£1k Challenge: Reflecting on six months in the bargain basement
It’s six months since we snapped up our bargain-priced classics – and there are no prizes for guessing which one has been the easiest to live with
DAVID SIMISTER The sound of Fairytale of New York drowning out the crackling of the log fire in the pub on a bitterly cold winter evening should feel like a very long time ago – but it doesn’t, because the vow I made to buy and run a cut-price classic is still ringing in my ears.
It was last Christmas that we decided – perhaps aided by a cask ale or two at the pub near CCW’s offices – that for all the hype about inflated prices, there are still plenty of bargain classics out there. Remember our £500 Merc S-Class, Ford Puma and MG ZR? We reckoned they only scratched the surface of what’s out there – so features ed Chris Hope and I started scanning the classifieds.
We each bought an old car within our stipulated £1k budget a few weeks later – and they’ve fared very differently since.
Chris headed to Preston to pick up a Rover 216 Coupé – nicknamed by marque aficionados as the Tomcat, in reference to its development moniker – and, horrific wind noise aside, drove the 200 miles back to our offices incident-free. Meanwhile I’d stuck everything on red after being utterly won over a bargainpriced Reliant Robin, reasoning that I could use the change left over to put a three-wheeled British institution back on the road.
Except that a few repairs have morphed into a body-off rebuild.
Our car’s Achilles’ heel turned out to be its front crossmember, which is virtually invisible in situ. It was only on its visit to the Practical Classics Classic Car and Restoration Show, with Discovery, back in March that a body-off inspection revealed how rotten it really was. It’d gone undetected by MoT inspectors for years, but after consulting with the Reliant Owners’ Club we decided that replacing the chassis was the safest (and easiest) option.
Since then our three-wheeler has undergone an extensive series of repairs, including a brake overhaul, service, cleaning up its 848cc fourpot and replacing the dampers and kingpins – and prep work is finally
underway on the fiddly jobs needed to get it through an MoT. It’s been a long haul, but I’m looking forward to getting it back on the road.
Which, as Chris has been at pains to remind me, is where his Rover’s been all along. Well, most of the time, because JBU has thrown him a couple of challenges along the way, too. The toughest moments have involved a radiator failing barely two miles from the office, and one of the car’s glass panels disintegrating midway through mending a roof leak – although we suspect that might have had more to do with his hamfisted repair skills!
It also managed to transport three of us to the Le Mans Classic and back – something our old S-class failed to do back in 2016 – though Chris is now hard at work trying to sort out the Rover’s rough idle.
One thing that has really stood out with both cars is how invaluable the clubs have been at keeping them going – particularly the 200 and 400 Owners’ Club’s John Batchelor with our Tomcat, and the Reliant Owners’ Club’s James Holland with our poorly Robin. If you aren’t a member of the club catering for your own classic, we’d definitely recommend it for the advice its experts can offer.
My annual membership’s been paid off many times over with Robin resto advice. It’ll all be over by Christmas…
‘The owners’ clubs have been invaluable in keeping both of our cars going’