cars you had, and wished you still did

[58classiccars]

Hi guys, if you could go back in time, what would be the one car you wish you still had mine was a classic 315. you can only pick one though.

[STUNO]

1964 Daimler V8. A beautiful smooth motor and in my opinion, an improvement on the smaller XK 2.4 and 3.4 engines. I liked everything about that car.

[warren t claim]

Any of the many 2 door Mk1/2 Escorts that I thrashed and destroyed. I would be a rich man if I still had them all!

[Pete-M]

Mk2 Escort RS2000, MTU11T.

 

I miss that car, but it went through a multitude of muppets after I sold it and a lot of them used to e-mail me pictures of their 'improvements' - which all ruined it. The muppet who removed the full, custom made quiet but deep stainless exhaust system and manifold and replaced it with an 'Ashley competition" system was the final straw. Chucked away close to a grands worth of exhaust and fitted a £85 shite one instead.

 

There was the muppet who removed the RS1800 anti-roll bar and double width kit "because the front wheels were too far forward".. which was the whole reason for fitting an RS1800 arb in the first place. Makes a Mk2 turn in a whole lot better.

 

The chap who complained that setting the tappets on the Burton cam to standard Ford tolerances made it slower..

 

The utter wanker who replaced the immaculate 'stubbies' with a pair of cheap Corbeau bucket seats..

 

Eventually I got a message from a chap in Ireland who'd bought it, still had a huge wedge of receipts for the bits and work I'd done to it and realised it had been ruined by the owners after me. He sent me a load of photos of it stripped for restoration and then went very quiet. So it's probably all over a barn somewhere waiting to be welded up and put back together.

 

I still miss it. Oh, and ignore the wheel centres being painted the wrong colour, I sorted that very shortly afterwards.

 

[Cavcraft]

Got to be D178 OTX, Mk2 Cavalier 1.8SRi (facelift) saloon. Absolutely fucking loved that car: thrashed it every single day, raced anyone I could to see how it compared, crashed it twice and it never, ever complained. Also picked our firstborn up from hospital in it.

[meggersdog]

Well seeing as I never actually got the Bond Bug on the road it would have to be (like Cavette) Mk2 Cavalier 1.8 SRi hatch.It too was the facelift version.Owned that car for four years and loved it.Washed it every week and polished once a month.Did about 30k in it and never missed a beat.Great car.

[warren t claim]

Mk2 Escort RS2000, MTU11T.

 

I miss that car, but it went through a multitude of muppets after I sold it and a lot of them used to e-mail me pictures of their 'improvements' - which all ruined it. The muppet who removed the full, custom made quiet but deep stainless exhaust system and manifold and replaced it with an 'Ashley competition" system was the final straw. Chucked away close to a grands worth of exhaust and fitted a £85 shite one instead.

 

There was the muppet who removed the RS1800 anti-roll bar and double width kit "because the front wheels were too far forward".. which was the whole reason for fitting an RS1800 arb in the first place. Makes a Mk2 turn in a whole lot better.

 

The chap who complained that setting the tappets on the Burton cam to standard Ford tolerances made it slower..

 

The utter wanker who replaced the immaculate 'stubbies' with a pair of cheap Corbeau bucket seats..

 

Eventually I got a message from a chap in Ireland who'd bought it, still had a huge wedge of receipts for the bits and work I'd done to it and realised it had been ruined by the owners after me. He sent me a load of photos of it stripped for restoration and then went very quiet. So it's probably all over a barn somewhere waiting to be welded up and put back together.

 

I still miss it. Oh, and ignore the wheel centres being painted the wrong colour, I sorted that very shortly afterwards.

 

That's a non custom spec one isn't it? No vinyl roof or fishnet seats?

 

It wasn't ex Merseyside Plod was it?

[Skizzer]

Polo G40 for me. Watching the faces on the tailgaiting tossers in their 318i's as they disappeared in the mirror was always priceless.

[155V6]

My Mate's was a Custom & didn't have a vinyl roof.It was one of the last (W reg)though.Also,non-Customs originally had steel wheels,but I guess alloys were optional.

[Father Ted]

E372 KRNMk2 Fiesta 1.1 Pop Plus in Rosso RedXR spoilerXR interiorSimple, reliable, honestly not rusty thanks to the several hundred weight of gunk in the body panels and underneath. Decent sound system, CB radio, camping gas stove in the boot, mood lighting in the rear - virgins conquered in that back seat =3.

[Pete-M]

That's a non custom spec one isn't it? No vinyl roof or fishnet seats?It wasn't ex Merseyside Plod was it?

MTU was a Custom, but it was one a changeover spec car so had the vastly superior Scheel 'stubbies' instead of the Recaro 'fishnets'. It also had bronze tints, black headlining and orange needle dials. Early Customs had Scheel seats, black headlining, white needles and green tints, while later ones had bronze tints, white headlining, Fishnets and orange needles. The changeover was in '78, just about the time MTU was built. Everything had the correct date markings for the build date of the car, so it really was a weird spec job. Luckily for me it was my dream spec, other than the white paintwork. I've always despised white cars.I don't like fishnet Recaros as the proper RS ones are a bit narrow for me. Vinyl roof was an option on the RS and wasn't compulsory on the Custom. Luckily, I only had one RS2000 that had a vinyl roof (out of 10 or 12 RS's).Easiest way to tell a Custom RS2000 from a non-Custom is the clock pod in the dashboard. Non-customs didn't have it and it's a right sod to get right without replacing the whole dash panel. The Customs also had the 'full door' trims instead of the base spec door trim, and the remote drivers door mirror.I did have an ex-Merseyside Plod RS2000, that one was XEM649W.

[25v6turbo]

My Vista orange MK2 Escort 1600 sport KUR 794P,loved that car,spent a fortune on it,then sold it before i moved into my current house only to see it flying down the road with a load of chavs in it,that was 1996.

[Hudsonpie]

Escort 1300E WXF 534M...written offEscort CXF 534G..might still be about...Feista S YLN 59S...dittoCavalier MK2 C657 CEU....Loads of other chod ...They're the only ones I can remember the regs of off the top of me head....

[CortinaDave]

Pacific blue very very early mk3 J reg cortina GXL. Utterly beautiful, fully restored and written off spectacularly 6 weeks later by me

[Gompo]

PHX349R, Mk2 Escort 2 door, 1.3. Bought and sold again in 2002. Made a profit and it needed work, but was a solid base and would be worth a fair amount now. Out of 3 Mk2s I've had, it was the best drive.

Scheel seats

Scheel seats looked great, i agree. Never sat in them though, although not sat in fishnets either.

[Volksy]

My Splitty van, only because it would be worth eleventy million pounds by now, '61 small back window, ex dope growing shed from California.Of the others.. '83 Fiat 127 1049cc Super 5 speed, with a full fold back sunroof and palio wheels, was an absolute hoot to drive, eminantly thrashable, and never broke, despite the punishment it got. Was £99 too '82 Audi Coupe 5S (Black with the Quad lights), Loved this car far far too much as it was bit of a problem child. Got me hooked on 5 pot motors.. Which I still am.

[r.welfare]

Another vote for a 5pot, B70 TBW, an Audi 80 quattro with 51k on the clock and one previous owner. Put 10k on it in 6 months back in 2001/2, made a profit on sale, beautiful car.

[Rusty Pelican]

My first car ARX 220J a Sunbeam Stiletto bought for £60 in 1980 , had it for 7 years , in that time everything that could possibly go wrong did , terribly unreliable , still loved it though . Swapped it for my Singer in 87 which i still have , The Sunbeam was used by its new owner for just one more year before it was stripped for parts , sat on his drive outside til 2009 where it was bought for £250 for spares ,almost snapped in half when moved from the drive , sad and wastefull end to a great car

[sporty-shite]

A638 XKU, Alfasud Ti, in black, lowered all round, and fitted with Koni shocks and with K&N's bolted to it's twin Webers.Surprisingly it wasn't that rusty, only having a couple of plates on it whilst I had it.Pretty quick, although not blisteringly so, and a bit of a let down on top end (it was so low geared, I had it nibbling the red line in 5th at just over 100mph*), but could that thing handle. Which was a good thing, cos the brakes were a bit shit!If I could have 2 cars back, the other would be FNE 215Y, Mk1 Astra 1.6 SR. Fast road cam, Cav 1.8 'box, lowered over Bilsteins. Again, handled like a cart, but this thing was quick, and would only be turning something daft like 3000revs at over the ton*.Miss 'em both.*Private tracks, Officer!

[saabhappy]

Hearing-aid beige Cavalier 1600 GL Mk 1 TWF 190S - never once let me down in 2 years of ownership, cost me next to nothing apart from consumables and sold to my next-door neighbour when I was promoted away from home.

[Angrydicky]

Austin Montego 1.6 Estate F120 MVW.This was an immaculate one owner, 36000 mile car that my dad bought in 2003 to replace his old Montego with a blown headgasket which was scrapped. Before it went to the yard the larger wheels of the old one (H reg 2.0) were substituted.Unfortunately he went on to sell it through the local paper, was sold to a young family who just wanted cheap banger transport, Montegos were not sought after at all then. Lasted until 2005 according to the DVLA. Shame, it really was mint :(I still have the original Austin Rover wheeltrims from that car hanging on my garage wall....

[Station]

All sold for a reason, I don't have any regrets. Probably the Starion, but I spent 1,500 on that in the first month I had it and it never worked.

[wuvvum]

If we discount all the old Fords and the RWD Starlet, all of which I could now put an extra zero on the price of compared to what I sold them for, I'd have to say this:

 

 

It ticked all the boxes really. Rare, old, French, and it was lovely to drive for a '30s motor, handled & rode incongruously well for something on beam axles and cart springs, had good brakes, a decent turning circle and enough power not to be a liability in modern traffic (unlike, say, the Austin Ten).

 

I sold it because I cooked the engine (it had a water leak which I hadn't spotted, and with no temperature gauge the first I knew of the problem was when it started misfiring, by which time it was too late) and I thought bits would be impossible to find - not realising at the time that the same engine was used in the Renault Prairie / Colorale right up until the '50s, and there's still dozens of those in scrapyards across France (as well as one in the Bickle Collection). So I swapped it - coincidentally for the Ford Classic from the beginning of this thread. I have fewer regrets about getting rid of the Classic - lovely looking car and nice to drive when it was working, but just too unreliable when I had it.

[scoobypete]

I bought a Subaru GLF auto from my phys ed teacher when i left school in '95,Reg no BWP310W in met blueIt never saw the road again was just ragged round a field and up and down our mile long drive,till it rusted badly but the engine never missed a beat and was still running fine when i sold it to the local subaru dealer to be broken for spares I still kick myself now for gettin shot of it.....the one ive got now is the same shape etc but hasnt got anywhere near the character that one did.....

[Des]

Lots of Escorts being mentioned here, may I buck the trend by mentioning I was happy to be shut of the only one I ever had.I really miss my old Vanden Plas Westminster, bought blind on ebay in 1999, 18K on the clock and turned out to be the first time round, was the only car I used for the next 8 years, regularly going as far as Glasgow, Belfast, Waterford. I didn't keep up with the welding and it wound up sat waiting for about a year, was only getting worse, couldn't see myself getting onto it soon so I moved it on. Huge stress from banger fags trying to buy it. Replaced it with a 3L P5, a nice solid one with near everything rebuilt, a far higher quality and better built car, but I can't get 'into it' somehow It's just not the same. (Like when you're doing a rough 'un, pussy's pussy, but you'll still be thinking about previous encounters with a nice piece).

[Albert Ross]

Torn between 2 here. 1973 DS23 Pallas in Metallic Blue with a Black roof, FTV 326L, or Austin 3 litre in Trafalgar Blue, possibly ex-Plod, had the 4-way adjustable rear shocks...., RJH 70H. Both owned while I was an impoverished dole scrounger in Nottingham a few yerars ago. Both saw the bridge at Macintyres..............neither had a listed weight, so fuel tanks full of water and concrete/bricks in the boots with keys snapped off made them worth a bit more for the effort involved.Wish I still had them, worth a mint now I reckon.

[Guest greenvanman]

My R4 F6 van - C643JHE. Not because of it's abilities particularly but because of the many happy memories associated with it. Slow, noisy and badly equipped it may have been, but it was incredibly cheap to run at a time in my life when that was a really important factor. That and the fact that I think there are few cooler looking things in possession of four wheels anywhere. Damn that French rust.

[wuvvum]

Oh yeah, my first DS was another one I regret getting rid of. It was a RHD Pallas semi-auto in two tone beige with a gorgeous blue velour interior. Engine was seized; I had a quote from a local chap to supply and fit a second-hand DS23 engine for £500. Would have been well worth doing as I only paid £250 for the car and it wasn't in bad nick, but I was about to go on holiday to California and decided I needed the cash, so I sold it as it was. Still made a profit, but I really wish I'd kept it and sold something else.

[whiskeyonesix]

I'd have to say the 1988 Volvo 740SE. Word of warning, If you spend a couple of hundred quid on some very tasty modifications ( 960 Alloys, Turbo grille,turbo spoiler, half-leather interior ) then you can afford to get it insured fully-comp.... Some guy ran into me as I was leaving work one day and the insurance company wrote it off, I sold the parts and made my money back but it was an absolute minter.... Excuse me, I'm off for a cry now...

[Richard]

Renault Savanna. It was only a 1.9 non-turbo diesel but it always felt lively enough and did 45mpg. Everything about it suited me perfectly. Unfortunately I chose this car to have my first proper crash in.