer , with my second Cortina . It was a very late ( V reg)  Mk4 in Gold with a brown vinyl roof and Capri Laser wheels. Swapped it for a 2.8 GL Granada estate when my oldest daughter was born.

Yes the V6 did sound nice. I had a 2.3GL Granada for a bit. A mobile mechanic I knew dropped a 2.8i engine into his Cortina Ghia, complete with Cortina 2.8i Ghia badge. 

I've always had a thing for MK4/5 Cortinas probably as they were everywhere when I was a kid.

[LoftyvRS]

I used to run a company car fleet of about 350 cars between 1991 and 2001 and we used to bulk buy all sorts of misery for the drivers, Predominantly a Ford and Vauxhall fleet we soon adopted a diesel only policy when co2 based taxation came in during the early 90's so the fleet choice list was quite grim back then, starting with...

Corsa B 1.5 d Merit 3dr - No PAS, no radio, no rear wash, just 5 gears and a set of door locks! Izuzu 1.5 n/a dizzler which wasn't a bad drive once the heavy steering had been overcome

Astra Mk3 1.7 d Merit 3dr - No PAS, but did have an airbag!! Vauxhalls own n/a 1.7d which then became the LPT 1.7d later down the line

Cavalier mk3 1.7d Envoy 4dr - At least this got PAS, decent drive if very pedestrian!

 

All the above used to struggle to fetch what we thought as good money at the end of 4yrs 80k, by which time cars were getting better and better and these early diesels hung about for ages.

Saying that I do get why the AS population would get excited about base spec 90's motors, they were of a simpler age. Quite fancy a Corsa B 1.5 TD myself one day....

 

 

[CortinaDave]

On 2/23/2020 at 1:31 AM, ruffgeezer said:

How has nobody mentioned the Chrysler Neon yet? Fucktacular.

The old man upstairs from me gave up driving in about 2010 and spent the next year trying to get a grand for his S reg Neon in green.

He asked me if I was interested and I told him it wasnt my thing.

" too big an engine for you son I take it" he said.

This despite me sitting in my Sd1 3500 vanden plas at the time of this conversation.

The scrappy ended up taking it away.

[sierraman]

12 minutes ago, CortinaDave said:

The old man upstairs from me gave up driving in about 2010 and spent the next year trying to get a grand for his S reg Neon in green.

He asked me if I was interested and I told him it wasnt my thing.

" too big an engine for you son I take it" he said.

This despite me sitting in my Sd1 3500 vanden plas at the time of this conversation.

The scrappy ended up taking it away.

You me neighbour sounds like a right billy big bollocks. ?

He obviously thought you weren’t man enough for the 112bhp or whatever it develops! 

[Justin Case]

Is there a modern equivalent?  All the Eastern European shite has gone, and now they make other countries  models in their factories.  Some cars like the Fiat Tipo appear to lose value alarmingly but you could get the basic model for £10k a couple of years ago, so the present price of £7k means a loss of only 30% in the real world. So is there anything still available new today that is so grim that dealers run into their portacabins and hide behind their bunting when one looms up on their forecourt?