£1000 Challenge
Reckon you need a big budget to enjoy owning a classic? We’ve challenged our experts to prove otherwise - by buying and running some classified gems for just a grand
What happens when we buy two bargain classics
There are plenty of gluttons for punishment here at CCW. Having spent 12 months living with three bargain basement classics we not only relished the experience – but actually bought all three for ourselves.
Regular readers might recall that after a rather ambitious pub lunch we snapped up a Ford Puma, MG ZR and Mercedes-Benz S280 for just £500 each, only to wish we hadn’t when the big ’Benz broke down on a cross-Channel ferry and the Puma’s ABS gave up the ghost a few weeks later. But after 12 months of classic show appearances and B-road adventures, the trio utterly won us over. So much so that managing editor, James Sadlier, picked up the Puma, executive barge devotee and former editor, Keith Adams, bought the ‘Benz, and Nick Larkin cosied up to the ZR when our 12-month trial came to its conclusion.
So it wasn’t long until we ended up back where we started – at a bar – realising that, for all their little flaws, we really missed having our cut-price champions around and that there are still plenty of brilliant sub-£1k buys that demonstrate that you don’t have to be the Duke of Westminster to enjoy classics. A round of obscurely-named cask ales later, and we’d come up with a cunning plan.
Specifically, this was to up the stakes to £1000, go out and buy the most classic fun we could find, and take it in turns to see who’ll land the best deal.
The rules are the same as our £500 Challenge – the car must be an interesting traditional or modern classic, and to stop us all going for the obvious options, they mustn’t be MGFs, MX-5s or Rover 75s. They also must have an MoT – although it transpires that David Simister clearly hadn’t remembered this one once the hangover had cleared up – and be good enough to take to shows. Nor will they be show ponies we take out once in a blue moon, so they’ll need to be reliable enough to be entrusted with regular
CCW missions. Oh, and if they go wrong, we’ll have to fix ’em.
The other thing we’ve decided is that rather than sticking with our cut-price chariots for a year, we’re going to pass the baton on to our other experts, so once we’re finally happy with the love we’ve lavished on our cars, we’re going to sell them on and look for even more classified ad bargains.
We’re looking forward to getting plenty more classics into CCW’s pages later this year, but first to take up the challenge were editor David and features editor Chris, who immediately started trawling through the wonderful inky world of classified ads.
David immediately announced that he was going to go out and buy the best Jag he could blag within budget – but as you can see from the car he came back with, he got a bit, er, sidetracked. He told us that not only had he managed to land a classic within budget, but that it was mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive and from a British manufacturer with a proud sporting heritage. He was strangely coy about the rest of the details and left us all guessing. We suspected that he’d bought a kit car, a (very) cheap Lotus or simply cheated by snapping up an MGF – until he showed up at the office in a £600 Reliant Robin. He’ll be explaining the method (we’re assuming there is some) behind his madness in next week’s issue.
Chris, meanwhile, had found a delightful Rover 216 Coupé for just over our £1k budget. A trip to Lancashire and some hard-nosed haggling managed to secure a tidy-looking ‘Tomcat’ for exactly a grand, although its rather leaky T-bar roof shows that it’s going to need a little TLC over the next few months.
So we’ve taken two very different routes into bargain-priced classic fun – a cheap Reliant that’s openly asking for some automotive love before we let it off the leash (and which we’ve budgeted for accordingly) and a modern classic that comes in neatly at exactly our £1k budget.
It’s proof that you can buy a classic for less than a price of a week’s holiday – but how will we get on with running (and mending) them?
Watch this space.