Buckley’s market matters
As a winter runabout, my wife bought me a £300 Fiat Panda from 2004. It drives perfectly and we soon sorted the blue front wing (the car is silver) and the lack of wheeltrims, although I insisted on Fiat ones rather than the £10 ‘middle-aisle specials’ Mia initially bought – they looked much worse than the bare steel wheels. This cheerful and beautifully packaged little car has air-con, electric power steering with a ‘city’ setting and is delightful to drive. What a fantastic piece of personal mobility for the money.
On another note, have you seen what people want for 8-Track players these days? The previous time I looked they were pennies, but now if you want a proper Radiomobile (as fitted to most of the posher 1970s cars) you could be paying upwards of £200 for a unit that allegedly works. Luckily, I managed to find a cheaper working one for £130 that should be ideal for the Rolls-royce MPW two-door I’m looking after.
The Bristol Blenheim now goes well, but what a painful process. The non-running was down to nothing more than a coil, but my friend (the owner) was presented with a bill that took account of every hour it took to discover this: harsh, I thought, and steeper than the figure the not notably inexpensive Bristol specialists had quoted. There’s a lesson there somewhere. All very awkward.
Capers with various XJ-SS continue: it looks as if I’ve got the 3.6 manual sold (after literally dozens of enquiries that came to nothing), to a man who is tired of his clinical Porsche 911 and wants something with a bit more personality. I fear the pre-he XJ-S that sits beside the (much smarter) 3.6 has a bit too much ‘personality,’ but I’m fatally drawn to it nonetheless and, to be honest, the more I look into the car the better it gets. Long-term, I’m hoping to hang on to it.
The great disaster of the new year proved to be the Mercedesbenz 300CE. I had high hopes, but its failure to pass an MOT set off a sequence of events that led first to a new water pump being fitted and then a blown head gasket being diagnosed. These straightsixes apparently blow them for fun and the cost of machining, removing valves and so on, plus the labour, suddenly made this otherwise rather tidy Mercedes coupé a non-starter.
It went to a trader who’s working on a Mercedes 600, which I firmly believe is the most stupid car ever made. How much, do you think, a certain well-known Mercedes 600 specialist would extract from you for a basic hydraulic service on this absurd vehicle? A mere £48,000…