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Automobiles : Good,Bad & the Ugly.

Colesman Ballz

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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 ?
A couple of Stag stories for you. I never owned one but know a couple of chaps who have. On my course at college in Brighton was a Norwegian student called Tore who I got on very well with. Norwegian student's grants were humungus compared with English ones, so within a few days of arriving, he went out and bought a 3 year old MG Midget in bright yellow. Fast forward a couple of years and he returned after the summer break in a beautiful LH drive Stag. A few years later, when he and his English girlfriend decided to return to Norway to live, he thought that he could save a considerable sum by having some work and a full service done in England rather than wait until he got home. He went to a garage near his girlfriend',s mother's house in Essex, and had a very reasonable quote. Going back to collect the Stag, unfortunately he too became involved in an altercation with the garage owner, who had presented him with a bill of over double the original quote. The outcome was that the car would not be released to him until the full cost had been paid in cash. Now Tore wasn't going to stand for that, and hired a small crane and driver, went around to the garage on the following Sunday morning and lifted the Stag out over the wall. He had a spare set of keys, so by the time the owner arrived to open up on Monday morning, Tore and his beloved Stag were aboard a ferry in the middle of the North Sea !

Yes, Tore was certainly a bit of a lad. He had an unfortunate habit of getting speeding tickets (maybe the cops kept pulling him to check the Stag out ?), but avoided a ban under the "totting up" procedure by means of using multiple driving licences ! He would alternate having the points put on, between an International Licence, and his English one. Meanwhile his Norwegian one was kept "clean".

Fast forward a dozen years or so to 1988, and I had a Scottish lad called Lindsay as one of my assistants, whose pride and joy was an aging maroon example. Stags may have their faults and be unreliable but nevertheless both owners loved them. They were also very much "babe magnets", as evidenced in Lindsay's case. He parked it outside the front of the office, and every valentines day would go out to it and find a single red rose tucked under the wipers ! The chief suspect was one of the secretaries, but she wasn't admitting it and so it remained a mystery. Maybe the "magnetism" was in fact unisexual and Tarquin in accounts was the culprit, he certainly had the hots for Lindsay, so why not the Stag too as they came as a package !
 

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
^^^^
They were certainly a nice looking car CB.There were high hopes for the model in the US market,primarily the California sector of that country.

Things got off to a bad start because the original design had the headlamps behind a grill.The US outlawed lights behind grills on new models in 1968/69.
Triumph were so keen to get into the US market they redesigned the front grill section.That put the release of the model back by a year.

The Stag should have been a success in the huge California market with its Hard & Soft top,but it’s downfall was the 3 litre V8 that was used in the model too many issues surrounding it.
Madness not to get those ironed out first.
If they had used the Chev V8 used by Rover under license,they would have had a winner.
Indeed it was becoming popular in the UK over the next few years to get rid of the 3 litre & put in the Rover/Chev V8.
You could always tell that conversion had occurred by looking at how the car stood. The front looked a bit higher when looking at the side profile.

A real shame what happened to the Stag in those early days.

The many that are still about would have had all of the issues sorted out by now & there are some fabulous examples around in Devon.

I have not thought about getting one,that itch passed many years ago.
 

ramone

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If i had to agree with you we would both be wrong
The amount of cars I have fixed for people who say "It's only got to last another year " and then you see the exact same car next year with the same story would probably run into the tens of thousands over the years !
I keep asking myself is the car actually worth doing 6-700 quids worth of work on a car worth 500 ? When they could go buy a car for 400 that would last 12 months.
 

OmanGrecian

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May 13, 2004
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Muscat, Oman
I've had a number of Vauxhalls over the past 10years (Corsa, Astra and Insignia estate). Despite what some people think, they were very reliable. Used to get 65mpg out the Insignia estate. Whoever bought it likes a bit of speed (I was sent a speeding ticket last week, even though I sold it in Dec).

My favourite car I had was, believe it or not, a Suzuki Samurai convertible. I use to rag it around the wadis in Oman. I'm looking to get one here in Italy for the summer months and selling my 2003 Honda Accord here. However, the 2nd hand car market in Italy is very expensive. For a Samurai from the mid 90s with 150,000 miles, you're looking at 5000 Euro. The same vehicle could be bought in the UK for 1k or less.
 

Mr Jinx

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I've had a number of Vauxhalls over the past 10years (Corsa, Astra and Insignia estate). Despite what some people think, they were very reliable. Used to get 65mpg out the Insignia estate. Whoever bought it likes a bit of speed (I was sent a speeding ticket last week, even though I sold it in Dec).

My favourite car I had was, believe it or not, a Suzuki Samurai convertible. I use to rag it around the wadis in Oman. I'm looking to get one here in Italy for the summer months and selling my 2003 Honda Accord here. However, the 2nd hand car market in Italy is very expensive. For a Samurai from the mid 90s with 150,000 miles, you're looking at 5000 Euro. The same vehicle could be bought in the UK for 1k or less.
Out of interest why is it so expensive there? Is it 1k for the car and another 4k for "protection"?
 

OmanGrecian

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Out of interest why is it so expensive there? Is it 1k for the car and another 4k for "protection"?
To be honest, I'm not sure of the reasons why. All cars here have damage to them because of the state of the driving and roads (the dents are known as Naples kisses). Even just walking around NATO on the boards, people are selling old bangers for fortunes. I saw a 2004 Ford Focus with 200,000km on the clock for sale for 9,000 Euro.

Insurance is also high (many people don't insure cars because of it). It was high for people moving to Italy as they won't accept transfer of no claims from the UK, so I am starting as a new driver here. We can only get 3rd party insurance. The one good thing is that this doesn't insure the driver, but insures the car. If I have friends or family come over, they can then use the car without additional insurance.
 

Mr Jinx

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I saw a 2004 Ford Focus with 200,000km on the clock for sale for 9,000 Euro.
That's insane. I don't get it. Why don't people just creep over the border and get them from France? They wouldn't even be that much in Switzerland.
 

Banksy

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BMW is like it says on the ads The ultimate driving machine(or similar)

I had a 3 series convertible a few years ago.It was the most fun car I have driven a 2.8 straight 6,it was a dream of a road holding car.

Also had a older 7 series 1986 3.5.A lovely car that l picked up quite cheaply l,but was horrendously expensive to maintain.(that’s why they are cheap 😁)
It was brilliant for a trip to Scotland that I did around 1998,but not so good around town.
My last BMW was a little Series1 , I really loved that car it went like #### off a shovel and on a good day did 60 mpg.My family quite rightly though ganged up on me to get rid of it after my hip operations because it was so low to the ground and doing me no good physically.Also , around here the potholes in the lanes are terrible.So they persuaded me to get a Nissan Qashqai which was much higher off the ground.Then I got the Juke which is also quite high up for a small car.
 

Mr Jinx

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We've had a Ford Focus 07 plate for the last 10 years and I must say it's really done us proud. Just a bit of work on the steering required in the last 2 years, but otherwise it's been very reliable. I have been starting to think about our next car which will be a purchase later in the year. Looking for a 16 plate of one of the following:

BMW 5 series Touring
Audi A6 Avant
BMW X3
Audi Q5
VW Passat/Tiruan

Which of those would you go for, or if there's something similar you'd recommend, I'm all ears. Thanks. Did consider a Merc E class, but think it looks like a hearse. Basically I'm after a lot of boot space, together with performance.
 

Swanaldo

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BMW X3
Audi Q5

Which of those would you go for?
I'd stick the Volvo Xc70 or Xc90 on that list too.
 
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