1987 Ford Sierra Sapphire 1.8L - (1)33,333 achieved - see page 47

[stuboy]

my BiL went up to silvestone, dunno if in the RS focus or MSRT transit

[sutty2006]

Wow that blue GLS is a stunner. Very lucky to find such a car! 
 

I used to go to Ford fair a long time ago, but there’s no way I’d pay £45 on the gate to walk up and down lines of Focus RS’s and ST’s. It started getting a little boring. Love the picks you’ve taken 👍

[Peter C]

49 minutes ago, egg said:

Did you see Pip Petchey's Mondeo touring car (Matt Neal) replica?

I didn’t. There were very few Mondeos on display.

[Peter C]

23 minutes ago, stuboy said:

MSRT transit

👍

[adw1977]

4 hours ago, Peter C said:

uncertain whether Mk2 XR2s were fitted with a speaker joystick (like my Sierra has). 

Yes they did

[stuboy]

1 hour ago, egg said:

Did you see Pip Petchey's Mondeo touring car (Matt Neal) replica?

Sorry pip I stole these off his Facebook...

 

[stuboy]

24 minutes ago, Peter C said:

👍

Sorry he went up in this..

[mk2_craig]

On 11/08/2024 at 17:02, Peter C said:

The highlight of the show was meeting @mk2_craig (and his family). We had a good chat about old Fords

Great to meet you too @Peter C and like others have already confirmed, cracking example of a well preserved Sierra Sapphire that you had the good fortune to acquire. 

I’m not going to fill up your thread with my holiday snaps but I’m sure I’ve come across that gold estate before. With a Falles sticker in the back window it was almost certainly originally sold in Jersey and probably the example I saw being advertised a few years ago in original condition for £600. 

[RustyNuts]

Sorry i'm late for the party lol, I didn't read all 43 pages but did make it to page 6...

Gotta be honest, although I could understand your disappointment at a car turning up with some mess and defects, it's an oldie and I gotta be honest, I reckon you got a great motor. Maybe the price was a little steep but I still reckon you've done well.

As another user posted in those early pages, older cars you can just drive without worrying too much (one of the reasons why I love the safrane).

For what its worth, back in the 80s I had a neighbour with a blue ford like your sierra. I can't remember if it was a sierra or escort estate but it was that same blue and I used to be amazed by it.

[Peter C]

I’m in Poznań, Poland, for a fortnight, taking it easy.

My BIL has a new Passat for family duties but also keeps a well worn Mk4 Golf TDi, which I borrowed to smoke around in.

BIL tipped me off about a blue Sierra that had just arrived in a breakers yard not far from where we were staying. 

I had to investigate. Sadly, upon arrival I found a Mk1 hatchback.

The engine, gearbox and front suspension have already been removed.

These rear lamps are definitely no good to me.

The interior had bits missing.

And the rear door ashtrays are completely different to the Mk2 ones.

The yard owner was very friendly, we had a good chat but I walked away empty handed.

The hunt goes on.

 

[lisbon_road]

3 minutes ago, Peter C said:

BIL tipped me off about a blue Sierra that had just arrived in a breakers yard not far from where we were staying. 

I had to investigate. Sadly, upon arrival I found a Mk1 hatchback.

The engine, gearbox and front suspension have already been removed.

 

 

That mk1 rear bumper, talk about hen's teeth.  They were hard enough to get when I had my Mk1 a few years back.   Was there anything else old or interesting in there?

What are Polish cars like now?  I have the impression that Poland is quite prosperous now.  It also seems to be very strong for LPG with the best suppliers of equipment being there.

Hope you have a good trip. 

[Peter C]

@lisbon_road

If I had a Mk1 hatchback AND had time to take bits off AND had the means to drag them half way across Europe back to Blighty then I would have had a field day. Not sure that a Sierra rear bumper qualifies as hand luggage when you fly with Ryanair.

We stopped off at the breakers on route to somewhere else. My outfit wasn’t quite right for getting down and dirty amongst a pile of shit old cars so I left without paying too much attention to the rest of the stock.

Poznań is in western Poland, about two hours drive from Berlin. It’s in a prosperous part of Poland and you can tell by the cars that people are doing ok. 

Old cars are uncommon. Forget about seeing an FSO, Lada or a rear engined Skoda. In a recent episode of Wheeler Dealers on the Road, the one where Mike and Elvis bought a FSM 126p in Poland, Mike said that 126p’s are still used daily in Poland and it’s everyone’s first car. Total bullshit, you don’t see them anywhere and if one turns up, people take photos.

There’s plenty of new Korean stuff, especially electric versions. There’s a VW factory on the outskirts of Poznań and new Polos, Golfs and Passats are everywhere. Well off Poles like their AMG Mercs and Audi RS6s, both are usually driven with vigour and make glorious sound. There’s very little here for an AutoShiter.

[andy18s]

As opposed to today's spotting in sunny Bg....

[mk2_craig]

 

[jonathan_dyane]

We visited Poznan about 18 months ago and loved it

[Peter C]

7 hours ago, andy18s said:

As opposed to today's spotting in sunny Bg....

 

 

 

Nice!

You won’t find such treasures in Poznań. My BIL’s Golf is about as shit as most cars get.

[sierraman]

Is there anywhere in Poland you can find old chod?

[timolloyd]

The Polish car museum in Krakow is awesome.

[Dyslexic Viking]

1 hour ago, sierraman said:

Is there anywhere in Poland you can find old chod?

Not cars but the agricultural sector is full of it.

Wladymirec T25 and Ursus C330 or C360.

I love going through the photos on agrofoto.pl even old East German stuff are still in use.

[sierraman]

Are cars relatively cheap in Poland? Anecdotally, again I’m probably massively out of date/wrong on this but the average salary is supposedly 7500ZTY which is £1,500 more or less a month. Obviously more round the capital, less in rural areas. 

[The Vicar]

2 hours ago, sierraman said:

Is there anywhere in Poland you can find old chod?

I've been around Poland; Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, Czestochowa, Poznan, Lublin etc (and plenty of other lesser-known places that I won't even dare to try to pronounce and the short answer, IME, is no. Even in Lublin in the east, where you might expect to see a few more oldies, Mk1 Fabias or older Felicias etc were all that stood out on my chod radar. 

[Peter C]

7 hours ago, sierraman said:

Are cars relatively cheap in Poland? 

Not really. Even something as shit as my BIL’s Golf still has some value, a lot more than what any of us would be willing to pay for a 200k mile rusty hatchback.

People here look after their cars a lot more and expect used cars to be in as-new condition.

[sierraman]

It must be a massive purchase then in relation to wages to buy a vehicle so maintaining it is paramount. 

[JakeT]

The ‘bottom of the food chain’ is also way lower in Europe, too. Lots of cars start life in a wealthy country, and slowly make their way east as they age, and as repair bills mount up. Labour is so cheap in places like Poland and other EE nations that it’s rare stuff gets scrapped unless it’s totally ballbagged.

 

I saw someone that moved to Poland, and took his E46 BMW with him. When there, he had it converted to LHD, as the labour was so cheap. A turbo or clutch/DMF might spell the end of a car here, but in Europe it just moves somewhere the labour rate is cheaper and gets fixed.

[IronStar]

8 minutes ago, JakeT said:

I saw someone that moved to Poland, and took his E46 BMW with him. When there, he had it converted to LHD, as the labour was so cheap. A turbo or clutch/DMF might spell the end of a car here, but in Europe it just moves somewhere the labour rate is cheaper and gets fixed.

How much would clutch + DMF cost in the UK? It's around a grand here, maybe a bit cheaper if the kit is unusually inexpensive. 

[Tayne]

On 27/08/2024 at 16:23, Peter C said:

Old cars are uncommon. Forget about seeing an FSO, Lada or a rear engined Skoda. In a recent episode of Wheeler Dealers on the Road, the one where Mike and Elvis bought a FSM 126p in Poland, Mike said that 126p’s are still used daily in Poland and it’s everyone’s first car. Total bullshit, you don’t see them anywhere and if one turns up, people take photos.

There’s plenty of new Korean stuff, especially electric versions. There’s a VW factory on the outskirts of Poznań and new Polos, Golfs and Passats are everywhere. Well off Poles like their AMG Mercs and Audi RS6s, both are usually driven with vigour and make glorious sound. There’s very little here for an AutoShiter.

I first visited Eastern Europe in 2005 and, with a couple of exceptions, my experiences have been more like Peter’s than Mike Brewer’s.

Plenty of euro, Japanese and Korean cars, occasional super cars and yanks and the old soviet stuff is rarely seen.

The exceptions being Ukraine (in 2011 or 2012) which had late Volgas being taxied in Kiev and the phone company in Sevastopol using a UAZ 469. We also stayed near the russian naval facility and every morning an officious chap in a big hat would park his 50 year old Volga (deer on the bonnet) in “our” street. No doubt some of this was down to ZAZ still being a going concern then, making Daewoo/GM type things by then.

The other exception is the Lada Niva which seems to be hanging on in rural hilly/mountainous areas.

[lisbon_road]

I went to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in 1991.  I went to a vehicle rally in Latvia and then we travelled across to Russia.  There was plenty of old stuff then and very very few foreign cars.  I think I saw six in the entire trip.  Should I dig the photos out?

[Tayne]

Yes please.

I’m doing a Baltic trip at the moment (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and the first leg only threw up 3 Ladas, 1 Volga and 1 Fiat 126.

[IronStar]

Eastern Europe here, can confirm Peter's experience. The lowest rung of the cars is run by food deliveries, usually late 90s - early 00s hatchback, usually base spec and unlikely to pass another MOT. Some Zastavas knocking about still, in various states of falling apart, but not something you see a lot of. Any other old Eastern European car is a very very rare sight. 

[JakeT]

3 hours ago, IronStar said:

How much would clutch + DMF cost in the UK? It's around a grand here, maybe a bit cheaper if the kit is unusually inexpensive. 

For let’s say a 2.0TDi Golf the parts would be £800, then probably the same in labour and other bits again.

 

With the lack of export markets many owners sell them for scrap at that point where they go to donate their parts to keep other ones running.

 

same thing with rust, where the labour cost is far more significant.