Car history.

Mottie

Mottie

Joined
27 Feb 2017
Messages
37,818
Reaction score
5,465
Location
Essexshire
Country
United Kingdom
A recent thread reminded me of some cars I’ve owned over the years.
From memory, my history is as follows (these are cars I’ve registered and have been daily drivers, not ones I’ve bought to sell).
Very first car that I got when I passed my test, given to me by my parents: Austin 1100
Then from memory, roughly in order:
Corsair V4
Corsair 1500 GT
Austin J4 van A.K.A. The passion wagon!
Mk4 Zodiac 3 litre
Mk 2 Cortina 1600GT
Mk1 Cortina 1500GT
Vauxhall Victor FD VX 4/90
Hilman Minx
Anglia Van
Mk2 Cortina 1600E
Mk 3 Cortina 1600
Series 1 Land Rover
3.8 S type Jag
4.2 XJ6
Daimler Sovereign 4.2
Mk2 Capri 2000GT
Mk1 3 litre Capri
Mk1 1100 Escort
Mk4 Cortina 2000 Ghia
HA Viva van
Triumph 2500 pi
Honda Acty van
Bedford Rascal
MK1 Fiesta 950
Mk3 Orion 1600i Ghia
Mk2 Fiesta XR2
Cavalier Mk 3 Auto
Cavalier Mk 3 SRI
Cavalier mk3 diesel saloon
Mk6 Escort
Mk5 Fiesta
Focus 2.0 TDCI Titanium
Mk6 Golf GTTDI
Land Rover Freelander HSE
Mk 5 Golf Diesel - still owned
Range Rover Freelander 2 HSE
Evoque 2.2 SD Dynamic
Audi A3 - still owned.

I'm sure there’s many I’ve forgotten. Many of those cars would be worth a few Bob these days but like all cars of that era, they either rotted away or were wrapped round lamp posts!

From the age of 15 I used to do banger and Anglia hot-rod racing
6E4B5D56-9968-4E3A-81AD-15F46571C05D.jpeg
and had dozens of Anglia's, Consuls, Zephyrs, Zodiacs, Mk10 Jags, MG Magnettes, Austin Cambridges - don’t think I paid any more than £8 for any of them. £2 was my opening bid for any derelict car I saw sitting idle outside someone’s house and many people parted with them for that price!

I've also restored a few cars as a bit of a hobby - a Mini, an Anglia 105e, A Cortina Lotus and I built a Mk 1 Escort RS2000 replica from a base 1100 shell.

Cars I nearly bought but changed my mind at the last minute were a Chocolate Brown Lotus Eclat - it seemed to be made up with the interior parts of an Austin Maxi, a TR6 but my experience with a triumph pi put me off, a Mk 1 Lotus Corina for £600 but it wasn’t as fast as the Anglia van I drive over to look at it in and a fur trimmed metal flaked Morris Minor with a pool ball gearstick knob and a steering wheel made out of a chrome plated chain - I turned up to pick it up with a few mates and they ****ed themselves laughing so I left it. Oh, I once left a deposit on an Orion Ghia saloon and when I turned up with Mrs Mottie to pick it up, she was turned off by the Panama hat on the rear shelf, said it was an old man’s car (I was in my 30’s) so I swallowed the deposit, turned round and came home!

Whats your car history been like?
 
Sponsored Links
With that list you're probably gonna be arrested by the snowflakes enviromentalists driving prius.
Delete the post!
 
with a list like that your a child born in the 50s but a child off the 60s teenage wise
all cars i remember but never owned a car my self
:giggle:
though j4 you may be earlier --was the j4 the one with the wheels in front off the cab or or underneath ??
 
Last edited:
big-all said:
though j4 you may be earlier --was the j4 the one with the wheels in front off the cab or or underneath ??
Click to expand...
Underneath and as standard, AFAIAK, my one had no front shock absorbers, think they were optional extra's - talk about bounce! A couple of things about that that I remembered was it was great to drive along with the sliding doors open which was just as well as it had an alternator that overcharged and gassed the battery which was behind the drivers seat. Once, after a particularly gassy trip, I went to jump start a car and the resulting spark as I connected the lead made the battery explode and I had 6 battery cell tops pinging around the cab like shrapnel. Oh, and I literally had a mattress in the back and a couple of stickers on the back windows - "Don’t laugh, your daughter might be in here tonight" and "If this van's rocking, don’t bother knocking". Happy days. ;) :giggle:
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
I've had 10 cars in 35 years of driving (2 new, 8 very used) - so not that many. I always fancied being like an American and having the same pickup truck for 50 years but the best I've managed is 10 years. My sister's had 4 cars (two new, two used) in 37 years.
 
Longest car we’ve had is our diesel Golf which has always been a second car. Had it 9 years now. I’ve had my commuter scooter from new in 2009.
 
Mottie said:
Underneath and as standard, AFAIAK, my one had no front shock absorbers, think they were optional extra's - talk about bounce!
Click to expand...

The optional extra explains a lot. My motorbike broke down in south Wales, when on a camping holiday there in my youth. It broke down in a village where there happened to be a proper garage. They were kind enough to load me the tools, to rip it apart to replace a burned out piston. Giving me a lift in a J4 to Carmarthen, to buy a replacement. The J4 bounced along, like a kangaroo.

It was Wynford Vaughan-Thomas's local garage, he popped in one day and exchanged a few pleasantries with the 17 year old me. It was obvious he was someone special, but I only found out from the garage staff later, who he was.
 
An impressive list, Mottie!

I'm going to cheat a bit, here. I haven't "owned" all these (i.e. logbook in my name), but have had the use of some interesting cars, nevertheless, so I've included them anyway. (Ones I've actually "owned" have an asterisk).

Reliant Rebel estate (Ended its life with a Ford 166 crossflow in it).

Bond Bug (As much fun as it is possible to have in a car, whilst keeping your trousers on).

Citroen D Super 5* (First car I ever bought with my own money. £75 for a dealer)!

Ford Capri 1.6 (owned that PS for a grand total of 1 day)!

Citroen DS21 Pallas*

Citroen CX GTI*

Reliant Scimitar SE5a*

LWB Series 3 Land Rover*

TVR S

Burlington Beretta*

TVR 390 SE

Citroen BX* (Most hated car, besides the Capri)

Citroen CX GTI Auto*

Alfa 164 V6 Lusso* (Owned 4 of them, still have the last one)

Peugeot 807 (several)

VW Sharan (several)

Land Rover Freelander 1 TD4*

Peugeot 5008

Mazda 2*
 
Avocet said:
Citroen BX* (Most hated car, besides the Capri)
Click to expand...
Why? I had one, regretted selling it after 5 years. 1.7 Diesel - 53MPG. Probably the car I loved the most apart for the Accord I've had over the years. Had one failure - an original suspension pipe failed on a long journey - car at the time was 17 years old. Sold it with 195000 miles on the clock. Unlike the car that replaced it (Diesel Golf) - 2 lots of injector failures, 4 springs, EGR valve, ABS pump, leaking in rear light cluster.
 
Can you remember the reg No's though?

Mini 1275GT LHY 898L, bought off my brother, sold on to an unsuspecting bloke when the idler gear started rattling, owned for about a year.

Fiesta 1.3, JPA 624V, awful, sold it to my father who used it as a runaround, owned for about a year.

Mini 1275 GT LPA 301W, engine blew up and my brother rebuilt the engine, 100bhp, absolute blast, went to the scrap yard with a blown big end, owned for about 3 years.

Peugeot 205GTI 1.6 D922 WPF great fun, sold to a bloke who knocked on the door and asked if it was for sale, owned for about 3 years.

Mini 1000, G700 VPO fitted a cage, had a 1380 rally spec engine fitted and all-sorts, absolute blast, wasted £10K redundancy money on it, sold it for about £500 as a non runner a few years after I'd stopped driving it and everything was ceased up etc, owned for about 6 years.

Peugeot 205 GTI 1.9, G??? ???, great fun naturally, big end went, went to the scrap yard, owned for about 3 years.

Golf GTI 16V J928 BVF, lovely car to drive, sold it to my sister in law for £1000 and then she promptly (pretty much) gave it away because 'she didn't like the gearbox', owned for about 4 years, wish I'd spent a bit of money on it and carried on driving it.

Renault Megane 1.9 diesel (with the big bum) YK05 YGB practical and comfortable family car but crap handling and several design flaws, not sad to see the back of it, traded it in having owned for about 8 years.

Current car - Golf 2.0 diesel, lovely to drive and very practical but now got an intermittent engine judder, owned since 2016, will keep it until it dies.
 
Diver Fred said:
Why? I had one, regretted selling it after 5 years. 1.7 Diesel - 53MPG. Probably the car I loved the most apart for the Accord I've had over the years. Had one failure - an original suspension pipe failed on a long journey - car at the time was 17 years old. Sold it with 195000 miles on the clock. Unlike the car that replaced it (Diesel Golf) - 2 lots of injector failures, 4 springs, EGR valve, ABS pump, leaking in rear light cluster.
Click to expand...
I had a BX too.

Probably the best car I ever had. Nothing from Citroen since then has been comparable either.
 
Diver Fred said:
Why? I had one, regretted selling it after 5 years. 1.7 Diesel - 53MPG. Probably the car I loved the most apart for the Accord I've had over the years. Had one failure - an original suspension pipe failed on a long journey - car at the time was 17 years old. Sold it with 195000 miles on the clock. Unlike the car that replaced it (Diesel Golf) - 2 lots of injector failures, 4 springs, EGR valve, ABS pump, leaking in rear light cluster.
Click to expand...
It's a fair question. And if I'm honest, I don't really even know myself, why I hated it so much! It's not like it was unreliable, or anything. It was bought as a stop-gap when I left a previous job with a company car, so for a start, it wasn't a car I bought because I really wanted it, it was just a car that fulfilled an immediate need. It was a 1.9 petrol one. Basically a Peugeot 405 with whacky suspension.
I think I hated it because after a couple of DS and CX models, it was sad to see what Citroen had become. It just wasn't "Citroeny" enough for me. Certainly I thought it was ugly - a mass of straight lines that didn't really flow to or from anywhere. Funny enough, Mrs Avocet had a Peugeot 405, and we both thought very highly of that car. As you can see, most of the cars I've owned have been a bit "off-piste". All have had their flaws - some of them very bad, but they all had "something" that really interested me. Something that made me admire the styling, engineering. performance, or whatever. I used to positively enjoy working on them, and somehow, even topping up the screenwash on that BX was just a chore. Not because it was difficult, but because it was just such a "vanilla" car for me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sponsored Links
Back
Top