‘It’s not fast, but it is cheap’
259,000 miles and it doesn’t owe a penny Julian Langdon and Barbara Nye
I bought this in May 2011 and since then I have put 78,000 miles on it. At 259k miles it is now well run in! We recently got back from a weekend in Holland, with four of us plus luggage and averaged 51mpg… it’s a normally aspirated, non turbo car, so it’s not fast but it is cheap. I maintain it at the kerbside because I have to, while I have also kept a close eye on the total average consumption since I bought it because, yes, I am that anal… 48.7 mpg! And yes, I have documented every fill up. Not bad for a big car.
My favourite trip was to Techno Classica in Essen and we also regularly go to Paris in it as well as Scotland. We don’t have emergency cover as – well, as I am the emergency cover! I pack a fuel pump, a torch, a bunch of tools and a filter. Hopefully I will never need to use any of it but you never know. It’s all by me: I bought it, I fix it, it costs me virtually nothing, it’s all good. And because it’s a Pug 405 from the era when Peugeot really knew how to design a chassis, it is still extremely rewarding to drive. I really don’t understand why everyone isn’t doing this. It makes no sense to throw money away on modern cars that just don’t give you the same levels of practicality and enjoyment.
When I work on it I simply relax, it’s like gardening. The biggest job I have ever done was fixing the nearside rear sill. It started as the size of a 10p piece and ended with me welding the floors and all sorts. You can’t see it now… I am quite proud of it. Other than that the biggest mechanical job has been a kerbside clutch change. Easy by comparison.