More common sense than expense?

[Marshall]

Was just flicking through some of my plethora of old car brochures etc. and came across these beauties. Thought some of you might be interested to see?

 

 

 

LUXURY:

 

 

 

I like these! :-

 

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Hey those are great.Some lad at my school got himself a Polonez PRIMA, he always parked it round the corner so he wouldnt be spotted in it. Of course, he quickly got rumbled and had the piss ripped out of him daily by me (and many others) until he got rid of it.He shoulda just driven around in it flicking us the V's and laughing, rather than admitting we'd found his weak point by attempting to hide the hideous old crate, that was never gonna work.Now the jokes on me as i would not kick a Polonaise outta bed, specially not one on wellers. Has anyone seen one in the last 5 years or so?

[Lankytim]

Id love a Polonez or a 125P. I remember they used to fail their first MOT's on emissions and could be scooped up for banger racing for £30 a pop. They were VERY strong cars, like a modern Polish version of an Austin Cambridge or something. The last one I raced was about 6 years ago. I picked it up from the side of the road after its engine had seized up, the owner told me to just take it! Shame, as it was a solid old thing. I stuck a crossflow in it but the mis-matched gearing gave it a top speed of 20MPH in second gear and I was PWND very quickly.Brake calipers would seize due to major wear in the moving parts at very low mileage, halfshafts would slide out meaning the whole thing was held together by the rear disc (yes, rear discs!) and the build quality was generally terrible. Unpainted box sections would rot out, sills would drop off, that kind of thing. There was a polonez for sale at that big show at Knutsford a year or so ago (I cant remember the shows name ATM). It was £500 odd and looked pretty smart. Think it had the K series engine in it too.

[Justin Case]

The last version was called the Caro, I'm not sure if it was identical to the Polonez and I think it had a peugeot diesel under the bonnet. Anyway in about 1996 the importers gave up the unequal struggle of trying to shift the things at £3995 a throw and announced a BOGOF offer, ie a brand new car only fourteen years ago for less than £2K . This offer came as manna from heaven to the taxi drivers of Telford, where I worked at the time. The council put out a rule that all taxis had to be less than three years old, so just as the five-year-old Hundai Stellars (I kid you not ) became unusable, you can guess what the result was...........I wonder if the mortal remains of any of them still exist in the area?

[ProgRocker]

Oh - I would LOVE to own a Polonaise too, if just for the kitsch factor. For me, this is up there with the mark 2 Cavalier with 'cars I wish I had owned where there were more of them around to choose from'. These cars must be as rare as rocking horse sh!t now!I used to get What Car? magazine in the late 1980s and the Polonez was put up against the Yugo 55, Skoda Estelle and Lada Riva in group road tests. It always go 1 and 2 blob scores and would always come last.

[ProgRocker]

The last version was called the Caro, I'm not sure if it was identical to the Polonez and I think it had a peugeot diesel under the bonnet.

1.9 XUD diesel engine, I believe.

[Milford Cubicle]

The Caro is a modernised Polonez.

 

 

The pick-up versions suffer from rust a touch.

[Andrew353w]

Lovely to see some Comie Autoshite rearing its ugly head again! These were often described as the worst cars in the world! That is until Yugos came along....I had a FSO 125p for a few years and but for the f**king Pikeys I still would have! Not a bad car really, and quite retro at the time I owned one. Mine was an E registration (1987 one) which couldn't drink unleaded fuel. One of the strangest things was that the engine was an overhead valve one, BUT the camshaft was driven by a rubber belt, so you had the worst of both worlds; not only did you NOT have the smoothness of an OHC engine but you ALSO had the pain of regularly changing the rubber cam belt; and it WAS a bugger! The engine also had 2 oil filters, both of which had to be changed every 3,000 miles. none of that 10,000 miles between oil changes with an FSO! Apparently one of the biggest problems was head gasket failure, as the cylinder heads were never torqued down properly at the factory. Quality control didn't easily translate into Polish in those days!

[Station]

Thos FSO's looke quite Italian in design from the side!

[Andrew353w]

Thos FSO's looke quite Italian in design from the side!

They would, as they were based on the Fiat 125 from the 1960's.

[Dukestar25]

Wow, I remember a neighbour having a then new red Polonez Prima when I was in my early teens. I always thought it looked cool with those big white wheels on it but the bodywork was fubar after about 5 years (and that was with regular soap-and-water pampering ). Thanks for the memory

[ProgRocker]

I think the car that became the Polonez was the first design for the 1981 Lancia Delta but Lancia rejected the design.

[brammy777]

Apparently, 4 were MOTed in 2007 and 42 Caros were as well. The number for the latter seems unusually high, but its probably half that (at least) now. Doesnt that weird autoshite musuem have a Polonez?