AUTOTRADER - june 1992 - suits you sir?

[HMC]

Meanwhile further up the summer 1992 food chain we have READING BAILEY “where customers send their friends” penning affectionate and intense short stories for each car

[HMC]

8 minutes ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Maybe it's my eyes, or perhaps wishful thinking, but the Cherry Jubilee at Sticker Lane looks rather like a Laurel....

Escort 2-door at Bargain Cars Sales for £95?!

I think so too. Cant quite make the reg out A124MUA ?

edit- its turns out my guess was right, despite grainy period newsprint. I guessed based on -UA being a leeds reg and its yorkshire autotrader.

[quicksilver]

22 hours ago, HMC said:

MEANWOOD VALLEY cheap car centre-

“definitely the best value for money in this area” 

And a bargain bucket section as well

LOL at the Acclaim ad saying 'library picture' but not having a picture at all. 'Library pictures' were the most pointless thing in these old classifieds - "here's a picture that's not the actual car for sale but another one that may or may not be something like it", to help those poor confused folks who wanted to buy a Triumph Acclaim but didn't know what one looked like.

[Spottedlaurel]

2 hours ago, HMC said:

I think so too. Cant quite make the reg out A124MUA ?

edit- its turns out my guess was right, despite grainy period newsprint. I guessed based on -UA being a leeds reg and its yorkshire autotrader.

Ta, nice to know it lasted for a few more years after it was on a forecourt.

[Low ontime]

3 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Maybe it's my eyes, or perhaps wishful thinking, but the Cherry Jubilee at Sticker Lane looks rather like a Laurel....

Escort 2-door at Bargain Cars Sales for £95?!

£95 quid 2  door escort…. So cheap it must be minimum of 25% fibreglass and p38 bog horror..? 

seem to remember dad paying £600 odd for the mk 3 escorts  in the early 90s… and they was ropey too!  

[HMC]

The whole dynamics of old bangers now vs early 90s is so different. Vehicles seemed to deteriorate bodily faster- mechanically probably also but in a more diagnostic and repairable way.  

what about relative worth?

£195 is a figure that seemed to crop up on dealer listings for mot’d but presumably quite rough cars back in the lost summer of ‘92 as a rock bottom figure.  A rough approximation seems to be about £500-£700 today- so although the type of fodder on offer is different, are we really in a better or worse situation compared to then in terms  of purchasing power for a set of wheels?

[Shite Ron]

3 hours ago, HMC said:

Meanwhile further up the summer 1992 food chain we have READING BAILEY

The bottom of the food chain provided the best cars ever in 1992, the ones at the top hold no appeal. The Granada Sapphire in Car Zone looks appealing even if the wheels look odd. 

The T reg 2.8 GL Granada and T reg 2.0GL Cortina both sound extremely appealing to me and both dream cars but probably had a very hard life.

[Shite Ron]

14 hours ago, Rightnider said:

Mind you, I never thought of the insurance cost. When I started driving my first (running) car in 97 I think I paid approximately £150 a year. For a 3-litre Granada.

When I was looking to buy my first car in 1985 my first choice was a 3.0GL Granada but after getting a quote of £500 I realised the best car I could afford to insure was a 1.6GL Cortina. The quotes were for the car to be insured in my mothers name with me as a named driver!

[HMC]

7 minutes ago, Shite Ron said:

When I was looking to buy my first car in 1985 my first choice was a 3.0GL Granada but after getting a quote of £500 I realised the best car I could afford to insure was a 1.6GL Cortina. The quotes were for the car to be insured in my mothers name with me as a named driver!

Have you got any pics of your earliest cars?

[Wibble]

11 minutes ago, Shite Ron said:

When I was looking to buy my first car in 1985 my first choice was a 3.0GL Granada but after getting a quote of £500 I realised the best car I could afford to insure was a 1.6GL Cortina. The quotes were for the car to be insured in my mothers name with me as a named driver!

Known in the insurance world as “fronting” and considered illegal, you naughty boy!

[Shite Ron]

11 minutes ago, HMC said:

Have you got any pics of your earliest cars?

I thought that I had posted some but have been through all the images I posted and cannot find them. I will try and remember to look through the albums at my parents house on the weekend. Unfortunately I didn’t think of taking pictures of my cars in the 80’s and 90’s but have one of my first Cortina also the 2.3GL, Daimler, Moke, Cub etc.

 

[Shite Ron]

12 minutes ago, Wibble said:

Known in the insurance world as “fronting” and considered illegal, you naughty boy!

Just after turning 17, passing my test and starting my apprenticeship I went to BCA  auction and saw ex police Jaguar 4.2 series 3’s with manual gearboxes going through at around £1,200. I went home and phoned the insurance company and got a quote of £500 to insure, now I was working this was just about affordable, unfortunately my dad overheard me and insisted I had to insure my car under my own name. I then was back to a Cortina 1.6GL, this time a 1982 model from BCA auction in Cardiff. I had to wait until I was 19 before I could insure anything above 1600 cc.

[Wibble]

14 minutes ago, Shite Ron said:

Just after turning 17, passing my test and starting my apprenticeship I went to BCA  auction and saw ex police Jaguar 4.2 series 3’s with manual gearboxes going through at around £1,200. I went home and phoned the insurance company and got a quote of £500 to insure, now I was working this was just about affordable, unfortunately my dad overheard me and insisted I had to insure my car under my own name. I then was back to a Cortina 1.6GL, this time a 1982 model from BCA auction in Cardiff. I had to wait until I was 19 before I could insure anything above 1600 cc.

Happy days in a different time. My first policy in 1988, I’m obviously considerably* younger than you😆, was £275 for TPF&T on a 1982 Cortina 1.6L.

My first car over 1.6 that I insured myself, was my 2.0CDi Carlton, 1987 new shape in about 1993.

First and only claim I’ve ever made off my own insurance when some scrote tried to steal it. Deadlocks stopped them but not before the driver’s door lock was mullered, window smashed and ignition barrel buggered.

Made a claim but insisted it went to the repairer I used for work, that I put literally dozens of lease cars through and had a good relationship with. Paid an extra £30 to have the stone chipped bonnet resprayed but never paid the policy excess or had my NCD reduced, so they obviously never invoiced the job. New locks all round, so still one key, new glass and door repaired and repainted. Great times but I was giving them a huge amount of work, right up to re-shelling vehicles.

[MorrisItalSLX]

M. Ital (SLX) ‘s Pick of the Bunch

[somewhatfoolish]

Saab 900 turbot from the classified roulette pls.

[grogee]

19 hours ago, HMC said:

Meanwhile further up the summer 1992 food chain we have READING BAILEY “where customers send their friends” penning affectionate and intense short stories for each car

The Escort Estate is 'dual purpose'. Presumably:

1) a car

2) a cupboard

[MrBiscuits]

The best bit of these for me is the old school dealer patter - 'clean car' , 'drives superb' , 'long mot' etc.  They always managed to fill those little ads without giving away anything that might put you off.  Takes me back to being a small boy trekking round bombsite dealers with my dad and trying to avoid the characters that ran them.

Some great humour in some of them too like that Reliant Robin.

[sierraman]

They were repairable in some sense but that was assuming there was something to weld to and that you weren’t in some completely hopeless scenario like having to change an engine in a communal car park of a high rise block of flats in February with a Pifco 3/8 Socket Set your family had bought you at Xmas. 

[AnthonyG]

Looking at all of that, I would have much rather have had something clean from the mid/late 70s than ‘modern motoring’ from an epically shagged out Metro/Escort Mk3/Sierra. I can only imagine how grim a £850 ‘84 Montego was at eight years old.

Funny how, in one of the first ads (Atlantic Car Sales), a seven year old Lada was worth a quite a lot less than a seventeen year old Triumph Toledo…quality always shines through in the end!