Jump to content

Worst place in the UK for finding decent shite


Lanciaman

Recommended Posts

My dad has this issue, he lives on north coast of Somerset, you can see Barry Island, it’s a few miles away though inconveniently the Bristol Channel is in between, Autotrader doesn’t recognise this so you see loads of cars for sale 15 miles away as the crow flies but a hundred mile round trip away by road. Where he lives is a rural area, people keep cars forever, not uncommon to see Mk4/5 Escorts, early Focuses, Orions, 91-98 Astras. You can’t be too picky though, cars usually end up for sale when someone has died or given up driving. On the whole they’re usually in good nick, low miles serviced on time at one of these back o’ the woods type garages. One that sticks in my mind was an early Mercedes 190, in hearing aid beige, on something like a B plate, you could see it’d been nowhere, an elderly couple had it, kept a tartan travel rug on the parcel shelf. No exaggeration here but it was immaculate, you could show it. Anyway things like that usually crop up when someone as I say packs in driving, usually the relatives don’t want the agg or have the means of putting it  on fleabay or the Trader, a bit antiquated but it might get advertised in the paper shop or passed on to someone they know for what you and I would call a pittance. Places like that can be a bit funny, they know the price of a sheep or a Land Rover but sometimes don’t put a big value on old cars. It’s like a sphere down there. That’s the type of motor you want to buy.

Conversely you don’t want to be travelling for hours to look at an absolute sack of shit on a sink estate outside Bradford. My sister in law had me look at a car for her ages ago, I just knew it was a heap of shit as she was telling me about it. So we trundled off down to Darnall which if you’ve been there you’ll know it makes Beirut look like a Pontins, it was up for sale behind this fucking supermarket, crap all over, the seller wouldn’t shut the fuck up while we were trying to look it over. With the same surety that it will go dark this evening it was a bag of shit, it cooked itself on the test drive despite the seller trying to guide us round the block in it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All my best buys have been London cars. However the 405 GRDT I got from Finsbury Park was chucking out smoke for ages on the way to (and probably around) the north circular as it hadn't been used much for ages. It did clear up though. 

I've also bought £200 Renault 19s from London, which incidentally was the best R19 I ever had. 

Lots of stuff seems to pop up in East Anglia and Kent which whilst still being sort of in the south, is miles away. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, rantingYoof said:

When @Supernaut and I went to the motorshow a few years back, which was sorely disappointing, we left the show and wandered the affluent streets in the area trying to spot superchod (i.e. things perfect for the low cost big liability thread). 

We weren't disappointed and after a few random streets were seeing stuff left right and centre (one particularly memory is of an entire street full of Range Rovers). 

However, the other thing we noticed at the time was that there were loads of mid to late 1990s and early 2000s generic tat about, often rust free but dented to fuck. Checking number plates later we noticed they all had silly low mileages and probably never left London, probably never getting out of third gear. A fair few Audi A2s, actually, which we both like.

It was a rather entertaining afternoon, until we got stopped by a private security person outside a particularly posh crescent of houses who suggested we delete the previous dozen photographs we'd taken in a way gave us the impression that, if we didn't, we would probably not be leaving London that day.

Legally on a public right of way security contractors cannot make you delete anything. They have no jurisdiction. Even the police can't.

Ask me how I know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, N19 said:

Arguably the best places will be city suburbs - where people don't use their car daily (they get the train/tube/bus etc) but still need one for supermarket trips etc, but as it gets used sporadically it lasts longer... whereas in provincial towns where *everything* assumes you have a car, people commute some distance daily etc, they're more likely to be replaced regularly.

They're the worst cars in my experience. Low miles but driven at slow speeds, not up to temperature and suspension parts battered on speed bumps. No need to be reliable or fully working as not relied on. As soon as you start using these cars more, everything starts to fail. 

It's why I avoid buying any car from inside major cities. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, puddlethumper said:

Legally on a public right of way security contractors cannot make you delete anything. They have no jurisdiction. Even the police can't.

Ask me how I know.

Legally maybe and can be ignored if you are bigger than them... which many of us aren't! Let's not forget they'll be used to dealing with the paparazzi too and they know the game much better. 

Is that a phone in your hand?

*Security grabs phone*

Oh dear you dropped it on the floor and it went down the drain! How annoying for you ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’d recommend the Isle of Wight for a spotting holiday. 
 

On the sales front things aren’t what they used to be 10 or so years ago here but it is still somewhat of a treasure trove for older cars. 
 

My Allegro has been on the Island all its life, I bought it from the original owner in 2014 who advertised in the local classifieds. 

 

 

B5D2296B-502F-49D1-B042-AA560AFEB819.jpeg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, puddlethumper said:

Legally on a public right of way security contractors cannot make you delete anything. They have no jurisdiction. Even the police can't.

Ask me how I know.

Absolutely. I've informed a neighbour this while working...they didn't like the fact their house was in my photograph of the house next door and demanded I delete the photo, but I said that I could reasonably photograph anything from the public realm, and then gave them my manager's direct dial and invited them to take it up with them. They declined.

This guy though...as @Supernaut said he was politely intimidating and had a manner about him that suggested he would have no issues doing it his own way if we declined. Which would be unlawful, obviously, but it wouldn't really matter to us if we were in the boot of a BMW 760iL on false plates :-D .

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, TheIsleofShite said:

My Allegro has been on the Island all its life, I bought it from the original owner in 2014 who advertised in the local classifieds. 

Wow that's a beauty. I love an Allegro. A trip to the island must be on the cards one day. I am in Kent but see very little of interest around here, for sale or not. I know that the complaint used to be that shows (remember them?) were always full of B's and Minors, but I even get pretty excited if I see either of those nowadays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hopefully Greater London doesn't become a bad place for buying, and also running, older cars.  If the ULEZ north and south circular extension remains the outer limit, there will still be plenty of areas in the suburbs to buy or spot tat (that's my wishful thinking anyway).  I'm sure a lot of the 80s and older stuff I spot outside the zone in the 'burbs doesn't go far anyway, or if it does it's always on a route across or out of the city.

As an aside, the V6 Laguna had lived all its life in Enfield, which struck me as odd seeing as it's a manual high performance car with a heavy-ish clutch, living in a congested area.  I can only assume the PO did lots of motorway driving, or just saved it for long trips, as it didn't have the look or feel of a car that'd just been used for shopping or popping to see auntie Vera 2 miles away.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Shite Ron said:

I live in South Wales and have only bought one car here I the last 10 or probably 20 years and that was my girlfriends modern BMW, the rest of the cars came from all over the country, drove the Granada home from Haywards Heath in February then bought two from Evesham which is pretty close at around 100 miles, most good cars seem to be in the South East, usually Essex or Kent. I think that wherever I lived it would end up being miles from where the car I wanted was but I have always travelled to buy cars and not restricted distance for the last 20 years at least.

Somebody many moons ago told me that all the clapped out shite that was traded in was dumped in South Wales auctions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I live in Leicestershire, sort of the middle of England, and it’s incredible how much chod there is about around here. A nice mix of rotters that old fogies keep alive and proper classics that are really loved. Quite lucky for car buying, really, and even though I live in the sticks a bit I’m surprised at some of the stuff in use locally.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, Bren said:

Somebody many moons ago told me that all the clapped out shite that was traded in was dumped in South Wales auctions.

Around 30 years ago, there was a man called Barton who sold cars from a yard well out of the way, He didn’t advertise and you would only find it by ‘word of mouth’ he sold mostly trade in’s from South Wales Car Discount, the yard was great, it was full of knackered cars, van’s , the odd boat  and a barn where his desk was with stables all around with horses in. It was always busy and you queued to ask the price of the cars you were interested in as they had no prices on. The place was amazing, I bought a few cars off him including a Mini Moke. I should have bought the mk2 Escort Mexico and kept it as an investment. Prices were well below auction price, all cash sold as seen.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Scotland/Dundee is terrible for chod but I see we've covered that a lot already.   The climate and the salt are terrible of course but it's also a pretty deep rooted disinterest in old cars and the recent past in general. It's not a recent phenomenon either. In the 90s when on holiday in Norfolk I was surprised to see Allegros in everyday use when normally I wouldn't see them outside the pages of Popular Classics.  

A car that's been in a Aberdeenshire field for a bit.

220109572_DSCF4100(1).thumb.JPG.6d7dd484f5f3d8093a2b96d90d589150.JPG

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We sold our passat on ebay to a couple from North Devon - they travelled to Warrington for a £1k car.

They explained that they had put a deposit on a similar car with a trader near to them - however he rang to cancel on the basis it had issues - like me, they agreed they had been gazumped - even though the car did have issues - door that would'nt unlock etc. They said there was fuck all for sale near them.

I think that good quality secondhand cars are getting harder to obtain - especially those around £1k - some people have no shame advertising scrap for a grand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Richard_FM said:

Certainly some interesting stuff on the roads in Stockport / South Manchester near where I live, I don’t keep too close an eye on what’s on the market.

East Manchester here. I never find interesting stuff for sale locally, and I don't spot much interesting about either. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Kringle said:

Southend-on-Sea area is utterly shit for this. Unless it's a 2010 white Qashqai, whatever it's called that you want then you're fucked. Get yourself near Romford and you might pickup a Nissan Primera woo hoo.

You must be blind, it's one of the best towns in the country for older cars!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm in Southampton.  No work at the moment so have been wandering around taking pictures to put on here eventually.  Been really surprised how much older stuff there is, though a lot of cars parked up with weeds growing currently.  Suspect that non taxed cars are being ignored for now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, Kringle said:

You must be buying them before me!

Are you from Southend? There’s older cars all over the place. Most of the very old stuff owned by giffers who keep hold of them forever but even so the local gumtree and Facebook selling sites are full of 1990s and 2000s stuff.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here’s my observations on the subject.

London, Surrey, the Isle of Wight and South Essex are great for Shite.

Most other places I’ve been in the country seem to range from acceptable to utterly piss poor.

Manchester was crap. I barely saw anything over 10 years old when I was there, same with Leeds and Nottingham.

East Anglia and North Essex doesn’t seem to have much older stuff. Neither does Wales apart from knackered farmers 4x4s.

Birmingham was acceptable, as was the West Country.

.The South coast was ok but seemed to get progressively more barren through Portsmouth, Hampshire until you get to Dorset which isn’t too bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It’s often easier to see interesting stuff if you get off the main roads. 

When I first started to see my wife I used to drive through a few mostly residential areas to get to my sister in laws house,  & often I would get to see some interesting cars I wouldn’t spot going on the motorway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've had it.  I'm in Aberdeenshire - not born and bred here - but the used cars for here - the selection is just utter shit.  Maybe cos interesting stuff rots away cos of the Council dumping tons of salt on the roads and the farmer fuckers add to it with a billlion tons of mud from their bastarding oversized tonkas.
Honestly,, take out 4x4 carp and german rubbish, it leaves 5% of stuff on gumtree.  I look with envy at you lot down south with lovely pickings of old shite.   Zero old citroen, peugeot, fiat, alfa.  Nothing.   Have a VW, Audi or some such white good. Ugh.
Stella and red wine not helping with this post, but anyone else rival up here for lack of interesting cars for sale???


They are about , have a rummage about Persley , plenty of Fiats , Fords , Pugs , Citroens etc , it’s just a matter of getting to them before their breakdown.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...