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Cars you expected to be awful but were actually OK...


Twinspark
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Carrying on the recent theme, really.

 

And the reason for starting the thread...

 

My brother has a MkII Focus Zetec and is currently having a few issues with the DPF and turbo - his mate will sort it, but it may take a bit of time, so he needed a cheap as chips runabout for a few months.

 

We trawled around some local dealers and ended up in Radcliffe at the auction site, after ascertaining they'd take offers on the cars and speak with owners before auction day.

As you'd expect, the stock was largely horrendous, aside from, bizarrely, a trio of Citroen Xsara Picassos. Since my brother has 2 teenage lads (both 6ft or approaching it) and a girlfriend with a 4 year old girl (long story - but she's *significantly* younger than him...), they suddenly made sense.

 

We picked the example with longest MOT (fresh 12 month ticket), ignored the airbag warning light and grabbed a quick test, after which the deal was done.

 

For insurance reasons, I drove it back to his place... and was very surprised that it wasn't utterly shit, despite the 176k mile HDI lump up front. The engine was nice and smooth with adequate power for a family bus, it handled 'OK', and was remarkably quiet at 80mph on the motorway.

 

For under 500 quid, it was perfectly adequate temporary transport... I did joke that he should fix and flog the Focus then run the Picasso until it dies... but that's tempting fate, as that engine seems to be built to function post apocalypse.

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Her X5, some years ago.  A 3.0d whereas I would only have touched the V8.  An SUV barge whereas I liked cars with handling.

 

But I actually grew to like the wafty and serene progress along the road, and if you managed the engine properly then it gave a real surge when you wanted to - I still remember leaving my parents-in-law for dust when we joined the M5 on the way home from a holiday.  And the space... you could lob stuff in the back and never see it again, quite unlike the 996 :unsure:

 

Oddly, she was really looking forward to it, but hated it as she needed half of the county in which to park it.  So we only kept it 18 months or so :(

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My Montego.:roflmao:

 

Seriously though, the one car that truly surprised me was a Nissan Sunny 1.4 Sequel.:roflmao:

 

It was the horrid looking hatchback thingy.  In a bright metallic blue.

 

It was horrible inside but the engine was remarkably smooth. 

 

Identical to this:

 

10714929664_4cbfef2e53_o.jpg

 

I ended up stuck with it for a few months courtesy of the insurance company, after rolling the MX-5.  I'm still not sure how I ended up with a Nissan Sunny but it stayed until my MG-F 1.8 VVC was delivered. 

 

I hid it around the corner of anywhere I needed to go.  But as this picture demonstrates, you could park it in any disabled bay and nobody would ever question it not having a disabled badge. :roflmao:

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The Picasso was one of these (same colour and trim)

 

citroen-xsara-picasso-lx-mpv-2002-blue-m

 

In base-spec. LX trim with the 90bhp 2.0HDI lump and added scratches and dents. Hateful turd of a car to look at, but we had a right laugh driving it back across Manchester.

Edited by Twinspark
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Our delightful neighbour (the one who is building a Cathedral), has a Picasso.

 

It is silver and I reckon any TSN-er would struggle to take a picture of a more dented car.  There are petrol stains down the wing that have been there for years (certainly all the time they've lived next to us anyway).

 

The front tyres on it are so bald you could use them as slicks on an F1 car.  I will admit I have got very, very close to reporting it because they ferry their kids around in it.

 

It is so old and battered I think it is one of those cars that they'll have to pay someone to take off their hands.

 

The old bloke who lives across the road from us is as blunt and direct as anyone you could ever meet.  He once looked across to the car as they were getting the kids out of it one weeked and shouted "I hear you trying to start that thing every morning.  It's my alarm clock.  At least you know it won't get stolen." - then promptly wandered off... :roflmao:

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When had my second MR2 Turbo, a TRD model, running around 330-350bhp (depending on who's rolling road you believed), it went back to the garage that sold it (Motormall just outside Canterbury) for a new clutch, they gave me a mk 4 Ford Fiesta 1.25 Zetec to run around in for a week until I could pick it up the next weekend (the then Mrs T was at Uni there).

 

The initial signs weren't great, the lock was broken on the drivers side, so I had to get in and out of the passenger door, it was utterly filthy and had various scrapes and dents all over it.

 

However, despite only having something like 75bhp, that little thing flew along, the Yamaha designed engine absolutely singing and reveling in being thrashed as hard as you could spank it, it hung on in the corners like a limpet and flicked between directions with a little bit of lift off oversteer so that you felt like a hero, but in reality, hadn't had much say in it.

 

I was really disappointed when half way through the week, the gearbox exploded as I drove through town, I pulled away from a red light, sensibly, and bang, bits of gearbox all over the road.

 

It wasn't all bad though, It got trailered back to the garage and in it's place arrived fresh from Japan, a deep burgundy Honda Prelude Type S with an OEM touch screen TV that controlled the A/C too and had Navigation, it had half leather/alcantara seats and was immaculate with very low miles, it never went back, I kept it.

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We bought a Megane CC (the one with the folding hard top) shortly after they came out because my partner wanted one and my brother worked for Renault, so the price was good. It was a petrol 1.6 Privilege, which I fully expected to be horrible to drive, unreliable and to generally disintegrate in the way only a French car can. Actually it was OK, in fact better than that. We kept it almost three years in the end, took it to France twice. I actually a quite enjoyed driving it - there was a certain challenge in gaining and maintaining momentum :roflmao:

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My brother has a MkII Focus Zetec and is currently having a few issues with the DPF and turbo - his mate will sort it, but it may take a bit of time, so he needed a cheap as chips runabout for a few months.

 

Colour me stupid, but - wouldn't it have made more sense to spend that £500 on a proper mechanic who would fix it in a couple of days at the most instead of months?

 

Rather than an utter turd of French automobilia?

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Indeed. He's having the Focus fixed at 'mates rates' - seems there's a wait for an exchange turbo, plus he's tracking down a DPF - or looking at a DPF removal. But I suspect it's going to be more serious, it was smoking severely on Monday, then he reported that something went pop and filled the cabin with hot fumes through the air vents. (His mate is a 'proper mechanic' - but will be doing it in his own time)

 

Whatever - due to circumstances he needed a working car TODAY. Well, he needed it yesterday - but I was around to do the school run with him etc.

 

So we went out with 500 quid to buy something, anything, that had a recent MOT and could be driven away immediately.

 

It buys him time to sort the Focus, which he's utterly sick of now and will be sold as soon as it's working, and buy something decent - he's probably going to get an E90 320i Touring, as he doesn't really do the kind of miles needed to keep on top of modern DPF equipped oil burners.

Edited by Twinspark
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A Toyota Starlet S courtesy car. It was quick by my standards at the time (a 1.4 1998 Polo) and I loved it. Wasn't as pleased with the Corsa switch they did - I asked for another Starlet but they didn't have one!

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Mmmm, courtesy cars.  Yes, the E46 320Ci coupe that Porsche once gave me when the 996 was in for a service.  Now, I know a 320Ci is a good car, but in the context of arriving at a Porsche dealership and expecting something tasty from their own stock, and given that I then drove a 330Ci, I was expecting it to be familiar but oddly slow. 

 

Which it wasn't.  I found I could go round Swindon all day at full throttle, which was a lot easier than having to think about how much power to apply.  You just had to wait until you were within sight of the apex of the roundabout, floor it, and then hold it there until the next roundabout.  OK, the back might slide a bit but the handling and balance of the E46 Ci would save you provided you were quick enough (see previous comments elsewhere...).  A really good fun day, which I was not expecting at all.

 

As someone keeps reminding us, nothing handles like a rental...

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NHLAR reminds me... last year's holiday in Jersey.  Rental car was a bog-standard Focus diesel *yawn*

 

Our hotel was in Bouley Bay.  Google it.  It's the home of Jersey's main hillclimb event.  The start line was outside our apartment.  The hillclimb was that weekend, and we arrived to find the (only) road out of the bay was all set up ready for the event.  Oh, it was lovely.  Yes, you can get wheelspin in a diesel Focus, although your times up the hill won't get you on the leaderboard. 

 

No, I didn't bend the car.  But I did offer to pop out for any and all errands that needed running :)

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1.0 12v Corsa.

 

Bought it for my Son when he passed his test & ended up using it as a runabout for a few months when he had to re-sit. With slightly over specced tyres as were fitted it was like a go-kart.

 

Provided you kept your speed up through the corners and planned you overtaking well, you could embarrass some much better equipment.

 

Megane R27 had us p!ssing ourselves once as he lost out after a few miles.

Edited by E-bmw
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I suppose the most obvious choice would be the Ford Transit Connect.

 

I was expecting it to be awful because it was replacing the Ford Courier vans at work... and they were waaay beyond awful. They contained in one vehicle everything that can be wrong with a car; they were dangerously slow (not a word I'm using lightly either), none of the controls felt like they were actually connected to anything, VERY LOUD diesel drone, no-where in the cabin to store anything and not that big in the cargo area either, extremely uncomfortable on any journey over 10 minutes (and we would regularly need to drive 100+ miles away in them), and those these ones weren't of concern to me, they were also unreliable, expensive to maintain and got terrible fuel economy. They could not have been any worse... therefore it was a surprise when the Connects we replaced them with actually turned out to be pretty reasonable on all fronts.

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