Right, thought I’d throw together a thread detailing my own piece of automotive shiteness; the wondrous Ford Cougar. A bit of a long one to start off with, and if it’s in the wrong place can a Mod shift it. Ta.
My example is a MY99 registered in early 2000 and owned by my in-laws since they acquired it a couple of years later from Lombard Motoring.  Having the correct compliment of cylinders in ‘v’ configuration I always wanted it. I had first refusal to purchase, but years came and went with no sign of selling and so I made do with all sorts of things instead (Mazda Tribute anyone?).
Eventually I acquired it following a poor MOT fail.  Deemed uneconomical to repair with knackered wishbones and an impressive list of broken stuff, its sudden availability coincided with a couple of pals and I signing up for a banger rally to Monaco. Perfect!  After all, the three hundred quid budget would get it through an MOT, right?
Well it did*. At what I consider great expense I sourced replacement wishbones from Poland, found several impossible to get Ford bolts and after convincing the garage to take it on, we had it back in for a repair and test.  Success! We eventually got the rattler down to Sheffield and collected it.
What a car! Check out those lines. ?

Driving it back was a pig.  It wandered all over the place at 70, the blower motor was shagged so it kept misting up and the road noise was… noisy.  We spent time replacing various broken or missing parts including servicing. This is the first time I did anything more than top up washer fluid and change the wiper blades, although my mate is far cleverer with his hands and sorted stuff out. Such as the n/s wheel bearing which was borked.
Pretending he knows what he's doing.

A full dead cow interior was found for £100 over in Carlisle so that went in to replace a truly wrecked driver’s seat. A set of four alloys with decent rubber came from the rather excellent owner’s forum which along with tracking helped with the wandering hilarity and even improved the noise further.
The trip down to Monaco nearly ended in fucking disaster.  A huge fuel leak outside Brussels made us too late for check in on the first night. Caused by the twat of a little clip breaking off the fuel filter, a bodge inside some recovery yard at midnight got us back on the road after we stole parts from a wrecked C5(?) along with a sneaky use of a kettle and some cable ties.  I'll write this bastard thing up another day.
Us thinking we were going to get murdered in deepest Brussels.

Anyway it performed flawlessly* for the rest of the trip, and by now I had committed myself to keeping the delightful old thing.  This is us at Tabac.

Of course it’s failed every MOT since.  Firstly on shite handbrake efficiency (THADTS) and more recently the dreaded rust in the cill.  Oh, and I bought a really wrecked V6 to break for parts too, which has been jolly useful and taught me a lot.  Since then it has made its way to a NE meet near Bishop last year, but now has virtually been in a lockup I can’t get access to, although post lockdown I’ll be moving to a new house and then it should fit in my garage to get stuff done.
TLDR;
Clueless idiot takes a fucked Ford failure to Monaco and decides to keep it.
I will upload more pics to bring it up to date.

Bit of a request for advice, also a bit of a vent.   Buggered:  Ford Sierra following an unleaded conversion last year.  It's the one concealing a 1.6 Emax lump under the bonnet.    My garage, who have maintained the car for the (near) five years I've owned it, put in new valve seats etc as part of the conversion to unleaded it had.   When the car was returned to me it ran brilliantly, far more sprightly than in recent times... funnily enough.  Garage recommended running it on 98 OCT or higher - I've been using the locally available Tesco Momentum 99 OCT, sans lead additive of course.   Very soon after, a metallic rattling sound began when being driven at low revs or uphill.  Back to the garage... They adjusted the timing and solved this problem (hurrah) however now it wobbles on idle.  Back to the garage... They adjusted the timing again and gave the (Webber) carb a clean inc. new jets.  Result:  no difference.  Now it's spitting oil from one side of the engine - rocker cover gasket I suspect (could however be unrelated).   And that's the Sierra in its current state. As I say, the wobbling problem didn't exist until the timing was altered to overcome the rattling sound (pinking...?) issue.     Any advice on how to achieve a 'rattle-free engine' which will not wobble on idle?

Perhaps I ought to try a new garage too - on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire boarder if y'all can recommend a mechanic out there. 

Thanks for reading!