Cars You Never See Anymore

[Puddy_Tat]

nah. french, tinny and flimsy. but not that shit. poor quality electricals though - my mother had a cooking 309 where the back screen literally blew up due to a minute madness with the rear defrosting electrics

don't think i had much in the way of electrics problems with my old 205 (one indicators relay failed but can't remember anything else)

i did have to re-wire the rear wiper and heated screen on my mk 2 fiesta, as the wires just got knackered

the current citroen c3 is worse on the electrics front, but then it's got all this new fangled electronics crap as well...

 

[Saul Goodman]

nah. french, tinny and flimsy. but not that shit. poor quality electricals though - my mother had a cooking 309 where the back screen literally blew up due to a minute of malfunction madness with the rear defrosting electrics

And changing the heater motor fan and controller every few hundred miles.
The only thing with Valeo written on it that was worth a shite was Super Oscars.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

And changing the heater motor fan and controller every few hundred miles.

now you mention it, think i did have to replace something to do with the heating once or twice on the 205, although that's probably not bad for 20 years...

 

[sovereignb]

Not exactly a car you never see any more, but at least a car which is becoming fairly rare is the Peugeot 309. When I was a kid our family had one, and much later I bought one of my own when it was already an old banger category of car. I remember the non power steering being a right work out and the manual choke needing some finesse in colder weather.

It’s not the kind of car which will ever have classic status I suppose, but I have an affection for them. There’s one for sale near me (not the pic below) with under 100k miles and I’m tempted, but they want £2k which is silly money. But is this age of car likely to go up in value from now on, or is that a pipe dream?


View attachment 227244

My older brother had one of these and I thought they were so cool. He has definitely upped his car game in the last 25 yrs though.

 

[Roadkill]

Was having a beer with a friend outside my local last night when someone drove by in a Triumph TR6.

Still a handsome car, and it did sound good as well.

 

[existentialist]

Was having a beer with a friend outside my local last night when someone drove by in a Triumph TR6.

Still a handsome car, and it did sound good as well.

If I had been in my 40s and looking for a car when those were around, I think I'd have ended up with one

 

[Sprocket.]

I had a 205, various electrical faults at different times. I would be driving along and the doors would be constantly locking and unlocking, the electric sun roof, (remember those?)would open and close at will, various relays. When you turned the ignition off, the engine, a 1.9 diesel would carry on and I had to stall it to stop, earth fault.
Mechanically solid.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I had a 205, various electrical faults at different times. I would be driving along and the doors would be constantly locking and unlocking, the electric sun roof, (remember those?)would open and close at will, various relays. When you turned the ignition off, the engine, a 1.9 diesel would carry on and I had to stall it to stop, earth fault.
Mechanically solid.

Do you remember the terrible, incurable Ford earth disease? The infection would start at the tail lights and spread through the rest of the car. It was a ridiculous design fault that anyone with an ounce of sense could see. The earth connection on the rear lamps was too small, creating a high resistance joint, which got worse over time and resulted in every light flashing when you turned on an indicator.
Ah, the good old days, when cars used to last about 5 years before they were scrap.

 

[Sprocket.]

Scraping the corrosion off the connecting strips on the rear light clusters was also an ongoing chore.

 

[Roadkill]

Do you remember the terrible, incurable Ford earth disease? The infection would start at the tail lights and spread through the rest of the car. It was a ridiculous design fault that anyone with an ounce of sense could see. The earth connection on the rear lamps was too small, creating a high resistance joint, which got worse over time and resulted in every light flashing when you turned on an indicator.
Ah, the good old days, when cars used to last about 5 years before they were scrap.

'Tis true. The kind of cars I was driving as a teenager in the 90s - most of which dated from the early 80s - were generally rusty and mechanically knackered by the time they'd done 75-80,000 miles. The car I drive most often these days is a Mk1 Toyota Yaris, which is completely rust-free despite being 15 years old, and still tight as a drum even with 120,000 miles on the clock.

 

[Sprocket.]

One of my Australian abiding cousins received a large cheque from Ford Australia for solving a misfire problem on one of their first electronic ignition engines. At certain RPM the engine used to start to misfire. Non of the dealerships or Ford could rectify it. He found a small electromagnetic pulse from the crank at the said RPM.
It helped as he had his own race team that regularly won at Bathurst and similar. Sadly he died in 1997.
Brilliant engineer.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Scraping the corrosion off the connecting strips on the rear light clusters was also an ongoing chore.

That's the one I'm talking about. They'd made the earth connector the same size as the rest of the terminals, and it couldn't handle the current when all of the lights were on, exacerbated by the fact that they'd effectively made a galvanic cell with the zinc plated terminals on the lamp and copper alloy connectors on the loom. It's almost as if they deliberately designed it to fail.

 

[Sprocket.]

That's the one I'm talking about. They'd made the earth connector the same size as the rest of the terminals, and it couldn't handle the current when all of the lights were on, exacerbated by the fact that they'd effectively made a galvanic cell with the zinc plated terminals on the lamp and copper alloy connectors on the loom. It's almost as if they deliberately designed it to fail.

Designed and built in obsolescence. The plague of a consumerist world.

 

[existentialist]

Do you remember the terrible, incurable Ford earth disease? The infection would start at the tail lights and spread through the rest of the car. It was a ridiculous design fault that anyone with an ounce of sense could see. The earth connection on the rear lamps was too small, creating a high resistance joint, which got worse over time and resulted in every light flashing when you turned on an indicator.
Ah, the good old days, when cars used to last about 5 years before they were scrap.

Albeit with some fairly significant welding to be done for the last 3 of those...

I was actually fairly shocked when what took my 18 year old Celica to the Great Scrappie In The Sky was bodywork corrosion, of the kind that'd have been a fairly routine bit of work for the welder 20 years ago

 

[Saul Goodman]

Albeit with some fairly significant welding to be done for the last 3 of those...

I was actually fairly shocked when what took my 18 year old Celica to the Great Scrappie In The Sky was bodywork corrosion, of the kind that'd have been a fairly routine bit of work for the welder 20 years ago

Every car spares shop had sills and floor pans in stock for all the popular (Flintstones) cars
A ten year old car is as good as new now. A ten year old car was a patchwork novelty back in 'the good old days'.

 

[hash tag]

A Nissan Cedric.
I would be very happy with the Belair or Lancia 13 unusual classics for sale – all with no reserve

 

[existentialist]

A Nissan Cedric.
I would be very happy with the Belair or Lancia 13 unusual classics for sale – all with no reserve
View attachment 227386

It even looks like a Cedric

 

[Sprocket.]

It even looks like a Cedric

Probably pronounced Seedric too, just to annoy further.

 

[Roadkill]

And that from a man who won plenty of races in Rover SD1s...

 

[Sprocket.]

Every car spares shop had sills and floor pans in stock for all the popular (Flintstones) cars
A ten year old car is as good as new now. A ten year old car was a patchwork novelty back in 'the good old days'.

All four of my early Escorts, two Mk 1s and two Mk2s required me to plate the tops of the inner wings where the MacPherson struts bolted in.
Take the bolts out, pop the preformed plate on, put the bolts in and weld the plate onto the inner wing.
A doddle using oxy-acetylene inside a car bonnet.
Sills and rear inner wheel arches was a Cortina specialty.

 

[Sprocket.]

And that from a man who won plenty of races in Rover SD1s...

My gaffer in the eighties towed a caravan behind one of these around the Lake District for a fortnight. He came back complaining that the car was different and a handful to drive. It turned out he had bought a cut and shut, the welding and fabrication holding the two donor cars together had torn because of the weight of the caravan.

 

[Roadkill]

My gaffer in the eighties towed a caravan behind one of these around the Lake District for a fortnight. He came back complaining that the car was different and a handful to drive. It turned out he had bought a cut and shut, the welding and fabrication holding the two donor cars together had torn because of the weight of the caravan.

Bloody hell! Shades of The Love Bug there...

 

[hash tag]

Poor Herbie. To think people say cars can have no character or soul.

 

[Saul Goodman]

I posted earlier about a friend who bought an MR2 mk2 new, still has it, full history, very low mileage. She takes it out only at weekends in the summer. And even then not every weekend. It must be very desirable now.

My dad has a MR2 T-Bar




With fairly low mileage...




And another, with similar miles.




And a very beige Merc.




All covered in bird shit

 

[Roadkill]

Love that old W123 Mercedes, Saul Goodman. I never liked Mercs much - they always seemed like cars for social climbers who couldn't afford a Bentley - but then I went to a conference on Gran Canaria a few years ago, and the taxi driver who ferried us around had an old 240D. It was a battered old thing with doors that dropped as they opened, but the driver was well proud of it. He'd been taxiing in it since it was new in 1980, it had never needed any more than routine maintenance, and yet it had done something like three quarters of a million kilometres.

 

[mx wcfc]

And that from a man who won plenty of races in Rover SD1s...

My dad had one of them, and I drove it a few times as a teenager. I once picked a hitch-hiker up in it. "Thanks mate" the hitcher said "nice motor!" "Yeah, not mine though". I replied. The blokes face was a picture.

 

[Aladdin]

My dad has a MR2 T-Bar

View attachment 227426


With fairly low mileage...

View attachment 227427


And another, with similar miles.

View attachment 227429


And a very beige Merc.

View attachment 227432


All covered in bird shit

That dark blue one is gorgeous.

 

[Aladdin]

'Tis true. The kind of cars I was driving as a teenager in the 90s - most of which dated from the early 80s - were generally rusty and mechanically knackered by the time they'd done 75-80,000 miles. The car I drive most often these days is a Mk1 Toyota Yaris, which is completely rust-free despite being 15 years old, and still tight as a drum even with 120,000 miles on the clock.

I wish I had kept my Yaris from 2000. It was lovely. Nippy. Great economical car. And the speedomoter was in a great spot. I loved that car.

 

[plurker]

All covered in bird shit

They look like they're washed relatively often though? A bit of birdshit sure, but not twenty years worth - nor caked in the usual thick dust of long laid-up barn finds.
Are they stored as investment, or just cause he likes them?

I do love an MR2, nearly went for a Mk2 about ten years back, but decided against it and got a Mk1 Golf instead.

 

[MrCurry]

My dad has a MR2 T-Bar

View attachment 227426


With fairly low mileage...

View attachment 227427


And another, with similar miles.

View attachment 227429


All covered in bird shit

The MR2 T bar was the object of my automotive desire when I was a kid. Even had a poster on my bedroom wall! I had forgotten, but your post reminded me I had resolved today buy one when I was “grown up”. Of course I could never afford it or at least the insurance for it, so that resolution fell by the wayside. Now I’m an old got though, if only I could find one it would be a lovely garage-filler.