Rusty's Antipodean Motoring Adventures

[Llessur]

I've been a bit of a lurker here for a good few years now and very much enjoy living out my somewhat egalitarian motoring dreams without even having to leave the house. However, I thought it was probably time to give back a little via the medium of documenting my own adventures at the budget end of the automotive spectrum. Hence this thread.

Firstly, I should probably apologise for the confused accent - I spent the first 30-odd years of my life knocking around Sussex and Portsmouth but moved out to Australia back in 2012 because A GIRL. I now live with said girl and my progeny in Adelaide - think all the vibe of somewhere like Chichester, but a bit warmer (although not at the moment apparently).

Like many people on here I have had a fairly rich and varied history of car buying and selling ever since I got my driving licence in the glorious time that was the late 90s. It all started with this rather resplendent 5 door Astra 1.6GL I bought from a friend of my parents for the sum of £700 after graduating from Pamela Carr's Streetwise Driving School:

Which I then replaced with a near-immaculate 1991 Sierra Sapphire 1.8LX bought from a dealer in Billingshurst:

But I sold that when I went to university and replaced it with this much more economical and quintessentially-student heap just poking its cute little face out from beside my parents' Eldis:

The Uno's gearbox was shot when I got it due to it being run for god knows how long with virtually no oil in it by the middle aged housewife I bought it from. I simply topped it up and it carried on merrily (although somewhat whiningly) for the next couple of years until I could afford to replace it with a slightly rusty and smoky old mk2 Golf 1.6CL in my last year of uni. My dad then used the Uno as an occasional runabout for the next few months before dumping it in his work car park when the brakes needed doing. Eventually his employer politely but firmly asked him to remove it, so it went to the big scrapyard in the sky. A shame really as it was a fun and rust-free little car.

About the same time as the Golf, and somewhat on a whim, I also invested in an early J reg pre-facelift Peugeot 405GRi which I travelled all the way to Hertford to collect (back when train travel was financially achievable to even a hard up student type) - the Autotrader photos backed up the seller's description that it was immaculate so I had high hopes. It was only after I arrived that the guy bothered to mention to me that the front passenger door had been kicked in - it still had the footprint on it. I had no other way to get home so I reluctantly bought it at a re-negotiated price, picked up a vaguely-matching door from the breaker's on the way home and then almost immediately sold it to a friend of my dad as I'd lost interest in it.

No pictures of that one unfortunately and I think the 405 is an itch I still need to scratch one day. I've always loved them, starting well before I had a licence.

I ran the Golf for a year or so before graduating and instantly made the mistake of thinking I wanted a brand new car to match my new status within the educated elite, so chucked a can of Wynns Stop Smoke it in, sold it to a young couple and then hot-footed it to the local Renault dealers to discuss finance options on a 53 reg 1.2 Renault Clio Dynamique. I credit taking my then girlfriend along wearing the legal minimum level of clothing for the very reasonable deal I was offered, and a few weeks later I was behind the wheel, getting a taste of what the new car experience was all about. Short story - I didn't really like it. The car itself was quite fun and did all the right car-related things, but it was just missing something. A smell I think. I also didn't like having to be paranoid about where I parked it which, living in Portsmouth and working in Aldershot at the time, left me with very few options.

Annoyingly, I can't find any photos of the Clio either, so here's a broadly similar one as an interim measure:

So I chopped in the Clio less than 12 months into the 3 year finance period and instead splashed out on a maroon 1.6 Ford Escort mk6 estate that I saw advertised at the side of the road for £400 a few miles from my parents' place. It absolutely reeked of cigarettes and the door bottoms on the drivers side were clearly made of filler, but I felt it suited me and took it home. After a liberal hosing of that nice AutoGlym interior cleaner I managed to get the smell down to a level I could live with and put it in to daily service. I had a three hour round trip commute to Aldershot at the time and, other than a bit of oil consumption, a leaky rad and needing a new set of discs and pads, the car didn't put a foot wrong and proved really useful for moving house and the like.

Eventually though I fancied something a bit different, and the sad old man who's always been living inside of me came out to play. I found a metallic blue T reg Rover 620 SLi advertised at a dealership in rural Hampshire and liked the thought of chuffing around clad in velour and faux walnut so popped over to take a look. I got the distinct impression it had been sitting there a while and the dealer pretty much bit my hand off when I offered him £1500 cash (£500 less than the asking price) to drive it away then and there. Not sure why really, it was a really nice car - absolutely spotless inside and out, reasonable mileage and seemingly in great mechanical condition. I think they just had a very particular image at the time. Sadly my early slide into middle age proved too much for my girlfriend, and she dumped me shortly after - genuinely citing my deteriorating choice of car as one of the apparently myriad factors behind her decision.

With the Rover leaving a slightly sour taste in my mouth I set about to repair my image with something a little bit sexier. I found an advert for a G reg mk2 Golf GTi for only £500 - a very good price even at the time, although it did have 150k on the clock (which later turned out to be more like 250k after I tracked down the service history via the supplying dealer). It was bloody miles away - Hertford I think, although it's a bit hazy - but again I hopped on a train to take a lookie-loo. I think the seller had described it as slightly scruffy, and that it was - but mainly on the inside. It looked like someone had spent the last few months using to transport building waste as it was full of bits of rubble and broken wood, and had a few nicks in the interior trim. But other than a rusty tailgate, the bodywork was surprisingly straight (including the factory BBS alloys) and it drove well with no knocks, rattles or smoke (plus I had no other way of getting home) so I handed over the cash. I remember that being the only time I've knowingly driven without insurance so I nursed it home at 50mph so as not to attract any attention from the plod. Against all odds it made it and I dumped it in my grandparents' driveway in Sussex before  returning to Portsmouth. Over the next few weeks I scoured the local scrappies for interior bits and a replacement GTi tailgate in the right colour and got it looking pretty darn good. However, during this time my Rover had been broken into several times in Portsmouth and I decided that a GTi would last all of five minutes parked on the street. So I sold it on for £1000 - one of the only times I've ever made anything resembling a profit on a car - and carried on using the Rover for the time being.

Here's the GTi parked outside my nan's house. I really regret selling this one...

A few months later I was having thoughts of quitting my job in order to move back to Sussex and decided to start making financial preparations for the inevitable period of funemployment that would follow - the Rover had to go, so I sold it on and for a short period of time I relied on the small fleet of work vehicles I had access to - a couple of H Reg ex-BT Ford Escort vans and a cira 1999 Ford Ranger pickup. One day whilst driving between sites I spotted a mk4 Fiesta LX parked outside of a dodgy looking car dealers somewhere near Bromley. It had no price tag on the window but it looked like it would satisfy my budget motoring requirements so I stopped to have a look. It was, I think, Tourmaline Green, had the 1.25 Zetec engine and looked to be in pretty good nick. The dealer had literally just taken it in part exchange and hadn't prepped it in any way, but we agreed on a price (around £1200 from memory) and I drove it away that day. I remember having to hide it for a few days on one of the building sites I was working on at the time before I could drive it home. That was an interesting job by the way, a semi-detached house had been swallowed by a massive sinkhole in the middle of the night with the owners only just getting out on time as the place crumbled around them (see Ridley Road, Bromley for more information). Every cloud though, as the back garden of their now-deserted neighbour's property became my private parking area for a while.  

The Fiesta for the most part turned out to be a great buy - it needed a new set of tyres in the short term and a few months down the track did end up needing some new brake lines and a master cylinder, but it handled the motorway commute quite well and did at least one trip down to Cornwall to see friends. Oh, and the ignition barrel shat itself one day and needed to be replaced - but I never got round to getting the keys matched or the immobiliser re-programmed so starting it became a bit of a faff juggling two keys - one for the barrel and one hovering somewhere near the inductive sensor behind it. I remember having to keep the fob of the new key wrapped in tin foil to allow the sensor to pick up the chip in the old key but that just added an extra layer of security in my opinion.

A few months later I quit my job, relocated to central Brighton and decided life would be easier (read: I would have more spare money for booze) without trying to keep a personal car on the streets of a city which hates personal cars. So I sold the Fiesta and for the first time since passing my test went without a daily driver of my own. I did however get an itch for a classic car, having toyed with the idea for a few years, so invested in a Triumph Spitfire 1500 which I kept at my parents' house (now a much more convenient 15 minutes away by train). Over the next few years I fitted/ruined it with a 2 litre GT6 engine and overdrive gearbox, a set of slot mags and a hard top and enjoyed blasting it around the South Downs and small country villages. I'd probably still have it today if I hadn't emigrated.

Whilst I would have been more than happy to continue my UK-based motoring career, by this time I had met the aforementioned Aussie girl and due to the ENDLESS RAIN of 2008-2009ish, plans were afoot to give the other side of the world a try. I sold the Fiesta to a guy at work and the Spitfire to a bloke who'd coincidentally just moved home from Australia.

From now on I'd have to pick things up in the Southern hemisphere - I'll cover that chapter in the next post.

[Rustybullethole]

Nice introduction and right up man. 
Am Holden on for the next chapter. 

[Llessur]

27 minutes ago, Rustybullethole said:

Nice introduction and right up man. 
Am Holden on for the next chapter. 

I see what you did there...

[mercedade]

Quality write up - nice work! 

Partial to a 405 myself. When my dad was doing a lot of station parking, and I was driving to Warrington and back, we swapped cars so he took my Panda 1000 and I took his 1.9 GRi 405, and nothing had ever felt faster to me. 

[Llessur]

5 hours ago, mercedade said:

Quality write up - nice work! 

Partial to a 405 myself. When my dad was doing a lot of station parking, and I was driving to Warrington and back, we swapped cars so he took my Panda 1000 and I took his 1.9 GRi 405, and nothing had ever felt faster to me. 

My friend's dad had a white SRi as a company car back in the day - my friend inherited it as his first car at the age of 17. Not sure how the insurance panned out but I guess 1998 was a different time! It's a shame I didn't get a chance to keep mine for a bit longer as I remember it being really nice to drive on the way back, but the mismatched door annoyed me and the fact I bought it for a road trip to Ireland that never eventuated meant I just didn't need it. Liquifying my assets so that I could buy more liquid assets seemed like a higher priority.