Happy 18th Birthday Claim_Jr. Here's some scans of the copy of Auto Trader I was reading in the delivery room as you were being born

[warren t claim]

Even though my bitch ex has made it impossible for me to see Claim_Jr for over five years he's always in my thoughts. To kill time waiting for him to make an appearance, I bought a copy of Auto Trader to read in the delivery room between smoke breaks. Obviously, I kept that copy for sentimental reasons and I thought that it'd be a fitting tribute to the fruit of my loins to start scanning it and posting the pages on here.

[warren t claim]

If anyone has a request to see a particular section then feel free to ask me on this thread.

[hairnet]

classic stuff obvs

motorbicycles

ta old man

[sdkrc]

American section please.

I always thought the West Yorkshire auto trader was the crème de la crème of high risk cars. I've not read a north west one

[Dobloseven]

Sad to hear of your not having contact with your son.We had this with our number 3 son and his ex a few years back.The lad is now coming up to 16 and has good contact with my son,but it was a horrible time for him and cost him a huge amount in solicitors fees to get a legally enforceable arrangement hammered out.I still don't know how he kept himself together through it all.Thought initially that must have been a pretty late copy of Auto trader,but apparently print editions kept going till 2013.

[Snipes]

It was always a tough choice twenty years ago wether to pick up a car mag or autotrader. 

Back when Johnny Cecotto edition E30 M3s were like £5000. 

[Marina door handles]

I occasionally dream that I am in a strange newsagents with multiple floors and a huge selection of interesting car magazines..... Then I wake up mildly depressed! 

[sierraman]

14 hours ago, warren t claim said:

If anyone has a request to see a particular section then feel free to ask me on this thread.

Any Sierras in there? 

[Dobloseven]

Now your son's 18, surely he can now decide if he wants to see his dad ,or not.Sorry if I'm speaking out of place on this,but having six,now grown up sons,have a bit of an interest and would say some of my best times have been when we've been messing around with old cars together.Last Sunday afternoon,for example was spent crawling under the youngests X Type fitting a towbar that cost a high percentage of the cars value.Thanks to a bit of Autoshiting,monkey bingo and man maths from the old man, he's effectively had 8 years depreciation free motoring and currently driving a "free" car.Sincerely hope things come good for you.A lad needs a dad and sounds like you'd be a good role model.Use that magazine as a starting point to rebuild a relationship.Track down a survivor,see how much it is today .....

[warren t claim]

13 hours ago, sierraman said:

Any Sierras in there? 

Fewer than you'd think. 

[warren t claim]

From the classics and LHD section. 

[warren t claim]

Capri anyone? 

[eddyramrod]

I'd be all over that Arrow Minx now, you can't buy a picture of one for that price!  And yet even the asking price is ten times what I used to pay for them.  Also, they never came with a 1.6 (/pedant!); 1.5 or 1.7 were the standard engines.  I know, I've had both.

Capri for £700 though... even Corgi ones make that!

[vaughant]

Not one transit above a grand 😭😭😭.

Loved a smiley face, had two and both were immense....

Both were fucking rotten as well but both were immense. Abused to fuck, overloaded, never really serviced but never failed to get me anywhere until I put borrowed* diesel in one with a spurious fluid in the container and that fucked it. 

Sorry to hear about the lack of contact with the lad but to echo what @Doblosevensaid above, a mate who has 5 kids has just remade contact in the last year with his 15,now 16yr old son, through gaming ironically 🤣🤣.

Turns out he lives about 40 mins away from him and they've now been meeting up regularly. 

The mum is ok with it now but had tried to limit all contact previously.

I'm on the other side of it as my lad hasn't seen his real father since he was 14 and wants nothing to do with him. I can assure you guys though that is entirely his decision, I've tried many times to get him to contact him but he's not interested in the slightest. 

He's not a bad guy his father, not a nasty bloke or anything but he never made any effort at all with my lad. He used to go over the house and his father would say " I'm going upstairs" and play world of warcraft until Jack asked for food or the like to which he'd give him £3 and tell him to walk to Spar then he'd come back and wait for us to pick him up. 

He probably didn't mind when he was about 10 or 11 as he's always been an "indoor" kid but as he got a bit older he wanted to do things himself and saw seeing his old man as a chore.

Final straw for him was he asked for a small present at Christmas, say £60's worth to which his old man promised him he'd get it, it was one of those things that made an Xbox like a Nintendo Wii, you put it on the TV and he'd agreed for a load of games specific to that from us for Christmas which we'd got. 

Knowing his old man was generally useless for things like that, I bought one anyway and was just going to return it after Christmas. 

On the day he opened his presents and found his old man had bought him a power ranger 🙄🙄🙄, not really what you want when you're 14 😬😬. Luckily we had the other one to give him so Christmas wasn't all lost.

He got really upset and annoyed over it but we knew there was more to it. A few weeks later he confessed that his father had told him how poor he was on Christmas Eve when he went over to see him, how he couldn't afford anything nice this Christmas as "your mother takes all my spare money from me", the usual bollox. However, Jack had opened the door to the dining room after being told not to when his old man was on level 20056 of WoW and found it pretty much packed with presents for his daughter (born after Jack) which I think hit him really hard.

His old man has made zero effort as well mind you so maybe it's what they both want. 

Bit sad though.

[warren t claim]

Seems a fair price. 

[warren t claim]

Bargain. 

[bangernomics]

Bargain. 

Love how it has a wing and door mirror suggesting the completely redone may be with scrapyard bits full of bog and last weeks autotrader.

Great idea all the same, hope the lad comes round too. Many rites of passage to be completed with his dad I imagine.

[bangernomics]

Bargain. 

Love how it has a wing and door mirror suggesting the completely redone may be with scrapyard bits full of bog and last weeks autotrader.

Great idea all the same, hope the lad comes round too. Many rites of passage to be completed with his dad I imagine.

[MJK 24]

Sorry to hear about your lad 😢

 

Any Scirocco’s for sale?

[wuvvum]

On 25/05/2025 at 00:06, warren t claim said:

Capri anyone? 

Who would want that rusty old Capri when for a fiver less you could have that lovely shiny 1.4 Escort underneath?

[warren t claim]

On 26/05/2025 at 10:27, MJK 24 said:

Sorry to hear about your lad 😢

 

Any Scirocco’s for sale?

[wuvvum]

Ah yes, those heady days when you could buy <10 year old cars for less than a grand...

[ruffgeezer]

5 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Ah yes, those heady days when you could buy <10 year old cars for less than a grand...

Not sure if tongue in cheek, but £995 then is nearly £1700 now, when adjusted for inflation. 

[AnthonyG]

On 25/05/2025 at 08:26, eddyramrod said:

I'd be all over that Arrow Minx now, you can't buy a picture of one for that price!  And yet even the asking price is ten times what I used to pay for them.  Also, they never came with a 1.6 (/pedant!); 1.5 or 1.7 were the standard engines.  I know, I've had both.

Just imagine the quality of the part-exchanges someone selling a £695 Hillman Minx would accept! 

“Will you accept an X reg Metro with a seized engine? I’ll throw in a Matsui video recorder”

“OK then, it’s a deal” 😄

[AnthonyG]

Also, amazing how little 5 year old Fiats, particularly Bravas/Mareas, were worth.

I think Ladas kept their value better. At least you could sell them to those blokes in Hull who took them back to Russia (remember Clarkson doing this in a mid 90s Top Gear). 

[AnthonyG]

On 25/05/2025 at 00:01, warren t claim said:

Fewer than you'd think. 

How much is the blue Imp in the bottom left hand corner? 

Also - I expect AgreedCarCredit didn’t survive the financial crisis at the end of that decade. There’s another similar ad in there quoting 27.9% Apr. Jesus wept. 

[warren t claim]

32 minutes ago, AnthonyG said:

How much is the blue Imp in the bottom left hand corner? 

Also - I expect AgreedCarCredit didn’t survive the financial crisis at the end of that decade. There’s another similar ad in there quoting 27.9% Apr. Jesus wept. 

 

 

a bit of a bargain that Imp.