Buckley’s market matters
I have a renewed urge to buy Lancias and spotted a lovely looking Flavia 1800 for sale in The Netherlands: a clean, fully loaded, air-con-equipped car of the mid-period Tipo 819 variety. I made polite enquiries with the vendor and asked if he would have a swap against my rusty Flaminia sedan; I sort of knew the guy was going to be rude and off-hand in response, and he lived up to expectations. You have to wonder, how do some people ever sell cars with that kind of attitude?
I have agreed to have one of my old Lancia Appia saloons back from a friend, too – although I have to devise a means of first paying for it, and second persuading the missus it’s a good idea. Watch this space.
I have had a Mercedes-benz 300CE W124 to sell on behalf of a friend for what seems like years. I almost forgot I had the poor car, but on driving it recently I was reminded of what a fine vehicle it is. It’s also pretty, perhaps the best-looking Mercedes of its era: I think I read somewhere that the 124-series CE is the design Bruno Sacco is most proud of, and it’s certainly prettier to my eyes than its 123 coupé predecessor.
Mr Sacco would not have been very proud of the job ‘budget Bill’ made of blowing-in the vandalised bonnet and front wings on the blue CE: it left his premises with a paint run that you could have spotted on Google Earth. In the dim light Bill didn’t notice, and got a ribbing from his mates on the size of the wavy dribble (or what we used to call in Manchester a ‘snotter’), but in fairness he was more than happy to sort it when I pointed it out.
I thought the Merc would breeze through its MOT but it failed on emissions, which were off the scale. This is a new issue in my world and I was told to go and buy some cat cleaner and give the thing a good hard run for 100 miles to get said cat nice and hot.
Meanwhile, I encouraged a friend to buy a Bristol Blenheim that was very much a project, with no brakes and a certain amount of rust. He had a poke around the car and seemed satisfied. But when the seller said to him, “Should I fire it up?” my friend replied with something along the lines of: “No, no we don’t want to disturb it, I’m sure it’s fine…”
Thus I was not surprised when, on delivery to Cirencester, the Blenheim point-blank refused to start. This remains the case as I write, although a couple of young electrical boffins are currently investigating the lack of sparks – something to do with crank sensors and the ECU.
Fingers crossed…