FSO Polonez at Anglia Car Auctions

[HMC]

IIRC   @Sam Glover  had an ambulance version at one stage- that would be my ultimate version.

[sierraman]

35 minutes ago, Steviemillar said:

Some additional info added to the Lot listing by ACA

 

”This 1481cc FSO Polonez is a garage find, having been dry-stored since its owner passed away. It was registered in March 1988 and has had two registered keepers overall. Its odometer shows 89,923 miles and there's no record of an MoT back to 2005, when online MoT records began. The car isn't currently running. Documentation accompanying the FSO includes the current and past V5Cs, MoT certificates from 1991 to 2002, and service book with entries up to 75,650 miles in June 1996, including an engine rebuild at 60,193 miles.”

Engine fucked after 60,000... oh for the olden days 😂

[mk2_craig]

35 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Engine fucked after 60,000... oh for the olden days 😂

Amazing that the owner deemed it worth investing in at whatever age the car would have been by then, 8years old maybe? 

[JMotor]

That car reminds me of this video I saw on YouTube.

Had a small chuckle at (4.48 on the video) how they shown a 125p in the background with a moulding missing off the rear door. Like wow, banging on about inspections and just booted a car out like that. Plus they stored cars anywhere and everywhere, even in the factory there was areas was rammed with cars.

Anyway. Would be nice to see that one saved or used to save others. But as others had said before, it'll likely see the oval.

 

[ETCHY]

1 hour ago, JMotor said:

That car reminds me of this video I saw on YouTube.

Had a small chuckle at (4.48 on the video) how they shown a 125p in the background with a moulding missing off the rear door. Like wow, banging on about inspections and just booted a car out like that. Plus they stored cars anywhere and everywhere, even in the factory there was areas was rammed with cars.

Anyway. Would be nice to see that one saved or used to save others. But as others had said before, it'll likely see the oval.

 

Cool video

Got to say though a lot of mainstream manufacturers put some dodgy stuff out build quality wise to customers in that period & they'd all bang on about quality too.
Wasn't there a tale of a Princess with differing trim levels on each side ? No doubt Vauxhall & Ford were as bad.

[grogee]

3 hours ago, JMotor said:

That car reminds me of this video I saw on YouTube.

Had a small chuckle at (4.48 on the video) how they shown a 125p in the background with a moulding missing off the rear door. Like wow, banging on about inspections and just booted a car out like that. Plus they stored cars anywhere and everywhere, even in the factory there was areas was rammed with cars.

Anyway. Would be nice to see that one saved or used to save others. But as others had said before, it'll likely see the oval.

 

That video is ace!

Light alignment checked with a (bio) robot.

Man with clipboard checks car has an engine... CHECK, piece of paper put on dashboard.

Another man checks the lights, again, and the horn, then opens the bonnet. Again. Another piece of paper.

Test drive on the test track, driver twats door mirror on overgrowth. A load of beige Ladas in the factory car park.

Goes underneath the car to 'check' none of the suspension has fallen off.

Then the brand new car goes into a dirty workshop for a man with a drill to fit an aerial.

Headlamp wipers with a washer that drizzles fluid onto the bumper.

Shit sunroof fitted.

Clean car gets washed in a car wash.

 

Mind you, none of that was too different to Longbridge/Cowley back in the day, so maybe I'm being unfair. 

 

Apart from Yugo, did any other Eastern Bloc manufacturers export to USA?

EDIT: Those 'Ladas' are FSOs. But still also old Fiats. 

[JMotor]

48 minutes ago, ETCHY said:

Cool video

Got to say though a lot of mainstream manufacturers put some dodgy stuff out build quality wise to customers in that period & they'd all bang on about quality too.
Wasn't there a tale of a Princess with differing trim levels on each side ? No doubt Vauxhall & Ford were as bad.

That's true. Hiccups were about to happen in those many processes of building a car.

Was it not an GM X-Car sent down the line with both the 5 door and 3 door pressings? Beating the Hyundai Veloster by a number of years 😆.

4 minutes ago, grogee said:

Then the brand new car goes into a dirty workshop for a man with a drill to fit an aerial.

No pilot hole or any protection to the paint 😆. Straight in, no kissing hahaha.

Been fascinated with watching shit factory videos. Another good one from the same person.

Then a report by Top Gear about the Polish car industry and car ownership as a whole. 

 

[grogee]

Thanks @JMotor, that TG was great. What a thoroughly researched bit of TV, effortlessly presented by our Lord Woollard. Seemed pretty fair too, not condescending about the Eastern European way of life. Unlike Sue Baker, who didn't like any of those awful Commie cars. My favourite bit was her trying and failing to demist the windscreen on any of those cars during the miserable winter road test. 

[Dobloseven]

Looking at the ACA photos, it seems to be mostly present and correct and unmolested. Obviously needs a lot of bodywork but a simple shape for fashioning repair sections. Really needs to live on in as original form as possible,and sincerely hope it does as a reminder of what seems another age. The infamous Swithland Motors used to sell them in Leicestershire with all sorts of finance deals and offers. Think motorpunk might have memories of them as well. 

[wuvvum]

11 hours ago, ETCHY said:

Wasn't there a tale of a Princess with differing trim levels on each side ? No doubt Vauxhall & Ford were as bad.

There's various BL-related tales along those lines, including a Marina which was found to pull to one side under braking, and on investigation it was discovered that it had a disc brake on one front wheel and a drum on the other.  How much truth there is in these I have no idea, but I wouldn't put it past a '70s BL worker to give that little of a shit.

[warren t claim]

The chosen car for RANDY SUN CARTOON COUPLE.

[Spottedlaurel]

I've dredged my memory banks but I have no strong recollections of any back when they were new or a few years old, other than seeing loads of them get banger raced in the '90s (I'm sure one was only 4-5 years old). I picked up the odd brochure at country shows, but I think unless you happened to live close to one of those small, independent, family-run dealerships that gave good service to local folk then they were a fairly rare sight.

I believe there was a place that sold them in the next village from me, but it was redeveloped before I moved here. Does make me wonder if there's still one or two sat forgotten locally.

I don't remember seeing it, but I believe an elderly uncle traded-in his late Farina Wolseley for one in the early-mid '80s. That's what intrigues me, wondering what delights the garages took in against them.

By the time I started taking photos in the digital age the  pre-Caro models had pretty much disappeared, so these are all I have on Flickr:

 

A couple in Medler's in 1996. I bet there were far more, I was just concentrating on finding Japanese obscurities.

This one on a local E-reg had apparently come off the road in 2001, I saw it at a place that had a few interesting things back in 2012. It's still on SORN and I did see some more recent photos but I don't know if it's still there now.

Exeter postcard from the early '90s.

Is this still down at the Atwell-Wilson museum? Was only on the road for four years....

[ETCHY]

Cars like that were often popular with old folk.

There was an old chap who lived on my walk to Junior school who had a Lada type FSO in a lurud green colour with a brown interior. The thing was immaculate as he was always polishing it !

[sierraman]

They tended to get bought by old folks that were probably more concerned about it coming with a toolkit and it being a bit rugged. Off hand they were roughly same price as a 3 year old Escort, so it was a BRAND NEW car for the money. One of the issues with that is that because they lost money so quickly the only people that would give you anything for it would be the dealer against another Lada/Yugo/FSO.

[Richard_FM]

I remember a house in New Mills used to have at least one 125P estate on the drive for years, certainly until the late 1990s.

[vulgalour]

Since we're doing memories, the first one I saw was in the 90s, the neighbours got an orange one and I was blown away by it because it looked nothing like anything I'd ever seen before.  They didn't have it very long at all and it was second hand when they got it.  I forget which way around it was, but the same neighbour also had a brown Princess which was either the replacement for the FSO or was replaced by the FSO.  Clearly our neighbours had excellent taste (and were skint).

The only other one I've experienced in the metal was at Shitefest a few years ago, I've forgotten the username, Samba something?

Heck, that was ten years ago!

[wuvvum]

That's the one that got used in the hilarious* Top Gear "worst car in the world" video.

[Lankytim]

I raced a few of these back in my banger days. Lots around at £40 a pop. They seemed to last  a few years on the road and then fail an MOT on something that was unobtainium and end up scrapped. It was common to see ones that were 5-6 years old cubed, some were even scrapped at their first or second MOT! I found that hollow body sections like inside the ribs on the bonnet and sills etc hadn’t been painted in the factory and were full of rust, they were also miles behind western cars in terms of handling and refinement. I know some on here will have rose tinted specs but I think they were absolute crap, on course this makes them even more interesting today. 
 

I’ve Ive got a Parker’s used car value guide from 1998 and none of the FSO cars had any part exchange value at all unless they were less than 6 years old or so. I’ll try and dig it out as the summary of FSO cars was quite amusing, the only brand that came off worse was Yugo. 

[grogee]

4 minutes ago, Lankytim said:

About the same as a Marina in terms of handling and refinement

FTFY

[quicksilver]

My neighbour had a Polonez. She bought it new in about 1990 from the local dealer Newton Longville Motors and I remember it was a pale grey that looked like primer. After a few years she replaced it with something completely different, a Fiesta XR2.

Here's an ad from the local paper in 1989:

The only Polonez I've seen since was at Luton Festival of Transport in 2019, owned by a Polish family who had immigrated over here in it.

 

[Lankytim]

2 minutes ago, grogee said:

FTFY

Trust me, they were worse. Think of a Marina but much more top heavy. 

[richardmorris]

My uncle had a red polonez new in 1987. I don’t know why either - he was working for aerospace at the time and did know something about engineering and certainly wasn’t a radical communist propping up the polish workers. He did have colleagues asking why he’d bought a UFO he said.

E or F reg I think.

at the time dad had a BX which had some similar ish folded paper design bits. I think it replaced a cavalier, but I don’t think it stayed long once he realised how awful it was.

 

 A good school friend (who I think went to oxford to study physics) had a dad with a succession of lada estates and had the morning star.

[neil1971]

Chap around the corner from my Mum's house had a white one years ago, I had A84GTO in my head as the reg but no idea why I would remember that, it doesn't come up on DVLA so may be wrong. I think he replaced it with a BX GTi which must have improved his driving pleasure a fair bit.

As said, they were a decent banger in their day, especially with a Ford crossflow transplant.

[vulgalour]

2 hours ago, Lankytim said:

 I know some on here will have rose tinted specs but I think they were absolute crap, on course this makes them even more interesting today.

No rose tinted specs here, I just like godawful cars and refuse to learn any better.

[Dead_E23]

I was friends with a car dealer who had one in stock for months that he just couldn't shift.

He eventually started lending it to customers whose cars were in for warranty work, where it had the advantage of making them super keen to come and get their own car back.

We used to call it the 'discourtesy car'.

[skoda_fan]

My second Caro as it looked when I sold it....and how it looked after restoration in Poland.

[RayMK]

2 hours ago, quicksilver said:

My neighbour had a Polonez. She bought it new in about 1990 from the local dealer Newton Longville Motors and I remember it was a pale grey that looked like primer. After a few years she replaced it with something completely different, a Fiesta XR2.

Here's an ad from the local paper in 1989:

 

I had a look at a Polski Fiat 125/FSO at that dealership, vaguely considering part exchanging my rusty but trusty Triumph Herald 1200 estate.  It says something for the 125 that after 20 minutes of sitting in one I decided to keep my Herald.  I was familiar with the Fiat 125 and Fiat 124 because some of dad's friends while we were based in Germany had bought them.  The later Eastern block versions by Polski Fiat/FSO and Lada (124) had very poor build quality by comparison.  Wartburg Knights and Skodas may have had even more archaic design and engineering features but were considerably better built.  I was never taken by the Polonez.  If I had to choose between the Polonez and the 125P, I'd have gone for the latter.  However, seeing the occasional survivor makes a refreshing change from bloated modern SUVs. 

[skoda_fan]

I know what you mean. Back in the day I considered chopping in my then three year old Riva for a new 125p. I decided to keep the Lada cos the build quality seemed better! I can recall 125p's especially looking really ropey at only two or three years old.

[cms206]

On 9/21/2023 at 7:41 PM, ProgRocker said:

Not for the UK market iirc. FSO left the UK market in around 1995/96 as they couldn't compete against Hyundai and Proton. The 1.9 PSA diesel engine was available in it's last incarnation as the Caro.

We got petrol Caros in the UK; ISTR they were 1.6s? The 1.4 16v K-series was available but not here. There were a few 1.9GLDs in Paisley but they all seemed to disappear at once, replaced by Hyundai Lantras before the Paisley TOA clubbed together and bought a massive batch of white 406 saloons, low numbered S-LGDs from memory.

 

Shitefest 2012 in Wilts was a veritable FSO fest.

[cms206]

Also, from the way back when...