Aaah, memories...

[wuvvum]

Nope, I remember the one you mean, but that wasn't me. My first Dodge 50 (the spec lift) was white, and the beavertail one was painted in a fetching shade of red oxide primer.

[wuvvum]

Resurrecting this ancient (and slightly* self-indulgent) thread as when I was visiting my parents last weekend, my mum produced some photos of the first motorised vehicle I ever owned.

Here is me in the autumn of 1993 with my then brand-new MBK Swing.

Fucking awesome little bike this was - once run in it would buzz along at 45 on the flat, and handled nicely too.  Sadly it got nicked from outside the local music school, and replaced by a much older MBK 51, which was then nicked out of the garage despite the front wheel being chained to a wall (the thieves came with a spare wheel).  That was replaced by a 1972 Peugeot 102 bought for 800 francs from a flea market in Grenoble.  Unbelievably that was also stolen, and was replaced with the ex-post office AV89 I still own today.

Here's me on the bike outside the front of the house we lived in at the time.  I still have that helmet too, although it's rather the worse for wear and has lost its visor.

I still remember how wonderful it was to finally be motorised, after dreaming of that moment since I was 3. 

[bramz7]

Just spent a few minutes perusing this thread. 

Crumbs. 

 

Now need to find an early 2.4 JTD 156 or Marea. Good one. 

[LightBulbFun]

1 hour ago, bramz7 said:

Just spent a few minutes perusing this thread. 

Crumbs. 

this!

proper top shite!  

[Tadhg Tiogar]

That really is a lifetime of shite. Lengthy list of big Cits.

Shame your list didn't contain a VW K70 or NSU Ro80, though - there were enough of them hanging around when you embarked on your epic voyage.....

[Eyersey1234]

On 1/20/2011 at 7:12 PM, wuvvum said:

 

100E Prefect. This would have been quite pleasant to drive if it had had a proper gearbox - it handled well enough and made a lovely noise.

 

 

D Series recovery truck. This was a proper heap, but still great fun to drive, at anything above walking pace at least (no PAS).

 

 

 

Pair of Frogeye Scorpios. The estate was a 24v Cosworth, the saloon was a VM-engined TD. Both a complete PITA with electrical gremlins, and the diesel had a leaky heater matrix too.

 

 

Rascal van. This was great fun, and possibly the most terrifying way to do 70mph that I've ever experienced.

 

 

635CSi. This wasn't as good as it looked, and I lost a lot of money on it. Snapped its propshaft two days after I bought it, racing a Punto GT away from the lights. Great to drive while it lasted though.

 

 

My first Alfasud, a 1.5 Ti. I drove this back from Sheffield, and used it as my daily for a while - never gave me any trouble, and went like the clappers too. Eventually sold it when the MoT ran out and it needed lots of welding in awkward places to pass.

 

 

CX GTI Turbo. I loved this car - it really was quite incongruously fast for something with only 165bhp.

 

 

Toyota 1000 estate. This is one I really should have kept. Great little thing to drive around town, if hopelessly low-geared on the open road.

 

 

Merc 230TE. Bought out of the Freeads for £150 with long MoT, this was a better car than I was expecting - was my first W124, but probably won't be my last.

I like the Prefect, my grandparents bought a beige one new in 1955 as their first car. 

[wuvvum]

Barrett mentioned this thread in the discussion about archived threads, so I thought I'd dredge it up in case anyone is interested.  Pictures have been watermarked by Photofuckit but are still just about visible.

[Skizzer]

My goodness, you really have covered all the bases over the years, eh?  That’s one amazing CV.

This sentence about sums it up for me:

On 1/20/2011 at 7:30 PM, wuvvum said:

Commer Walkthrough burger van. I swapped this for a Volvo 480.

The list includes more or less every car I’ve ever fancied a go of.  Massive respect.

[lanciamatt]

On 1/20/2011 at 7:02 PM, wuvvum said:

Last night I was searching through my Photobucket account to try and find pictures of my old Rayton, and in the process I spent a happy half hour reminiscing about some of the gems I've owned over the years. I thought some on here might appreciate pictures of some of them - I haven't got photos of anything like all the cars I've owned (didn't get a digital camera till 2003, and even then I only took pics of cars when I was selling them, and I didn't always keep the pics), but below are some of the more interesting ones I do have, in roughly chronological order.

 

I'm not sure how many pics you can fit in one post, so I'm going to do ten per post.

 

 

 

Jetta 1.5 GLS auto. Bought before the heady days of OMG DUB SCENE TAX YO, I purchased this tidy two-owner 70k-mile car from Sheffield for £250 with a year's test. It was a lovely thing to drive - I used it as my daily for some time.

 

 

Citroën CX 25RI Familiale. This was my third CX, and I used it as my tow car for several months.

 

 

Merc 230E. Bought from a mate and sold two days before Christmas 2006 to two blokes whose car had died and who needed it to get home.

 

 

Saab 99. This one wasn't particularly interesting, but it was cheap.

 

 

HA Viva. I loved this car - it had had a 1256cc Chevette engine fitted and went like the clappers. Was my daily for ages. Bought for £175 BIN off the Bay, the bloke delivered it from Yorkshire for an extra £75 as he needed it out the way. Needed a bit of work for its test, but nothing excessive, and was solid as a rock.

 

 

Hyundai S Coupe. Bought purely because it was dirt cheap, this was actually a surprisingly pleasant car.

 

 

Dolomite 1850 auto. The autobox ruined it, but it drove nicely apart from that. Paid £100 for it - no T&T though.

 

 

Maserati Biturbo - I bought this on a bit of a whim. It was up in Leeds, and I trailered it home despite it being T&T'd. Not the most reliable car I've ever owned, but good fun when it was working properly, if a little hairy at times - RWD, twin turbos, no PAS and a wood-rim steering wheel are not always an ideal combination. Sold it to some bloke in Germany in the end.

 

 

LDV 400. Bought purely because it was the first 400 I'd seen for sale with slidey doors. It was painfully slow though, so I sold it after a couple of months.

 

 

My first Metrocab. It had just had an expensive gearbox rebuild, but whoever rebuilt it didn't put enough ATF in it, so it was on its way out again by the time I bought it.

That's my old 420 biturbo, that car could 180 at alarming speed, caught me out more than once. Needed carb rebuilding though.you must have got it off guy I sold it to. I'm in Barnsley and guy from Leeds bought it off me.

[HMC]

I’m having to have physio on my thumb as I’ve just pressed the like button one too many times.

[bunglebus]

Christ on a bicycle. I thought I'd owned a few cars...

[wuvvum]

56 minutes ago, lanciamatt said:

That's my old 420 biturbo, that car could 180 at alarming speed, caught me out more than once. Needed carb rebuilding though.you must have got it off guy I sold it to. I'm in Barnsley and guy from Leeds bought it off me.

Yes, it was a bit twitchy in the wet.  Still needed the carb sorting when I had it - it was quite spluttery at low revs.  Absolutely flew once it cleared its throat though.

[anonymous user]

Wow, I must have missed this first time around. Some lovely stuff you have had over the years.

[AnthonyG]

Orange Alfasud is still with us, despite earlier mention of it being scrapped.

[lanciamatt]

52 minutes ago, wuvvum said:

Yes, it was a bit twitchy in the wet.  Still needed the carb sorting when I had it - it was quite spluttery at low revs.  Absolutely flew once it cleared its throat though.

I bought it off a guy in Wakefield, it was a flying machine when it run right. Did about 10mpg when I drove it. 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, AnthonyG said:

Orange Alfasud is still with us, despite earlier mention of it being scrapped.

Yep, I saw it a few years back at one of Trigger's meets at Shotley.  Looking rather better than when I had it, and a good deal better than when it had been languishing on an Ipswich driveway for years.

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, lanciamatt said:

I bought it off a guy in Wakefield, it was a flying machine when it run right. Did about 10mpg when I drove it. 

I don't think I ever dared to calculate the fuel consumption...

[lanciamatt]

We went on a lads piss up weekend to whitley bay in it. It used 75 quids worth of juice, good laugh on A1 though. 

[ProgRocker]

I currently live quite close to where @wuvvum parked his Scorpios et Al on page 1. There have been some new houses built on that very car park.

Parking on that estate is really shite now. Pain in the arse to get out of it with all the parked cars reducing the road to one lane

[Eyersey1234]

@wuvvum how many vehicles have you owned now? Was going to say cars but there are several vans etc in the list as well. 

[Jerzy Woking]

14 minutes ago, Eyersey1234 said:

@wuvvum how many vehicles have you owned now? Was going to say cars but there are several vans etc in the list as well. 

I was going to ask how many since 2011? I know you've owned some shite motorbikes as I bought two from you (the Cagiva Planet has been rebuilt twice, and my nephew is going to attempt a third soon. The Hyosung was scrapped after about 5000 miles of being thrashed, crashed and chopped about a fair bit making it into a bobber).

[wuvvum]

I need to update my spreadsheet.  I'll do that this weekend and then let you know the new total.  I think it's somewhere in the high 500s at the moment.

[wuvvum]

5 hours ago, ProgRocker said:

I currently live quite close to where @wuvvum parked his Scorpios et Al on page 1. There have been some new houses built on that very car park.

Parking on that estate is really shite now. Pain in the arse to get out of it with all the parked cars reducing the road to one lane

I still go up that way occasionally as I'm still mates with one of my former neighbours (he now has my old MGB, although that's hidden away most of the time - it's usually just his work Corsa and his Mrs' Rover 25 on the drive).  Those new houses look rather incongruous compared to the shitehole council flats surrounding them.

[Amishtat]

I've really enjoyed reading through this one ever since barrett mentioned it the other day. All my friends and family think I'm a maniac for cars but I can show them this now confident that I'm a rank amateur.. SPU585D rings a bell for some reason and I'd almost lay money that that blue Hunter came from the same seller as Reg Bo11ox' Avenger. 

[wuvvum]

Just updated the spreadsheet - grand total so far is 572.  I've slowed down a lot in the last 10 years.

[RobT]

Is there anything you have a burning desire to own at the moment?  I recall you saying the plan is to buy less modern crap and try to stick to older, more interesting motors.  But I suppose it's proving increasingly difficult to find such things at sensible money.

[Austat]

On 1/21/2011 at 6:12 AM, wuvvum said:

 

Toyota 1000 estate. This is one I really should have kept. Great little thing to drive around town, if hopelessly low-geared on the open road.

 

On 1/21/2011 at 6:30 AM, wuvvum said:

 

OMG RWD OSF. This was a 1.6 Ghia - OSF tax was already on its way up when I bought this, but for some reason this particular car seems to have missed out, as I paid £350 for it with plenty of T&T. Had been mildly tuned and fitted with a 1600GT gearbox and went like the clappers, until it melted a piston at 100mph on the A47 - still kept up with traffic even running on three though. Another one I should have kept and fixed.

 

On 1/21/2011 at 7:43 AM, wuvvum said:

 

The 304 - I bought this from Reading, with a little assistance from R.Welfare of this parish who picked me up from the station. It was a lovely thing to drive, and I used it as my daily for a while, even giving Spottedlaurel a lift to the Ace Café and back in it. Heater was pants though. The Justy next to it was also mine - brilliant to drive, but rotten as a pear.

 

Mazda 323 auto. This was a sweet little car, had a blown head gasket but still ran and drove OK. It got vandalised though when some drunken twat decided to jump on the roof, and I sold it to Utterpiffle / The_Scrapman, who was going to drop the body onto a modified MX5 floorpan.

Any info on what happened to these? 

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, RobT said:

But I suppose it's proving increasingly difficult to find such things at sensible money.

This.  This is the problem right here.  Your ADO16 was a bargain by today's standards.  My almost-as-solid cream-coloured one a few pages back was £350.  The grey Minx you can see sat behind the blue Jag on page 1 was also £350, as was the Triumph 1300.  The weekend trio (CX, SD1, Minor) left me with change from a grand.  You'd be looking at a minimum of 5 times those prices now - and you probably won't be surprised to hear that my disposable income hasn't quintupled since 2011.

The Merc I bought a couple of months ago was a bit of a bargain (although less so now it's a non runner), but they are extremely few and far between nowadays.  Ten years ago eBay was full of them.  That's why I end up buying modern and semi-modern crap - because I have money burning a hole in my pocket but there's nothing interesting available at that price.

As for burning desires, they change almost by the week.  I am a fickle twat.  At the moment it's something front wheel drive and BMC, but that's only because you and BeEP have bought ADO16s, and I liked the look of BeEP's Landcrab when I saw it in the metal.  Next month someone else will buy something different that will catch my eye.  The only cars that I have had a long term wish to own are a Panhard and an 02-series Peugeot, but both are rapidly ascending out of my price range even if I sold most of the rest of the fleet to fund them.

I don't actually need another classic as such.  The Renault 6 is, as it proved last year, perfectly usable, economical and capable of undertaking long journeys without leaving me with tinnitus or a need for an osteopath.  The 220D, if I can get it sorted, will be even more usable, if slower.  I just miss the days when I had a dozen interesting cars to choose from if I wanted to go somewhere.

[wuvvum]

1 hour ago, Austat said:

Any info on what happened to these? 

The Toyota 1000 went to Lincolnshire, then I lost track of it.  The Escort, last I heard, was still around somewhere in Norfolk, although not on the road.  The 304 was resprayed in blue but eventually got scrapped (not by me) after failing its MOT catastrophically on rot.  The 323 was sold to Utterpiffle off of Retro Rides, but he then moved to Germany and I have no idea what happened to it.

[Pieman]

6 hours ago, wuvvum said:

Just updated the spreadsheet - grand total so far is 572.  I've slowed down a lot in the last 10 years.

I'm genuinely stunned.

I wonder if there is an official record for the person who has bought and sold the most vehicles in the UK for personal use...cos I reckon you may well have a good shot at it.  You are the Autoshite equivalent of Eric "Winkle" Brown.