Your best ever all rounder?

[Vince70]

For me it’s got to be my 1994 Audi A4 1.6.

It was a low mileage stunner I picked up for I think £230 with a fresh ticket and it was cheap because of a scratch on the rear door and the drivers window needed a peg in place to keep it up.

It was a free fix to do the window  as I changed a clip when I found a new window mechanism in the boot and had some  clear lacquer repainted over the scratch which bought it up as good as new.

It gave me 5 years of trouble free motoring and if I kept it I’m sure it would still of been running as good as new.

Being a very early example it was basically a reshelled Audi 80 and I even bought the last A4 B5 on an X plate and although it had tons of toys you could see it just wasn’t as well screwed together as the earlier examples.

[AnnoyingPentium]

3 minutes ago, SiC said:

8th gen (spaceship/one after) is a much better car and can be had for similar money as the 7th gen. Most 7th gen are knackered as "Hondas don't need maintenance" happens more and more as they age. 8th gens are starting to go that way now too.

I'm not a fan of the spaceship style Civics. Look a bit like a slater/woodlouse to me. I'm in no position to say much, I drive a car that has the aerodynamic properties of a house brick, at least compared to equivalents of its time. 

[AnnoyingPentium]

1 minute ago, Vince70 said:

For me it’s got to be my 1994 Audi A4 1.6.

It was a low mileage stunner I picked up for I think £230 with a fresh ticket and it was cheap because of a scratch on the rear door and the drivers window needed a peg in place to keep it up.

It was a free fix to do the window  as I changed a clip when I found a new window mechanism in the boot and has some clear lacquer repainted over the scratch which bought it up as good as new.

It gave me 5 years of trouble free mileage and if I kept it I’m sure it would still of been running as good as new.

Being a very early example it was basically a reshelled Audi 80 and I even bought the last A4 B5 on an X plate and although it had tons of toys you could see it just wasn’t as well screwed together as the earlier examples.

My neighbour in my old house had a silver one of these, high spec I presume. Stunning bit of kit since he kept it looking smashing.

[Six-cylinder]

For me a Volvo 740 2.3i Auto Estate (pre cat) is my favourite all rounder.

Why don't you see me driving around in one today? 

My first drive was 1985 when I worked for a Volvo dealer and while I never had enough rank to have one as a company cars I grabbed one when ever I could and in Oct 1987 I borrowed my boss's 745 GLE Auto and drove it 2,250 miles in a week touring Scotland. In 1991 I moved to a Vauxhall dealer and my contact with Volvo 740s dwindled away.

Then in 1999 I needed a stop gap car and selected a gold 740 GLE Auto estate. In 2004 Mrs6C returned from the USA where she had a Volvo 740 and bought a 1990 740GLE Auto. Mrs6C ran that until 2006 when it was replaced by a V70, but that is not the end of it. The 1990 745GLE went to my father-in-law in rural Wales and was driven regularly. Finally the the fuel pump stopped and he has given up driving so it is now marooned in rural Wales. 

The plan is to fix it and get it back home again.

 

[grogee]

2 hours ago, Supernaut said:

My 2nd Peugeot 306. I seriously regret selling this in 2014.

It was a 2.0 HDi that I put a stage 1 map on within about a fortnight of buying it. So roughly 120hp and a fair bit more than that in torque. In a roughly 1,200kg (or so) car.

It did constant high-40s to low-50s even with me driving it everywhere like an idiot. Due to being a Peugeot 306 it handled nicely and rode like a cloud. Being an estate meant it could carry more crap than a hatch too.

 

Many memories of flicking it down Aberdeenshire B-roads with the musical accompaniment of my tools rattling around behind me. Even with the toolbox strapped into the load tie-down points they would rattle.

 

A brilliant all-rounder.

 

 

I sold it to buy an Audi A4 1.8t quattro sport. Probably hands down the worst car I've owned in terms of unreliability. It was a nice enough place to sit when it worked, but it just didn't have that joi de vivre of small Peugeots. It would also take massive bites out of my wallet on a regular basis.

Actually now you mention it the 306 HDi I had was very good too. 3 door hatch so it looked nice. DTurbo spec, it had air con but if course it didn't work. Acceptably brisk with a plug-in fuel pressure sensor cheater thingy, to the point where it overcame the clutch. 

Did 50 to the gallon. Good ride and handling. Relatively easy to work on. 

I wish someone had bought all the tooling off Peugeot to keep making them, a bit like the old Ledbury Maestro idea. 306s are brilliant. 

[ProgRocker]

The 1999 T reg SEAT Ibiza 1.4 owned between 2002 and 2010 was a superb all rounder. Utterly reliable too. The only thing I could fault it with was that it wasn't quick. I only parted company with it when I wrote it off.

 

However I think that honour will be replaced with my current 2018 Hyundai i10 1.2. Not as spacious but an extra 25 bhp from an engine 200cc smaller than the Ibiza. 7 months in and I'm chuffed with how it's been so far. 3  and a bit year old cars with 30-35,000 miles seem to be sweet spot (as was the Ibiza). 

[Gerrymcd]

The car with the worst reputation was probably my most reliable and dare I say favourite.

04 MK2 Renault Laguna 1.9 Diesel. The horror. 

Dad bought on 16k miles, had it from January 07 to Summer 09. I bought it off him at roughly 50k and took it to 135k before trading in  - Summer 2015.

It liked rear axle bushes, timing belts/waterpumps (x3) and a couple of springs but it just went and went. 

Wacked a Scenic up the arse with it pretty heavily when not paying attention in traffic. Scenic boot all stoved in, no damage at all to the Laguna.  

Really comfortable, handled well, about enough grunt for safe overtaking (120bhp is hilariously shite now mind) and could swallow anything Ikea threw at it. 

6 years with me which is still the longest I've owned the one car. 

[brownnova]

Easy one for me. Best all rounder is my 9000.

It does everything a modern could, it cruises along the motorway with ease, but isn’t too unwieldy around town. It’s comfy, roomy and has a massive boot. I’ve done nearly 50k in mine, and it only let me down twice (a seized caliper and a seized aircon pulley), and it’s currently only off the road as I’ve got other things to use. The only thing which comes close is the Volvo 940 which I bought a few weeks ago. 

[Amishtat]

No contest. Pleased to see these cropping up so often in this thread. 

[motorpunk]

It would be easy to post up my old company car, Honda Accord, which did 60k miles a year and was bounced off the limiter every gear change and only randomly serviced as I was so busy.. only a failed window regulator in 3 years... fantastic car, but it was a new car, and therefore hardly Autoshite stuff. Same for my classic Fiat 500 (my avatar), it's brilliant and has cost me nothing, but it does 50 miles a year so hardly fair to hold it up as a beacon of reliability when it's a toy. 

No, I nominate this as my best all-rounder. BMW 525d, manual, SE spec. I bought it with 80k on the clock just under 4 years ago and it's now on 191k. These are supposedly moneypit trouble but in 111k miles it has been great. It gets routine services at a BMW specialist. Aside from routine servicing it has needed  DPF clean, a parking sensor has failed, and the wiring loom in the boot hinge had to be resoldered which had caused the remote central locking to misbehave. That's it. The dent in the rear 3/4 was me maneuvering in the dark and hitting a plastic bollard. It has averaged 44.8MPG over that distance, does 0-60 in about 8 seconds and had 180ish BHP. The rear suspension is airbag stuff and it's on big soft tyres (I get those free) so just silently whumps over potholes and speedbumps. It cruises up and down the motorway silently and I honestly don't know what I'd replace it with, but....

... it's on the original clutch and flywheel, and the flywheel now has a rattle. This will be a big job. And there's a vibration at 60mph and under heavy braking which I am pretty sure is lower control arm bushes. And it needs a service in the spring. And the battery is original. So I think there's a bill of maybe 1500 quid on the horizon. But if I flog it as is, it'll only attract tracksuits with bond villain accents and oil-in-water trickery with offers of "free handred mate coz it eez fooked" nonsense - and I'll have to shell out probably ten grand for a similar car without the miles. So I think I shall reward it's faithful four-laps-and-more-of-the-earth service with a proper service and rely on it for a bit longer. 

[Scruffy Bodger]

My best all rounder was my Mk1 Golf GTi Campaign. It did everything an old hatchback does best which is masquerade as a small van when you have the need to fill it with loads of shit but could be frugal or could be a flying machine all wrapped up in the same package. A paltry 110 ish BHP but you could use every single one of them and really hustle it along country roads, yet it'd happily sit on the Motorway for sustained illegal speeds on a long run too.

The main fix* I did to it was fit a bushing kit to the gearchange as first became more or less impossible to find, 20 quid spent and a couple of hours transformed it. I made a few quid on it over and above what it cost me in the end as I bought it when prices had finally bottomed out, paid £900 iirc? I sold it to finance a trip backpacking in Canada.

There's a reason they are valued at what they are today.