Marketplace

Oops. Our Russ has taken his own advice to heart.

Recommending cars to other people is dangerous; those hot picks you’ve been espousing the virtues of can stick in your own head as well. That’s my excuse, at least, for recently buying two cars we’ve run in the ‘Practically Classic’ slot over the page…and coming close to a third.

The driving force for this buying action came when my ‘sensible modern’ Saab 9-5 estate – the newest car that I’ve ever owned – proved more hassle than a classic by breaking in a way so expensive it just wasn’t worth fixing. Old habits die hard, and one of my old habits is running several older cars at once in the belief that it leads to a much more interesting life and at least one of the fleet will actually work when I need to get somewhere. There’s also a delight in buying cars at the bottom of their depreciation curve, before they get ‘discovered’.

First up was an Audi A2, shaped like a Hovis loaf and ever so innovative in the all-aluminium-ness that makes it a whole 100kg lighter than a Volkswagen Lupo. That really scoots along and manages 47mpg, while mine even has the clever all-glass opening roof, though it doesn’t work of course. £800 well spent, I feel, but it needed back-up. I had my eye on a 62,000-mile Volvo C70 Coupé in Classics Central’s sale – low estimate £1500, and a no-sale on the day. Perhaps I should have? But before the sale James Walshe rocks up at the PC office with the £200 Alfa 156 you’ll read about elsewhere in this issue (see p94). And he only wanted what he paid for it. Well I have always wanted one of those; it now sits proudly on my drive.

‘Running old cars makes for a much more interesting life’