Show and Tell…Your Car that you bought because you had to

Basically a stop-gap, the idea of ‘fun’ never occurred. Its basically a packhorse and if you were single and going dating you’d have to lie and say ‘its my mates/sisters/borrowed’

Heres my Gelded-beast (no this is the sellers photo, I didn’t take it on a romantic trip

Is that binners’ arse I can see in the back seat there 😉

I bought it as a bikewagon (had all sorts of top of the range BMWs prior to this) but it’s done me proud and after 5.5 years I still love it. Though I did choose to buy it and it cost me £15k once upon a time.

Amateurs.

Pride? What pride? 175k miles and still going strong.

After a run in with the Tax man I had to downgrade quite quickly.

I ended up with a really cheap 2.4 ltr Hilux Surf, which was pretty ropey to be honest, but I liked it enough to seek out a really good example a few years later. You may already be aware that i like this one 😳

and this one ( that my brother gave me, when I was a bit skint)

Bought to move biking and kayaking kit around.
Probably an alps trip in the summer too.

Plus the huge tailgate is amazing.

I think my c-max wins for most unrelentingly mediochre car. It doest even set itself appart with quirky european design or bad handling, it just stays perfectly level untill it understeers.

Its even ‘skull crushingly dull ford light blue’, if beige was a shade of blue, this would be it.

It doesn’t even have the good grace to break down and develop some ‘character’, it just trundles on.

I’ve got one of these bad boys!

That particular one isn’t mine, mine’s a lot ropier than that. The boot leaks a bit, one of the split seats is permanently down to accommodate a bike at a moments notice, smells a bit of knee pads and old opal fruits down the side of the kids seat.

I bloody love it, 2.0 petrol, drinks like a fish and the only thing that it’s cost me over ~5 years of ownership is tyres and replacing the cam belt after it snapped (yeah, snap the cam belt and it’s still going strong) It was gifted to me when my step dad got a brand spanking new… Yeah, a new Avensis.

My S-Max fits this category. A different nondescript blue to TINAS’s blue, but Ford have the market cornered in dull blues. It’s even called Blazer blue, and what’s duller than a blazer (other than a beige sports jacket, i guess)

I agreed to get it on prompting from my wife. I was set on a Ti-spec Mondeo estate which would have been just as good for dragging bikes and kit around, and been way better than what I got for the same money. However her friend had been diagnosed with a brain tumour and had her licence taken away due to sudden dehabilitating dizzy spells (not great when driving, granted), so the wife thought it would be good to have a car so she could run her and our two kids, and Fiona and her two kids around in. Which was fine for a few weeks but then Fiona deteriorated, trips ceased, and ultimately she died in early September. Leaving me with a a bloody S-Max on HP for the next 2.5 years.

(Yes, i am being deliberately uncharitable and I don’t really mean it before you all flame me. I’d gladly drive round in this bloody thing for the next 20 years if it brought her back)

As I drove home with my brand new bike (Whyte 929), ontop of the world last Jan (2013) some complete idiot decided to right off my perfectly serviceable abet very old focus estate. So I got one of these.. a fat golf

(not mine but similar)
Why? Cause I’d driven them before and liked it, and was driving a insurance hire ‘normal’ golf diesel and was driving quicker and quicker, which was going to end badly. So a more sensible car was needed quickly, the newer Focus estate are smaller inside than my old one, mondeo’s are bloody huge and I fancied a change. Golf estates are stupidly expensive and so were Passat’s, & these aren’t so sought after. It’s bloody boring… in a great way, as it handles fine and without fuss, the seats (tall & van like) and space inside the cabin are/is brilliant (elderly relatives can enter and exit it without needing lifting apparatus) .
I do miss my focus’s heated screen though.

In about 1998 I bought one of these for £200 spent nothing on it apart from a starter motor from a scrap yard after it gave up following driving through floods. Kept it for a year and then sold it for £190. It even came with half a bottle of methadone under the back seat!

i bought one of these in 2002, aged 21, for 300 quid. I was living back home in Huddersfield and my ex was living with her mum n brother on t’wirral so i needed some transport to go see her. Back seat was MASSIVE 😀 8) Me and my ex had some right trips out in it.
Happy memories.

Big red fun bus:

First car so had to be boring, and bought only for bike hauling. Was mechanically ropey, reasonably sure it’d been clocked at one point, but it did the job beautifully. Absolutely spoiled me for practicality, the boot on these mk1s and 1.5s was stupidly big.

I brought a pug 306 estate for a summer of biking and touring the UK. I picked it up relatively cheap and the idea was was to run it for wee while then sell it for what I pad for it. Bearing in mind I was in my mid twenties when I purchased it, it was not exactly the coolest thing to be seen in but it did hold 4 bikes, 4 adults and camping kit without too much hassle. Ten years and 100000 miles later and she is still going strong. 😯

After my first car, a knackered old Escort MK3 which was stolen, I had two really crap cars and then one of the most undesirable cars on the planet.

Surprisingly I didn’t take any pictures of any of them. The first two bought for a few hundred quid.

Can’t find any the same as mine, which was White.

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Wheels[/url] by Loco Tuning[/url], on Flickr

Ten years and 100000 miles later and she is still going strong.

Scary isnt it, people complain about DMF DPF EGR etc goung wrong at 100,000 miles, but thats 4x round the world, 4 trips arround the world and its probably consumed nothing more than fuel, brake pads and tyres, its mental!

Scary isnt it, people complain about DMF DPF EGR etc goung wrong at 100,000 miles, but thats 4x round the world, 4 trips arround the world and its probably consumed nothing more than fuel, brake pads and tyres, its mental!

Rear fuel pump, power steering pump and an air con pump are the only things that have stopped the car from moving in ten years. It had 70,000 on it when I got hold of it as well.

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Untitled[/url] by Bruce Ritchie[/url], on Flickr[/img]

Probably the most satisfying car I’ve owned, despite several BMWs, Audi, VW, Saab and others. Was £6k new and I did 75k in it.

A few years ago, we had a Merc and a Subaru with different insurers. Both overnight said our cover was reduced if the car was left in a public car park overnight including railway stations and airports. So as a temporary measure I bought a Citroen Xantia Estate diesel off a friends father, thought it could be a winter hack and tip run car as well. We though a year at the most. It stayed with us for 11 years, had 240,000 miles on the clock when we drove it to the scrappy. It carried dogs, muddy bikes and stacks of kayaks all over the country. It couldn’t be over loaded. It seemed indistructible. It never let us down. It was great. One of the best bits. It worked out at 24p per mile over the whole of its life!

I’d love to luck in with a car like that

Mundano estate 55 plate in some kind of burgundy mettalic ,pa in law was chopping it in and so I had just lost my job and flogged my pathfinder and Freelander I thought that’ll do for a bit
Two years later I still have it and apart from looking Shiite it is rather good so now a keeper until it falls to bits

I have an 03 Kia Sedona, it’s boring big and not very economical, but it’s amazingly reliable, carries 7 people in comfort and is not going anywhere until very very dead.

The colour is even named as beige in the log book, (officially champagne)

This was bought just over 2 years ago as a ‘go between’ motor

£700 with 6 months MOT and 134K on the clock

30K miles later, she is still going strong

Spent maybe £300 on MOT requirements, but she’s been to the Alps twice and everywhere else in the UK

2.6 V6 petrol with LPG – so economically equivalent to about 40mpg

Full leather, working aircon, drives well and has swallowed 5 bikes and a spare set of wheels

It’s quickly becoming the best car that i’ve owned!

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Blue Shark[/url] by boltonjon[/url], on Flickr

I bought my Ibiza as I something economical for the 100 mile commute I was doing…wanted the Cupra really, but this was already more than I budgeted for.
Plenty of grunt, economical and reliable. Bought it 3 years old with 24k miles on and is now almost 11 years old with over 230k on it. Still on original clutch, dmf, exhaust, turbo….it’s only on its second set of front discs and pads!!

Just bought…

Bint crashed into me…

Bike lugging!

Peugeot 5008 (S-Max lookalike)
It’s done nearly 50,000 miles without the inevitable catastrophic electrical fault
It’s a Peugeot, so I got it at a big discount with six miles on the clock
Drives fairly well for a van
For all you Top Gun fans, it has a head-up display (that’s actually great, despite me thinking I’d hate it)
Uses half the fuel my old E39 5 series did
Sadly, I can carry 6 kids in it

(not my photo – why would I take a pic of my car ?)

Bought this nissan skyline a few years ago because I like going sideways and because I could

My beloved Volvo S80 was written off and I had to find a cheap car in a hurry. One just like this was being sold by a guy a mile away from me, so I just went for it. It’s pretty nasty, the fuel consumption is terrible, the drive is horrible, the heater is terrible (constant cold feet) but it’s big.

After realising that 17mpg on a 34 mile round trip every day didn’t make sense, I bought this for a grand….polished the shit out of it and sorted some mechanical niggles and sold it two years later for £1470. Total PROFIT from ownership £290 🙂

2002 Mondeo Ghia TDCi.
Bought it at 130k to tow the caravan, which it did brilliantly until the Galaxy came along.
Four years later it’s on 170k, & asks for nothing more than fuel & a sump of clean oil once a year.
I absolutely love this car.
Wouldn’t part with it. 😕

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03102009046[/url] by pten2106[/url], on Flickr

just after doing the work to get it through its mot. – rear ARB bushes and a spot of welding to the rear X member.

Traded in our golf which the mrs melted the head on when the waterpump failed – previous owner used a pattern waterpump. Dick. I was going to scrap it but the mechanic offered me a trade in against this frontera – i wouldnt have entertained a frontera in any other circumstances – i sure as hell wouldnt have searched one out. Its actually been an impressive little workhorse – has a 2.2 DTI isuzu engine that pulls really strongly.

after a year of running it and with minimal work for mot + advisorys of only corrosion to brake pipes and fuel lines i set about turning it into a daily hack – stuck on new brake pads and disks , new suspension(stock) as the old stuff was really tired and sagged heaps , new tires and wheels as the alloys were porous/leaking and the tires verging on worn out + full fluids (engine , diffs , boxes , ps and brake fluid) and filters

then 3 weeks later a stupid bint drove into it.

insurance wanted to write it off and give me 500 quid.

120 quid has got all the bits needed and its just waiting on me to get home and finish mounting the steering rack(needed a special socket for the flare nuts on the feed and outlet) having replaced the wishbones , wing , indicator , ball joints and polished the paint out the bottom of the door already.

double post

Hora ah does that mean your not going to get back to my email now 🙁

One weekend back in the late 80’s, bought one of these to get to work on the Monday as my old SD1 died for the final time on the way home Friday night. Sad, the 180 mile commute everyday did for it in the end.

You can’t tell the colour properly from the photo, VW called it Champagne Metallic but it was actually pink in the daylight! Oh, the inertia was a burgundy colour, all over! It only lasted a few months (tied equal shortest owned can with a Mk2 Mondeo TD Estate – my worst ever car) but was replaced by a lovely MK2 Golf GTi and the VW dealer gave me more as a trade-in than I paid for it.

* There are often threads on here about the vagaries of car insurance, it’s nothing new. Mine went up for the Scirocco, a 1.6L from the V8 3.5L Rover which was modified – JanSpeed, K&Ns, Spax adjustable that the insurer knew about.

** Just noticed I called the SD1 old, my current Mondeo is now older…………………………..

Hora ah does that mean your not going to get back to my email now

I bought the gelded-Stallion at the beginning of Dec to cover me ready for the handback of the lease car- I am interested in your car its just I’d need to get my wallet-onside as well 🙁