[Wills2]

Originally Posted by JD6

Where were the rear lights from? A Merc?

They do look like it, remind me of the rear lights on my old SL320 but they are Rover SD1 units

[Pond]

Yes upside down Rover SD1 rear lights! They were great cars but had a few issues. The most annoying being it was almost impossible to get a good earth on the stereo, so you would get engine frequency interference through the speakers.

[boba-fett]

I wish I had pictures of some of the real golden oldies I have had! I've only got a few photos from the start of the digital age really!

[isleaiw1]

Originally Posted by JD6

Here’s my E39 M5 in Oxford Green. Fabulous car but something of a liability parked on the streets in London. It was just 3 months old when 2 of the wheels were stolen.

The wheels were nicked from my E30 from the Victoria centre underground car park in Nottingham whilst I was at work. Fortunately Sytner nottingham were out the back, and they grabbed a couple of wheels off a car they had in to be able to drive it round to theirs until the new ones arrived....

They also broke the window to nick the stereo even though it was on my desk!!

[isleaiw1]

Originally Posted by Pond

My first two 'performance cars' when I was 18 then 20. Loved both of them, but the XR3i was better to drive TBH.

another spoilt brat... at 18 I was doing A levels, at 20 I was at uni, at 21 my dad gave me an interest free loan for a year old Cavalier 1.6 Mk 1!

And I had a mortgage at 23 so cars had to wait....until work bought the nice ones!

[SkyJawa]

Pictures dissapeared!

[Alscoob]

Originally Posted by boba-fett

I wish I had pictures of some of the real golden oldies I have had! I've only got a few photos from the start of the digital age really!

This..... such a classic, nearly bought one but needed it as an everyday car so kept my Hawkeye 2.0 litre JDM



Some cracking cars there Boba the GTR bet you wish you had kept them

[D69GMB]

My first car, horrendously unreliable, spent nearly as much time repairing it as I did driving it. Remember one night spectacularly blowing the engine up, conrod through the block which then took out the gearbox that I had just changed a week before.

[xenon]

^^ I had one exactly like that, same colour. Mine was very reliable other than headgaskets which it would consume fairly regularly. Got to the point where I could change one in about an hour. Other than that, with a Janspeed exhaust, K&N filter and a Kent "fast-road" cam I thought it was the dog's

[Pond]

Originally Posted by isleaiw1

another spoilt brat... at 18 I was doing A levels, at 20 I was at uni, at 21 my dad gave me an interest free loan for a year old Cavalier 1.6 Mk 1!

And I had a mortgage at 23 so cars had to wait....until work bought the nice ones!

I never got an interest free loan from anyone! Parents never gave me a penny.
At 16 I was working as couldn't wait to leave school. Every car I've ever owned has been paid for by myself.
At 18 I was working 70-80 hour weeks just to pay for my cars (and bikes).

[E60525d]

Originally Posted by boba-fett

I wish I had pictures of some of the real golden oldies I have had! I've only got a few photos from the start of the digital age really!

Some very nice cars there!

[boba-fett]

Thanks, yes I wish I had kept a few of them Had an R34 GTR NUR2 as well, 21k miles and probably a £300k car now. I bought it for £40k way back!

I bumped into these last week at the detailers. A delivery miles R34 GTR and a 3k mile 22B

Lovely to see!

[JD6]

Originally Posted by isleaiw1

The wheels were nicked from my E30 from the Victoria centre underground car park in Nottingham whilst I was at work. Fortunately Sytner nottingham were out the back, and they grabbed a couple of wheels off a car they had in to be able to drive it round to theirs until the new ones arrived....

They also broke the window to nick the stereo even though it was on my desk!!

BMWs were quite prone to having wheels nicked at the time. I thought it was odd that the 2 locking nuts they removed were next to the car, completely undamaged. I asked the BMW dealer to fit 5 different sets of locking nuts to stop it happening again, which is when I discovered that virtually all of the sets for sale with every dealer were the same pattern. There were supposed to be 49 patterns, but in practice almost everyone had the same one. Thieves needed one key to help themselves to any BMW wheels…

So I pointed this out to BMW UK’s press office, who replaced the wheels as a ‘gesture of goodwill’. Then I fitted AC Schnitzer locking nuts.

[crAbb]

Originally Posted by boba-fett

Thanks, yes I wish I had kept a few of them Had an R34 GTR NUR2 as well, 21k miles and probably a £300k car now. I bought it for £40k way back!

I bumped into these last week at the detailers. A delivery miles R34 GTR and a 3k mile 22B

Lovely to see!

Dribble.....

[Pond]

That R34! Ooohh!

When I was 'into' rice rockets, an R33 v-spec was something I lusted after. Only ever managed a Mitsu Evo 5, though!

[boba-fett]

Originally Posted by Pond

That R34! Ooohh!

When I was 'into' rice rockets, an R33 v-spec was something I lusted after. Only ever managed a Mitsu Evo 5, though!

My purple 33 GTR was 800bhp. Did go and the noise it made.

Few more old school I found

[SkyJawa]

Try again with pictures!

Learnt to drive at 18, first car was a 1.1 Renault 5 GTL like this:



It leaned so much on corners it was ridiculous, so I made myself a promise, within 1 year I was going to own a car that didn’t lean on corners much at all, and had a fair bit more poke, parents said I’d never afford it and proved them wrong by getting one like this:



Which got written off after 2 years when some stupid idiot in a corsa ignored traffic lights and pulled across in front of me.

Replaced with a GTi-6 then an Impreza Turbo, but after a split with my gf and having to sell the house and Impreza I had to downsize and picked up this over 20 years ago and still treasure (posted on here before):



All great drivers cars with very little modern aids!

[Pond]

Amazingly the 1.9GTi 205 was on my dad's company car list in 1987 (M&S). So what did he get?........an MG Maestro!

[Blacktemplar]

Having started my driving life with a 1972 Morris Marina that was - frankly - a death trap, the only way was up.....

Unfortunately much of my early years were spent living in big cities with no real need for a car, and by the time I could afford something more interesting that made sense where I lived, kids had started arriving.

The only thing I've ever owned that could be construed as a worthwhile drivers car was the Alfa 156 GTA - picked up one of the early UK models while there was only one sprog around (eventually became 3 so car choices needed to be more practical).

It sounded fantastic, went like stink (for the day - these days a 0-60 of just over 7 seconds is glacial), the handling was superb, and it had the full Zender bodykit fitted by the supplying dealer.

Unfortunately it was made from spaghetti, leaked like a seive, you could hear it rust in places, and it had a full Zender bodykit fitted by the supplying dealer. Who was a Fiat main dealer and had neither the wit nor the skill to maintain something like the Alfa. It spent 8 of its first 12 months in the garage being repaired, and after an exasperating 18 months I traded it in for a Ford Galaxy to accommodate a burgeoning clan.

Like many on here, pictures of it pre-date the digital age, so I only have an example from the web - minus the Zender bodykit, which like the real thing looks to have fallen off

What is it they say? If you've never been ruined by an Alfa you're not a real petrolhead

.

[Pond]

Never been brave enough to have an Alfa.
I wanted an Alfasud as my first car but my dad forbid it for good reason. I think his words were "I am the one who will be mending it every week and I'm not good at welding, so no get a Ford". Which I did...a Capri!

[Ennoch]

Originally Posted by Pond

Never been brave enough to have an Alfa.
I wanted an Alfasud as my first car but my dad forbid it for good reason. I think his words were "I am the one who will be mending it every week and I'm not good at welding, so no get a Ford". Which I did...a Capri!

My first three cars were a 1.8 Fiat Bravo, a 2.0 Fiat Bravo and a 2.0 Alfa 145 Cloverleaf. And all of them were faultlessly reliable aside from the first one snapping the clip on the clutch pedal (fixed with zip ties road side and driven another 30k miles like that!), and rust free. Something that couldn't be said for any of my mate's Escorts/Corsas/Disastras etc. That said I'm scared to ever own anything Italian ever again, I think my luck has been used up for several lifetimes! Then again my dad had a new A-reg Uno and then a new J-reg Tipo and both of them were reliable too.

[isleaiw1]

Originally Posted by Pond

I never got an interest free loan from anyone! Parents never gave me a penny.
At 16 I was working as couldn't wait to leave school. Every car I've ever owned has been paid for by myself.
At 18 I was working 70-80 hour weeks just to pay for my cars (and bikes).

I paid mine back!

I couldnt do the job I wanted to do without uni, and was working around it. I did the 70 to 80 hour weeks when I started at 21 - and most wasnt paid as it was studying for more exams!