Group Buy: 1982 Ford Escort bASe. Purchased.

[BorniteIdentity]

11 hours ago, spartacus said:

What sort of outlay are you looking for?

For simplicity, £500 really.  £700 makes it even simpler, but I appreciate a lot of people on here don't spend that on a daily which is 100% theirs.  

8 hours ago, greengartside said:

I don’t have any monetary value I can throw at this, but I do have a (untested) indicator stalk that I am willing to donate to the car if it arrives in the fold.

I do like it, very nice indeed. Not many owners either, one from 1982 to 1986, the next from ‘86 to 2019 then a couple after that.

Bless you, thanks mate.  The low owners is part of the appeal.  It looks like a charming thing in better nick than the Sierra was and, like the bASe, it hasn't been passed around from pillar to post.

7 hours ago, AnthonyG said:

It does have the proper base dash from the pic in the ad, and also the door trims are correct. Even the tan side stripe is right looking at the July 1982 Ford Cars catalogue. Sienna Brown with tan interior is the right combo on the colour/trim front. 

Hope it makes it into the fold so I can have a proper perv over it at a shitefest/FoD event. Happy to buy it some oil/petrol or other service bits if it does!

Yes, I did a bit of digging and noticed the dash is correct which was the key thing for me.

 

I totally get that this sort of scheme isn't for everyone, but if anyone is interested in bringing this into the warm bosom of AS motor holdings then please let me know.  We can either share it around or it can stay here.  I think it becomes too complicated if there are lots of minority shareholders so it's probably best to say "3 or 4 directors" with the option of others sticking donations in.  

Unfortunately, TYREGATE/BicklePickle is probably working against us right now - but if anyone DOES want to invest* then let me know.

[Talbot]

13 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Having spent a lot longer agonising over the photos, it's a bit grottier than it ought to be at that price.

Is it a trick of the camera/reflections, but is that NSR arch also made mainly of WOB?  Something's not quite right there.

Seems about a grand overpriced to me.  Unless these are starting to suffer from Ford Seen Tacks now?

Look at it this way.  at £2250, it'll either be sold to a mentalist who will fix everything perfectly, keep it in a dehumdiddlified garage and cherish it, or it'll not sell and come down in price.  Either way, it's not going to get used as a cheapo, run on a shoestring for a couple more MOTs and then fragged.

[BorniteIdentity]

If the seller will let it go at £1700 ish then it’s doable immediately.

Prices for mk3’s have gone skyward in 4 years; in 2017 I had a MK3 snaffled from under my nose at £850. Today that would easily be £2k. The estates, especially as a 2 door, are rare. 

I honestly think someone will give him near enough what he’s asking, especially with a long MOT with nothing scary on it. 

We are already good for most of it, just need one other lunatic who wants to see a genuine AS sort of car preserved. 

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

The price isn't unreasonable. We're not in the good old days of 2018 anymore, we're in the unrelenting hellscape of the '20s, where old car prices are set by doubling last year's price, huffing ether straight from the bottle, doubling the price again, investing the proceeds in cryptocurrency and somehow becoming a billionaire a week later because a Reddit meme tricked Warren Buffet into putting everything he has into Dogecoin.

 

[BorniteIdentity]

Final shout before I put this idea to bed? Viewing is tentatively booked for Saturday but if we’re £500 short I won’t waste his time. 

I’m happy to insure it, it can stay here, we can agree paperwork and what have you. But, again, appreciate this sort of scheme isn’t for everyone. 

[Out Run]

3 hours ago, BorniteIdentity said:

Prices for mk3’s have gone skyward in 4 years; in 2017 I had a MK3 snaffled from under my nose at £850. Today that would easily be £2k. The estates, especially as a 2 door, are rare.

Yep.

Hopefully there are enough interested parties to rehome this estate. 

[Skizzer]

I’m not in the market this time, but have no regrets from the group buy we did with the Sierra base.

 I think in the long term it’s best if someone buys out the other parties, as happened with both the Sierra and the ex-Danthecapriman Granada. We did agree up front how that would eventually work, which avoided potential fallings out.

[BorniteIdentity]

29 minutes ago, Skizzer said:

I’m not in the market this time, but have no regrets from the group buy we did with the Sierra base.

 I think in the long term it’s best if someone buys out the other parties, as happened with both the Sierra and the ex-Danthecapriman Granada. We did agree up front how that would eventually work, which avoided potential fallings out.

Yeah, no sweat dude.  

Long term, I would like to own it.  In fact, if the wife wasn't paying her tax bill tomorrow morning I would buy it outright tomorrow morning.  

I spoke again with the seller who is getting increasingly pissed off with time wasters messaging him.  He is taking me seriously because he knows about the Sierra and, strangely, he lives a few roads away from a colleague and friend of mine.  

Just need someone to join @Cheggersand me really.

[sutty2006]

If autoshite had its own museum of beige base spec model run outs that we could all visit and share miserable stories, I’d bung 100 quid in. 
 

 

now there’s an idea..... 

[Mally]

I've never been, but it's called field of dreams, free admission, Visa's  greatfully accepted.

[BorniteIdentity]

I went to see this earlier on.  It is simultaneously better and also worse than I hoped and expected.

The vendor is fucking hard work, no doubt.  I get on with people from all walks of life but he really is exhausting to deal with.  When I went underneath it he said "YOU WONT FIND NUFFINK UNDER THERE MATE - I DON'T SELL NO SHITBOXES".  Double negatives aside, it was quite annoying - and he did shut up a bit when I asked him, politely, if he inspected the undercarriage when HE bought it himself two years ago.  Of course he did.

Mechanically, it's been very well looked after.  My suspicion is it was owned by an old boy on the English Riviera for a long time before a couple of armchair traders (including mine) have tried to make a few quid out of it.  Fair enough.  

The arches are nearly all wob.  "I LIKE FINGS TO BE ORIGINAL" says our man - "WOT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE".  "Oooh, I don't know, maybe bought an arch repair for £15" says I in that passive sarcastic tone so perfected by Basil Fawlty.

The most worrying thing is I drove away thinking, "Jesus, that wasn't great" and then got home to realise it's probably better than the Sierra in most ways.  The interior, front seats aside, is very very good.  VERY good.  He's done all the glass rubbers, welded a new battery tray in, changed the heater matrix, had it fully serviced and it runs beautifully.

Realistically, it needs those fucking rear arches sorting properly to be presentable.  The driver's seat is absolutely FUCKED which is a real shame.  

Frighteningly, an absolutely HANGING example was pulled out of a shed last year and sold for £1000 so I think, much to my eternal chagrin, that the price is probably about right.

 

[R1152]

The radio looks *older* than the car - an early to mid-70s Radiomobile?

[greengartside]

@BorniteIdentityso when’s the collection thread? 

[Skizzer]

2 hours ago, R1152 said:

The radio looks *older* than the car - an early to mid-70s Radiomobile?

My 1983 Ford range brochure suggests this came without a radio, so I’m guessing that’s what the original owner had on the shelf in the garage.

[R1152]

7 minutes ago, Skizzer said:

My 1983 Ford range brochure suggests this came without a radio, so I’m guessing that’s what the original owner had on the shelf in the garage.

What a lovely old thing it is. And you can mend them, too...

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Thanks for the trip report, @BorniteIdentity.  What a wonderful survivor, I hope it can be saved. I don't think I'm the right custodian - even aside from the hassle of collecting it in apocalypse times I don't have the wherewithal to sort the arches. 

I keep going back to that dashboard photo. Amazingly miserable. I love it. You'd have to track down a radio blanking plate, of course. 

[somewhatfoolish]

That looks horrible; when are you collecting it?

[Conrad D. Conelrad]

Hey, brochure hoarders, what wheel treatment should it have? Is it the little unpainted hub caps?

edit: is the base model even missing the locking petrol cap? 

[wuvvum]

Is that a white Felicia I see nosing into one of the pics?

[Shite Ron]

31 minutes ago, Skizzer said:

My 1983 Ford range brochure suggests this came without a radio, so I’m guessing that’s what the original owner had on the shelf in the garage.

My dad had a 1982 base Cortina estate company car and fitted the Philips radio and cradle that he had bought for his Viva in the seventies, and that radio looked more modern than the one in the Escort. If the original owner was too tight to buy a proper spec car he was unlikely to buy a new radio 😀. Car radio’s were expensive back then.

[BorniteIdentity]

5 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Is that a white Felicia I see nosing into one of the pics?

It's one of those shitty trucks that all fizzed away within moments of being released.  Can't remember what they're called but you could get them in yellow and they looked awesome.

[HMC]

Skoda fun or something? 
 

I love the escort because of its base ness and it’s 3 door estate ness. What a combo.

[wuvvum]

16 minutes ago, BorniteIdentity said:

It's one of those shitty trucks that all fizzed away within moments of being released.  Can't remember what they're called but you could get them in yellow and they looked awesome.

The yellow ones were called the Felicia Fun and had, if memory serves, pictures of frogs on the upholstery.

They were also available in less amusing form as a VW Caddy.

[Angrydicky]

I’ve just come here to say that’s the spitting image of my late uncles old Escort estate he had from new, B241 PDY. Same colour and everything. His was a 1.6 auto.

He was a severely disabled war veteran who was brain damaged, paralysed from the waist down, and only had the use of his left arm. Somehow, he managed to pass his driving test and treated himself to the new Escort. He proudly had extra Tex type stainless wing mirrors fitted, and an old fashioned AA badge on the grill.

When it wasn’t in use, which was most of the time, it lived in the double garage (with posh electric door) behind his bungalow in Eastbourne. Thing was absolutely immaculate.

Eventually, he stopped driving. At the time, the Escort only had 12k on the clock. He gave it to his younger sister, who was in need of a car. She drove it up to Chester and immediately pressed it into service on a Chester-Liverpool daily commute. Poor thing kept cutting out apparently. Probably the shock.

Not sure what happened to it in the end but DVLA reckons it never went back on the road after she sold it. Shame.

[Skizzer]

1 hour ago, Conrad D. Conelrad said:

Hey, brochure hoarders, what wheel treatment should it have? Is it the little unpainted hub caps?

edit: is the base model even missing the locking petrol cap? 

Yup, those wheels and hub caps.  The locking petrol cap was actually standard - very little else was.

Ref the discussion above, the passenger door mirror was a factory option. 

[Skizzer]

 

[Cavcraft]

The only reason it could be £2,250 is because of it's rarity. If you can do the work yourself then it's possibly worth it, but imho the arches, resultant re-spray (and it'd need to be spot on) plus getting a decent seat etc would mean if you're buying it for monetary reasons, you'd need to keep it a long time.

Needs to be at least £500 cheaper.

[Soundwave]

2 hours ago, wuvvum said:

The yellow ones were called the Felicia Fun and had, if memory serves, pictures of frogs on the upholstery.

They were also available in less amusing form as a VW Caddy.

Not just any frogs - frogs wearing fucking crowns. I'd love to know what substances the marketing department at Skoda were huffing when they thought of this.

 

[BorniteIdentity]

1 hour ago, Cavcraft said:

The only reason it could be £2,250 is because of it's rarity. If you can do the work yourself then it's possibly worth it, but imho the arches, resultant re-spray (and it'd need to be spot on) plus getting a decent seat etc would mean if you're buying it for monetary reasons, you'd need to keep it a long time.

Needs to be at least £500 cheaper.

I don't think anyone would argue that this car makes a wise financial investment.  My man at the garage gave me a bit of a patronising yet accurate review of the Sierra the other night.  "I admire what you're doing, it'll never be worth any money but it's admirable because of that".  He's still getting to know me, so I've had to sit him down and say "look - I DO know - this is, at best, lunacy".

I've only ever bought two cars as investments and they were both lovely.  However, I'm not sure I really suit 'nice things' so always end up selling them and running some old fucking heap.

Sometimes, it's not about money.  I know that reeks of fucking privilege, I don't mean it to.  

You are, of course, right.  It's too much money.  Not by as much as some people may think, as this old shit heap sold for £1000 at the start of the year.

[Rusty_Rocket]

Is the terracotta car that much better than that white one above?  I mean, after the wobbed up arches and pigeon sh*t welding has fallen off after a good night of rain?  Your (brilliant) depiction of the current owner doesn't fill me with confidence.  Is it really a full on restoration project?