Tips, tricks and nostalgia from a lifetime immersed in old cars
I ’ve always been a sucker for a bargain, especially when it comes to old cars. One evening in the pub back in the ‘80s, a mate mentioned that he needed a car and quite fancied my old L-reg Mini 1000. The Mini was nothing to look at – originally beige, it had been touched in with a variety of rattle cans and brush paint as I’d fought the good fight with ongoing corrosion as we did back then. Full body restos were something reserved for posh cars, and just because a car was old, it didn’t automatically qualify as a classic as it increasingly does now.
But it was a reliable old thing, had a longish MoT and tax in the screen. I was very fond of it, but the opportunity for a ‘change’ was too tempting, and a couple of pints later, I was without transport but had a bunch of notes in my back pocket.
This was long before the days of 24 hour banger shopping courtesy of the world wide web and eBay. You found your next car by word of mouth, cards in newsagents’ windows, poorly executed handwritten signs stuck in back windows and the classified section of the local rag. There were the weekly car sales titles, but a week was a long time to wait when you had money burning a hole in your pocket.
My addiction for old BL tin is hardly a secret, and the more denigrated the model, the more I feel the need to own it. In the corner shop window, a card with spidery handwriting caught my eye. ‘Allegro 1500 LE, good tyres, radio cassette, no tax, short MoT, slight damage. £125 or nearest’. All I saw was a lot more engine than the Mini, and music on the move. I reckoned a quick haggle over the price, an even quicker bodge it and scarper job on whatever ‘slight damage’ meant and not only would I be mobile again, I’d still be quids in – the asking price was a lot less than I’d managed to get for the Mini.
I rang the number and found out that it was just a couple of streets away. It was late afternoon and starting to get dark, but I went round anyway. The elderly owner was keen to chat but in no hurry to show me round the car, so it was positively gloomy by the time he opened the door on his tiny unlit garage.
As the door lifted, I was greeted by the rear end of a 1978 Tara Green metallic Allegro saloon. The LE differed from lesser models thanks to its dark green side stripes, tinted glass and stripey seat fabric. This particular LE differed from its siblings in that it was particularly shabby for a car that had yet to reach its tenth birthday, and it had had an unfortunate coming together with a concrete gate post and the nearside front wing was toast. But peering into the gloom of the garage, it didn’t look that bad, and I had the whiff of a proper bargain in my nostrils.
What was the worst that could happen? Allegros were ten a penny, and as far I was concerned, so were spares for them. I lived less than a mile from Longbridge, where up until very recently, these cars had been rolling down the line. I made a cheeky offer, and the owner reluctantly accepted, although making the point that he still thought it was worth more, it was a really sound car other than the obvious issues, it had never let him down and he felt bad about selling it etc, etc.
I was so confident I’d bagged the bargain of the century, I didn’t bother to squeeze into the garage to look underneath, try to start the thing or even look under the bonnet. I paid the man his money, and returned the next day with a couple of mates to extract the green machine from its damp shelter.
Sitting on the drive at home in the cold light of day, and with two mates circling the car and pulling it slowly to bits, the true nature of my latest purchase became apparent.
The front wing was destroyed, the bump had only finished what the rust had started, and the sections where it connected to the bottom of the A-post and the front valance had disintegrated in a shower of rusty cornflakes. The side light/ indicator was smashed, and there was damage to the corner of the bonnet, the slam panel, and front panel. We’d started it with jump leads, but the battery was clearly on its last legs. I stopped looking because with every new problem, I could see my little pot of cash evaporating.
Cheap parts would save the day. Enquiries at my favourite local motor factor induced much sucking of teeth and a couple of phone calls, but they couldn’t help unless I wanted to order genuine dealer parts, and they came at genuine dealer prices.
I cadged a lift into the centre of Birmingham, where there used to be a massive parts dealer called Fletchers. They had an Alladin’s Cave of a shed tacked onto the back of the building where you could find everything from Hillman Imp indicator stalks to rolls of seat fabric for the Metro 1.3s. It was an open-allhours autojumble and the bits were always giveaway cheap. But on the day I needed them most, they couldn’t deliver.
When I finally tracked down a wing, they wanted almost as much as I’d given for the car. And the sidelight unit cost almost as much again. The old wing didn’t take much removing, but repairing the areas where it attached to took an age. The final insult came when I had some paint mixed to spray in the finished job. I’d have got a closer match using a tin of Hammerite, but by this stage the car had me beat and I couldn’t care less.
I used the Allegro for a couple of months until the MoT ran out. The performance of the 1500 was never up to much and the radio cassette, as it turned out, was just like the rest of car and didn’t work. Even with a new battery and a service, it was never too reliable and much to the delight of family and friends, much preferred to be bump started than do anything so convenient as to start on the turn of the key.
When I took it for an MoT, the tester took his yellow chalk for a long walk along the nearside inner sill and front footwell. And my attempts to sort that proved to be a bigger disaster than the whole ownership experience up until that point – believe me, that’s another story for another day. The Allegro was left on the drive in disgrace until another mate expressed a passing interest, so I flogged it for less than I’d paid a few months earlier.
It would be good to report that the Allegro taught me a valuable lesson – like never buy a car in the dark, always fully inspect any prospective purchase no matter how cheap, never make assumptions about parts prices and availability, or maybe, never buy an Allegro. But I didn’t learn a thing. I’ve repeated all of the above at least once since. And let’s face it, in the age of eBay, it’s almost compulsory to buy old motors this way.
I’ve read a few articles recently making surprisingly negative comments about the first generation Ford Mondeo, branding it as just another boring repmobile and a poor successor to the rear wheel drive Sierra, and indeed the Cortina. Maybe it’s because the first cars are now well over 20 years old they’re starting to appear on the classic car radar, but I can only guess that these comments are not borne out by actual experience of the cars.
Back in the mid ‘90s, I was working on a Ford magazine and had the opportunity to drive the full model range. From the Mondeo, launched in 1993, through the revised MkIV Fiesta in 1995, the Ka in 1996, and finally the Focus in 1998, Ford took the opportunity to answer criticisms levelled at earlier models – particularly the dynamically catastrophic MkV Escort launched in 1990.
Let’s not kid ourselves, Ford knew their market incredibly well. They knew that they would shift a ton of mid-spec Mondeos out to fleet, and these cars would spend many millions of miles schlepping up and down the motorways of the UK (and the highways of the world, as this was the dawn of the global car). So there were just enough creature comforts to keep the sales reps happy – the LX models had such luxuries as electric front windows, split fold rear seats and a very capable sound system.
Even to those who viewed car as little more than a consumer durable, the Mondeo was more than quick enough, as comfortable as a pair of well worn Hush Puppies and frugal enough to keep fleet managers’ blood pressure in check.
But this generation of Fords were not the sluggish old dogs that some would have you believe. The last of the Sierras were not bad cars, but the 1.8 CVH was nothing compared with the new twin cam Zetec engines. When pushed, the handling was sharp and predictable, and if you felt the need and kept the revs up, you could cover ground very quickly.
The publishing company I worked at had a 1993 Mondeo hatch as a pool car, and by the time it met its untimely end, it was six years old and showing well over 170k hard driven miles on the odometer. Despite that, it was still enormous fun to drive and would willingly rev to the redline through the gears. And most tellingly of all, it was a firm favourite with all the young hacks, all keen drivers.
I would happily add an early first generation Mondeo to my fleet now, it’s bound to be a sound investment in the long run considering the prices of pretty much every other Ford out there. They marked a significant point in history so are worthy of preservation. But most importantly, it would be fantastic to get behind the wheel again.