Buckley’s deals on wheels
I occasionally watch Hoovies Garage on Youtube, the shtick of the channel being that Mr Hoovie goes out and buys the cheapest example of any particular exotic car he fancies and then reports back on the highs and lows of ownership – mostly the lows. That said, he appears to do okay out of it in that magical way millennials seem to earn fortunes out of internet-related witchcraft.
And you have to admire his bravery: the current fleet includes inherently troublesome 21st-century Ferraris, Bentleys, Lamborghinis, Astons and highend German metal, alongside comedy-value cars such as the Cadillac Allanté, De Lorean and various boaty old Chryslers. Clearly, the man does not take himself too seriously.
But now Mr H, located in Oklahoma, has bought himself an S1 4.2 E-type roadster (above) and I was almost moved to see that, despite being surrounded by modern exotica, he was absolutely besotted with the thing. Although it is a mobile oil leak (rear main-bearing rope seal) and will doubtless present him with other issues, the green Jag – which seems to go very well and is not notably rusty – inspires a level of enthusiasm I’ve seen reserved for very little else in his huge fleet. As the man himself said: “How can you be mad at a car that looks like that?”
Driving around Bicester recently, I spotted LC Hughes recycling, which I recognised as the scrapyard I visited in the very early ’90s after a reader told me they had a BMW 2000 CS in for breaking. Sure enough, it was a white one with all the usual rust, but complete and not beyond restoration – as if anyone would have bothered in those days. I was after the Solex sidedraught carbs to upgrade my 100bhp C into a 120bhp CS, and other bits including hubcaps: having got rid of the non-original alloys, I wanted to go back to period steels. When I went to pay for my treasures, the man at the desk wasn’t too pleased that I’d parted the carbs from the engine, but let me have them anyway; £40 the lot.
The other evening, doing my occasional ebay sweep for a Fiat 124 Coupé/renault 16/Rover 2000 (or something else I feel I need) I came across a ‘celebrity’ car almost as tenuous as the Morris Ital formerly owned by Ray Reardon’s brother: a mid-’60s Ford Zephyr V4 that belonged to John Micklewhite, uncle of a certain Maurice who by then was better known as Michael Caine. Apparently Michael – who seems to have looked after his close family after coming into money – couldn’t drive, and bought the Zephyr for his uncle so he could pick him up from the airport.