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Automobiles : Good,Bad & the Ugly.

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
After a couple of posts about cars on the TV thread thought it was about time the subject had its own.

I have lost count of the number of cars I have had,probably 40+ in 42 years of driving since I was 17.

The one car I alway wanted when I was 20 was a Triumph Stag, but for a car dealer messing me around on my Cortina 2000E trade in,In 1981 I would have had one.

It was beautiful ‘P’reg in the rare colour of Jade plus desirable Manual with Overdrive.

I often regret getting my ‘arse in hand’ with the dealer over £100 at the time & not getting it..It may have been a blessing because the Stag was known as not the most reliable motor & was prone to overheating.

Anyone on here have one ?

Any other stories about cars,good & bad ?
 

Stuffy

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Worse car I owned was a Citroen GS Club. I believe Jeremy Clarkson claimed it was made of recycled washing machines. He was probably right.

Most Disappointing car was a Porsche Cayman. Only because scruffs in rusted out Citroen Saxo's jockeyed to beat me away from traffic lights

Most comfortable to drive over a long distance was Mark 4 Ford Zephry or BMW X5

Most desired old time runaround would be a Yellow with Black vinyl roof Mark 3 Cortina GXL or GT.
 

Legohead

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I'm so not a car man. If it is reliable and gets me from A to B then i'm happy. That said i'd like to chip in on the thread. My late father was obsessed with bikes / cars and he used to spend hours and hours working on old cars in the yard. Often breaking them down just to build them back up again. He was in the Green Howards Regiment and worked a lot with heavy machinery there. I was never interested and never understood how stuff like that worked. Much to his disappointment. I'm more a creative type lol

My initials are AJS after my dad named me after the famous motorbike which I had never heard of until I saw one on display at Sewerby Hall, Bridlington years ago and my mum said that was what I was named after.

I remember as a young kid my dad always had Ford Cortina's and he loved the Mark 3 which was kind of a lo slung saloon car like you'd see on the Dukes of Hazzard or something. Always stunk of fags! lol

My first car was a ford escort mark 3 which unfortunately blew a head gasket on the way back from our first holiday in it to Norfolk a few weeks after i'd bought it for 500 quid. Ended up stranded in a village called Beckingham just off the main road outside Newark. Those were the days.

I had a really old saab once too and was embarrassed at driving that ugly old thing in the early 00's. Nowadays i have a 10 plate Citroen C3 Picasso which has done nearly 150k miles and I use it for local runarounds and a Peugeot 208 16 plate which has done 24k miles and use that for longer journeys.
 

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
Most desired old time runaround would be a Yellow with Black vinyl roof Mark 3 Cortina GXL or GT.
Daytona yellow..Loved that colour.I had a Mark 3 in that colour a 1600L when I was at college in Devonport..Great car.I got used to putting a bit of WD40 in the distributor cap on damp mornings if it did not start.
I Fitted a realistic(that was the brand name!) auto reverse Radio/Cassette into it soon after a got it..Cost £95 from Tandy at the top of Paris St.
Took it out when I sold the car,as was the norm in those days & fitted it in my next car a metallic bronze Mark 3 2000E.

Incidentally on the first Ford.Its cost £1,100 a fair bit in 1979 for someone like me.
I had a £400 px allowance on my 1st car,a mini estate so had £700 on a bank loan over 2 years.
In those days you had to see the Bank Manager for a loan,with 4 weeks wage slips & had to put down at least a third of the balance of any purchase using a loan iirc.
Even though I met the criteria & was in steady employment with the gas board my dad still had to come in & be a guarantor for the loan 😁😁

Different days & how times changed within a few years with loans in general.
 

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
I remember as a young kid my dad always had Ford Cortina's and he loved the Mark 3 which was kind of a lo slung saloon car like you'd see on the Dukes of Hazzard or something. Always stunk of fags! lol
The Mark 3 Cortina was a lovely car for its time.A coke bottle atheistic look from the side & a lovely smooth gearbox.The only thing you had to watch out for was throwing it into a corner because the back end would slide out 😁

Most reps & company cars were Cortinas in the 1970s because they were so comfortable to drive & reasonably cheap to run compared to their contemporarys.
 

Alistair20000

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Biggest pile of turd 💩 I drove was a brand new Austin Montego in 1984. Feckin’ dire.
 

Legohead

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Could have been worse. Could have been a Maxi. God awful looking monstrosities. Or an Ambassador.
 

Alistair20000

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Could have been worse. Could have been a Maxi. God awful looking monstrosities. Or an Ambassador.
Yep they were shockers too.
 

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
Could have been worse. Could have been a Maxi. God awful looking monstrosities. Or an Ambassador.
British Leyland at its worst..No wonder the Japs cleaned up.

I remember at work there was talk of trying to help the ailing British car industry(this would have been the early 1980s) from other successful nationalised industrys employees in the form of loans at a reasonable interest rate to buy from BL...Someone shouted out.
“could we buy a Datsun instead,if we took the loan”
😁😁
 

Alistair20000

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Loved my Ford Anglias and Vauxhall Viva Mark I
 
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