The grumpy thread

[John F]

^ OK Louise, I'll summarise them for you...  Savvy has just bought a Toyota

 

Re. "this site isn't what it used to be", etc, it's a simple fact of life that many unpopular / unloved cars become cheap old snotters, and that's where bangernomics meets Autoshite. And even the bangernomics roadwhores will eventually disappear - when's the last time anyone saw a Mk 1 Mondeo or a Calibra in the wild? - whereupon all of a sudden they're Autoshite.

 

That guest chappy was wrong to just whine about the state of the site though, if he didn't like the state of things in here at the moment he should have taken the initiative & posted up some quality content instead.

[Captain Furious]

I actually spotted a Mk1 Mondeo yesterday for sale at Newark.  I never imagined that one day my attention would be drawn to a car like that because "you don't see them much any more"  Was a very nice one too, for sale for £700-odd if I recall.

 

A lot of cars from my era seemed to become extinct almost overnight, no doubt in part because of the scrappage scheme, but also because the easy availability of lease and finance deals mean just about anyone can have a new car, and fewer seem to be interested in old ones.  Even without the scrappage scheme they'd rather chop in perfectly good cars for next to nothing and drive away in a new or nearly new car, and not always without good reason.

 

A guy I know who drinks in my local had a beautiful MGZT in metallic blue.  It was an 02, he'd owned it from 12 months old and it was immaculate.  One day I noticed it had disappeared and a Focus 1.0 ecoboost appeared in its place, the Rover never re-appeared so I asked him about it, he'd chopped it in for £200 against the Focus!  Why?  Because it was coming up on needing a cam belt. 

 

And this is the other problem I think, people either aren't interested in working on their own cars any more (which causes them to buy new ones) or modern cars are now so complex that what would previously have been a DIY fix is now too much to for your average DIY mechanic to take on, meaning enormous garage labour costs that make it prohibitively expensive to keep them on the road (so they go and buy new cars)  Hell, many people get rid as soon as its due its first MOT

 

So if you're smart\brave\stupid enough you can pick these cast-off cars up and either fearlessly wring the last throws of life from them - I mean, they say  it needs a cambelt, but that's not to say it might carry on for another 80,000 miles right?  - Or you crack open the Halfords professional socket set and have a go yourself.

[Captain Furious]

Also, a proportion of Mk1 Mondeo's probably fell victim to classic Ford owners looking to stuff a pre-pats zetec into every Mk1\2 Escort in the land

[cort16]

I like cars. Old ones, new ones, shite ones, shiney ones. One's built this century, ones built last century. I find the cars and stories attached to them interesting. 

 

It's not like the site is filled with 900 page threads on someone detailing their Mondeo it's all pretty on topic. If it was someone battling to fit a 2nd hand Turbo to it then I'd be interested.

In fact the bleating on about it gets a bit Zzzz to be honest.

[Captain Furious]

YES!  Exactly that, cars are a bit like music, I can't pigeon hole my taste in music to a particular genre, because I like such a massive variety of stuff - same with cars.   And this is the only place I know of that you can read about 2CV's and Rolls Royces on the same page. 

 

Plus I can live out my V12 owning fantasies through other people and maybe try to talk myself out of doing it one day. 

[fordperv]

I just hate how the cars I love have become scene so command much more money than they are actually worth because people want to look cool, the same people would have slated you 8 years back for driving the same car, who's cool now dimwits

[gordonbennet]

Christ yes, this a broad church, lets be honest half of us are borderline bloody bonkers, the other half completely gaga.

 

Some of us spend and have spent fortunes on cars that maybe deserved it maybe didn't.

Some run almost exotic and stupidly wallet draining real cars that would put the fear of God up most, but our heroes here just go and do it.

Some run any old bloody cheap chod that keeps going.

Some change cars more often than i do me socks.

Some are cantakerous buggers whom would argue the world is flat.

 

We all like different aspects of owning older cars, some things we agree on some we don't, we all get teased now and again about our chod, either its not old enough or it's been too well cared for, and Heaven forbid someone actually restores a car or they'll never hear the end of it.

 

Long may at all continue.

 

However all moderns are shit.

[John F]

None of this really matters.

 

Most people that own a true AS icon are likely to have at least one newer car as well, and this is likely to be a 12-year old bangernomics snotter that may well end up being one of the few survivors of its ilk thanks to any support found on this site.

 

Personally, I'm trying to gather up enough mojo to fettle my LT camper to a level where I'm happy to sell it, and then have another go at finishing the welding on my bloody Maserati. Or fit the 3.0 V6 to my Calibra. But other life stuff gets in the way, it's not always possible for people to keep supplying a regular input of interesting* threads.

[Richard]

That van looks ok.

There's not a single fixture inside it, I think it's been a donor for a camper conversion. Even the skylight and vent grilles have gone.

[mercrocker]

I actually spotted a Mk1 Mondeo yesterday for sale at Newark.  I never imagined that one day my attention would be drawn to a car like that because "you don't see them much any more"  Was a very nice one too, for sale for £700-odd if I recall.

 

 

This pretty much sums up where I am heading to when it comes to shite cars...

 

Never would in a million years have wanted a Mondy, but a giffer-gaffer taped doom blue Mk1  for the right money could just find its way into my parking space as a winter shitter. 

 

As alluded to in various other threads the "scene Tax" or whatever you choose to call it that blights anything 25 years old means that I am not going to shit a grand or more on a fucked 80s car just to keep myself dry in the winter.   Far better to spend half that on an X reg FWD nightmare and hope to get  a bit back at the end without getting all emotionally entangled with it.

[Captain Furious]

I just hate how the cars I love have become scene so command much more money than they are actually worth because people want to look cool, the same people would have slated you 8 years back for driving the same car, who's cool now dimwits

I'm not sure when exactly it happened, but it seems to be fairly recently that the concept of "only going up in value these" and "investment opportunity" entered the collective conscious of every car owners club in the land and otherwise perfectly ordinary cars began being marketed as such. So before cars have finished their death spiral into worthlessness, owners get it into their heads that by virtue of nothing more than the fact it's 10+ years old, it's now on its way to becoming the next Mk1 RS1600. Before you know it everything is a future classic and scene taxed accordingly.

 

Luckily a lot of the old mainly ford chod that piques my interest seems thus far to have escaped their attention.

[Kiltox]

I hear that 2003 Renault Trafics with 205k on the clock are next to rocket, better buy mine quick before they're all £100,000

[dollywobbler]

Personally, I'm trying to gather up enough mojo to fettle my LT camper to a level where I'm happy to sell it, and then have another go at finishing the welding on my bloody Maserati. Or fit the 3.0 V6 to my Calibra. But other life stuff gets in the way, it's not always possible for people to keep supplying a regular input of interesting* threads.

 

Indeed. I'm struggling a bit with this, as the RAV isn't really prime Autoshite, the Nippa just behaves itself and the 2CV (also not really prime Autoshite to be fair) is in a million pieces and stuck waiting for paint (for at least another month. Bored now!). 

 

So I bought the Colt, which has more issues than I currently have time to fix, so that's no good either. 

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Huh. Selling an item privately on eBay with 'no returns' ticked doesn't prevent the buyer asking for a return and freezing the Paypal funds. And I have to pay a further £3 to send the buyer a postage label. 

 

Huh. 

 

I look forward to getting the item back. I am going to run over it with my car. 

[dugong]

^ OK Louise, I'll summarise them for you...  Savvy has just bought a Toyota

 

Re. "this site isn't what it used to be", etc, it's a simple fact of life that many unpopular / unloved cars become cheap old snotters, and that's where bangernomics meets Autoshite. And even the bangernomics roadwhores will eventually disappear - when's the last time anyone saw a Mk 1 Mondeo or a Calibra in the wild? - whereupon all of a sudden they're Autoshite.

 

That guest chappy was wrong to just whine about the state of the site though, if he didn't like the state of things in here at the moment he should have taken the initiative & posted up some quality content instead.

Post up some 'quality content' and it gets buried in tedious sub-literate guff after 30 seconds.

Or you can have unpaid EV PR (where differing views are VERBOTEN). I'm not sure what's worse.

 

I like the way tacitly there's an awareness of how crap the posts have become on here, though. At least that's something.

[cort16]

Give it a rest with the negativity its exhausting . You go on about good content getting pushed off the page but here you are doing the same. It's not just you there's always some long standing member or another popping about the good old days and the board is full of shit stuff , no one looks at my stuff or likes my posts etc .

 

I think I'm going to FRO for a bit as I'm sick of hearing the same old shite.

[danthecapriman]

For me autoshite is about anything that's not current. I like the fact that I can come on here and write about/post pics of my cars and then go to another thread and look at a filthy old Rancho some lunatic just bought, or a bog standard mk1 Mondeo. There's everything for everyone on here.

My personal taste in cars is generally 80's and older but I still like to look at what others are up to, even if it is just some mundane task on a 10 year old whatever that someone's keeping running instead of binning in favour of a new car.

I'm sure not everyone likes my yank or my old Fords, but I love them and I think they do fit in on here still.

The 'scene tax' thing does piss me off, sure. But I got my Capri before any of that, I paid £100 for it (taxed and MOT'd) and I've had it years now, they were uncool old sheds at the time. Same for the Granada really. Cars like these and my Transit used to common as muck at one bit but now you never see them. I think that makes them fit here, just like a mk1 Focus will end up in another 10 or so years.

The yank? I think it fits still. It's different and from a time even the Americans probably would rather forget! It's big, it's uneconomical, it doesn't handle well, surely this all makes it shite!?

The great thing here I think is variety. If someone doesn't like one (or all!) of my stuff then there's bound to be a nearby thread containing something they do like, even if it's one of the spotted threads.

[cort1977]

Post up some 'quality content' and it gets buried in tedious sub-literate guff after 30 seconds.

Or you can have unpaid EV PR (where differing views are VERBOTEN). I'm not sure what's worse.

 

I like the way tacitly there's an awareness of how crap the posts have become on here, though. At least that's something.

 

There's definitely an awareness of how crap some of the posts have become...

[xtriple]

2CV is PRIME autoshite mate, oddball, old, unloved when new... the fact that nowadays they are worth a few pictures of her Maj is neither here nor there.

 

This is the best forum on the interweb and that is end of discussion.

 

However, todays grump is; I realised I have had the Mazda since March and never cleaned the inside. So I did... I reckon I got an extra three dogs out of the carpet and the door cards are now black again instead of mud coloured. So I then took the dogs out in it, they had a swim and the inside looks like I haven't touched it since March...

[anonymous user]

Funnily enough I just clicked the arrow to have a look at the first page from 2007. (I appreciate that there are the even earlier, lost in the mists of time, pages that may have been completely different.) There are a few names who are still posting and a few long gone, or who rarely post now. I did note that many of the threads then had less than ten responses, so these would also have dropped off the front page pretty quickly, just as they do now. I would agree that the many of the things spotted then are vehicles that you are even less likely to see nearly ten years on.

 

On the next page is a now traditional themed post, slating Top Gear, and yes there were cars for sale back then as well, but back in 2007 people could make a post about a new Audi R8 without the now traditional slating,

 

So yes things have changed, but not that much; some of the people who have interesting, older, more rare vehicles have moved on or no longer post about them, which is a shame. For some, being on here is possibly a safe place for them to communicate and vent off about things to fairly sympathetic ears, not just about cars but life in general.

 

Sadly some of us have quite a thin skin, so if there's too much bitching or disagreement on here they will stay away. If a thread doesn't interest me I close it, accepting that this could mean I miss something good, if some of the responses would have been of more interest, after all I still like cars. It's never going to be everything about everything that everyone likes

 

I'm afraid I do read this particular thread, as some of the grumps are often amusing (and god knows I need cheering up), but could we now have a special new thread for discussing/stating how shit the general forum has become?

 

Edited to add: Oh bugger, I've just checked and see that I have only ever started eight topics/threads, and three of those weren't about cars. I don't post much about my cars as I don't do much with them other than watch them rot away, or pay other people to make them go.

Edited August 8, 2016 by anonymous user

[Captain Furious]

I've never been on a forum in my life that isn't "not what it used to be"

[Rocket88]

I blame Quentin Wilson..........................for pretty much everything that's wrong with the "old car", scene. I man who knows the price of everything, and the value of sod all............................

[danthecapriman]

I used to go on another one make forum, I haven't bothered with it for ages now, but there were some right arseholes on there, real arrogant argumentative shits. Granted it wasn't everyone, but on here there's nothing like it! There's a bit of crap now and again but it could be a lot worse.

Nowadays I try to stick to this side of the forum, and if I don't like something I just ignore it. It's not that hard to do.

 

I think I came on here in 2008 ish, it was Torsten that told me about it after he came and bought one of my Volvo's. It's the only forum I've stuck with tbh. Must be a reason for that?

 

Is Torsten still around anyway? Didn't he have a big underground car park filled with all sorts of shite?

[BorniteIdentity]

I used to go on another one make forum, I haven't bothered with it for ages now, but there were some right arseholes on there, real arrogant argumentative shits. Granted it wasn't everyone, but on here there's nothing like it! There's a bit of crap now and again but it could be a lot worse.

Nowadays I try to stick to this side of the forum, and if I don't like something I just ignore it. It's not that hard to do.

 

I think I came on here in 2008 ish, it was Torsten that told me about it after he came and bought one of my Volvo's. It's the only forum I've stuck with tbh. Must be a reason for that?

 

Is Torsten still around anyway? Didn't he have a big underground car park filled with all sorts of shite?

He is...with another name.

 

It's him hawking around a few cars atm including the Regatta that FFS bought.

[purplebargeken]

I like the forum overall. There is stuff that I don't look at and some I follow with a passion.

 

I post stuff about what I have, not the i10 tho  I tend to post if I have done something particular to the cars or if something has gone horribly wrong.

 

Hopefully folk don't get too mindlessly bored. If so, well it happens and thankfully it isn't fatal.

 

Every forum goes through the same doldrums from time to time.

 

I have no particular 'what is shite, what isn't shite' view. I just read what is on the forum and enjoy (mostly).

[dugong]

Give it a rest with the negativity its exhausting . You go on about good content getting pushed off the page but here you are doing the same. It's not just you there's always some long standing member or another popping about the good old days and the board is full of shit stuff , no one looks at my stuff or likes my posts etc .

 

I think I'm going to FRO for a bit as I'm sick of hearing the same old shite.

Right yeah, because complaining in the thread about complaints (in a thread started to specifically house complaints) is clogging the main board up - unlike the reams of tedious drivel which clog the main areas up.

 

Remember, if you get sick of all the crap, you're 'flouncing off.'

[purplebargeken]

I'm not sure I could physically 'flounce'. 

[daveb47]

My opinion......

If you dont like the crap,try posting something interesting.....

[dugong]

My opinion......

If you dont like the crap,try posting something interesting.....

 

 

If only it were that simple. 

[hairnet]

or go out and do some (whatever it might be) shit with your car go on holiday etc

 

this is internet - doesnt matter