FSO Polonez at Anglia Car Auctions

[sierraman]

The higher spec SCE always seemed to have Wellers fitted. Guessing they were fitted by the importers. 

[tooSavvy]

I love 'any banger as full deposit' entrees...

Proton did it with my Savvy...

'any car [MOTd] taken as full deposit'

So I chucked my flakey (.. extremely, underneath 😳) 3wk MOT 1.0 Swift 3dr into the dealer and blew £7k 🤦.

TBH 9yr and no FTP was quite fair, nippy [Clio 1100 motor].

[eddyramrod]

That's how I got my Corsair 2000E in 1982: it had been traded-in at a Lada dealership under such a scheme, and then dumped in the back yard to be knocked out to anyone who fancied it, cheap as possible.  I got it for £85.

[2flags]

On 9/22/2023 at 11:48 PM, wuvvum said:

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.

I know for a fact hat this is true as I was in the garage when they took the wheels off. We sent the car back! 

[RobT]

There's a low millage one that lives near me.  Photo from January 2021 and the MoT ran out 9 months later.  Still there albeit with pogged paint.  ULEZ is irrelevant seeing how he doesn't use it.

[egg]

I like how it's used as extra security for his garden box/shed

[Richard_FM]

5 hours ago, 2flags said:

I know for a fact hat this is true as I was in the garage when they took the wheels off. We sent the car back! 

I've heard the story as well!

Rootes also had some Friday afternoon cars, such as a Hillman Hunter which couldn't get over 70 mph due to being fitted with the wrong rear axle, but was great accelerating at slow speeds.

Vauxhall had some officially sanctioned fudges on Vivas due to parts supply problems.  One batch had Opel Kadett cylinder heads during a strike!

The brake components often changed supplier & the pipes sometimes had a metric thread at one end & imperial at the other to cope with this!

I've heard the rusting late 1980s Fords were due to a strike by staff in a rustproofing section, so cars were simply left the factory with just paint over the bare metal for a few weeks!

[tooSavvy]

@Richard_FM.. "I've heard the rusting late 1980s Fords ... "

Similarly 'simply dissolving Fords' [*see also: Fiat] were supply issues/costing pressures leading to super...super...low kwalitee sheet rolls, sourced from Uncle Joe's iron works 🤦

[Dead_E23]

12 hours ago, sierraman said:

The higher spec SCE always seemed to have Wellers fitted. Guessing they were fitted by the importers. 

FSO were imported by a company in the same offices that did Mazda in Tunbridge Wells, and Weller Wheels were based a couple of miles away on the town's industrial estate.

[Richard_FM]

1 hour ago, Dead_E23 said:

FSO were imported by a company in the same offices that did Mazda in Tunbridge Wells, and Weller Wheels were based a couple of miles away on the town's industrial estate.

Some of the press cars have the registrations in the same series of Maidstone registrations.

[Essex V6]

Great TG video! I clearly recall many years ago making fairly decent progress in my Capri 2.8i when out of the blue a red stock looking Polonez blasted past me. Gawd knows what had been done to it!

[warren t claim]

On 9/23/2023 at 8:06 PM, sierraman said:

The higher spec SCE always seemed to have Wellers fitted. Guessing they were fitted by the importers. 

I believe the FSO is the only car allowed on the banger track fitted with said wheels.

[riek]

There was one round my way when i was a kid, it had wellers and it was blue. It also had one of those "do it yourself" sunstrips that read "Mervyn & Pauline".

When she inevitably left him in the 90s, he actually took the time to update it to read "Mervyn"

 

Weird the incredible details that stick in the mind of an aspy child who likes cars eh?

[ProgRocker]

1 hour ago, riek said:

There was one round my way when i was a kid, it had wellers and it was blue.

I wonder if it was a top of the range "Prima" ?  Most of that spec tended to be in default white although the one that used to be at a car museum (photo posted upthread I think) was red.

I collected a lot of What Car? magazines during the 1980s and 90s. On the rare occasion that they featured a Polonez in a road test with other budget cars it would come last, with a 1 out of 5 verdict 'blob score'.

[Dead_E23]

I drove the discourtesy car a few times and recall that the gearstick was angled backwards and was much too long, which placed the gearknob uncomfortably far back in the car and the clutch pedal was such a long way from the floor that you couldn't pivot your foot from the heel.  It was a shit thing to drive.

[RobT]

On 9/24/2023 at 12:12 PM, RobT said:

There's a low millage one that lives near me.  Photo from January 2021 and the MoT ran out 9 months later.  Still there albeit with pogged paint.  ULEZ is irrelevant seeing how he doesn't use it.

Sadly it's gone, which might be a recent thing.  But he's replaced it with a Caro.  Spud cam drive by photo.

I had a search and the Polonez was in a Telegraph article in March 2022.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/classic/uks-rarest-cars-1989-fso-polonez-one-11-left-britains-roads/

Rabiej’s G-registered example is one of the few surviving right-hand drive models still on the road, mainly due to the factory’s limited protection against corrosion.

I had to sign up to The Telegraph to get that screen grab.  Things you do eh.  Better phone up and cancel the subscription tomorrow as, of course, there's no option to do it online.

[mk2_craig]

Hmm, SORN and a Feb 2022 last V5 issued. Fritzled away somewhere? 

[Noel Tidybeard]

my dad quite liked the looks of an polonez but thankfully he subscribed to which! and they basically said NO, RUN AWAY

[D.E]

In the final years ('96-'97 ish) the Daewoo dealers sold FSOs here. They even had Daewoo badging! All scrapped a long time ago, the one in the picture below lasted 11 years which seems to have been the usual lifespan of them.

 

[D.E]

And I'll just leave this here...

 

[trigger]

There's been a massive photo dump of pictures uploaded on the ACA Polonez, it's a bit frilly!

https://ukbarnfinds.com/2023/09/27/1988-fso-polonez-e37-emx-photo-dump/?fbclid=IwAR2Vfq1-gwUj-WgX4yIn1Kwf5WX4na-iSRBrn-QbPGK9_kzFnWo7iYSsd_s

[sierraman]

I still can’t see anyone giving more than a few hundred on it. 

[wesacosa]

35 minutes ago, sierraman said:

I still can’t see anyone giving more than a few hundred on it. 

I'm still going for a grand 

[martc]

Some history about the factory here - https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/iconic-factory-that-introduced-legendary-syrena-and-polonez-cars-closed-10-years-ago-today-20058

[sierraman]

1 hour ago, wesacosa said:

I'm still going for a grand 

A fool and their money 😂

[Zelandeth]

Have to admit that actually looks a lot more solid underneath than I was expecting...it still actually has sills for one thing.  I was honestly expecting the seats to be hanging through the floor pan.  

Yes there's a load of work involved, but that looks a lot more saveable than I expected from how crusty it looked up top at first glance.

[egg]

6 hours ago, wesacosa said:

I'm still going for a grand 

£1,250 for me.

[2flags]

When is the sale? We can then award the new owner his gold plated brave badge! [Made of cardboard, the gold coming from a quality street toffee wrapper.]

[trigger]

4 hours ago, egg said:

£1,250 for me.

I'm going for around that, £1500 with fees

[Adrian_pt]

Yep. Ultimately with 1.2 million Poles in the UK there will be some with the nostalgia _and_ the cash. It'll make good coin and has been well advertised,