The Good Car File: 1990 Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6L

Still none the wiser...

I bought this to replace the awful Proton described earlier in the blog. I only had £250 to buy a car and was wondering how i was going to pull it off, but ebay saved the day again, the day after i sold the car, i spent it looking, and looking, and looking again for another motor. Nothing doing.

So i went for some lunch, and came back and hit ebay again: Bingo! just put on, an "Arthur Daley" style dealer in Rugby had a H Plate 1.6L Cavalier in Gold for a mere £175 with three months T&T.

That'll do, said i, i rang "Arthur", and arranged to view the next day and booked the train ticket. I got to Rugby and started the walk to the garage only to get there and find someone clearing it of junk, was i too late? No, thankfully. I did a drive, it drove a lot better than i expected a £175 car to drive and money was handed over.

It even had a original Vauxhall (Philips...) cassette radio that worked so i was MP3 ready, and had a pleasant 45 mile trip home.

And it was a good car. It ran brilliantly, the only problem being that a rubber breather pipe had rotted and burst and was spitting oil in the engine bay so i toddled off on foot to the local Vauxhall dealership, only to discover that the parts guy was an Aussie and the parts system was based on the Opel naming system.

After nearly twenty minutes of trying to convince him that "actually, Vectra A is a Cavalier in the UK and you really don't have to ask everyone on the staff bar the cleaner what car i've got and scratching your head really is a waste of time because i'm telling you in the nicest way possible that i can that it actually is a Vectra A re-badged for the UK", that i could finally order my part. The only problem is that it was in a warehouse in Germany and would take up to five days to arrive. Oh bugger.

I tried to get radiator hose to fit but it just wasn't pliable enough, i had to have this poxy part, but once on it behaved impeccably for eight weeks and i loved it, from the crusty rear wheelarches and 40 MPG to the stuffing coming out of the driver's seat.

Then the cambelt snapped on a journey to my Parents. I don't know what provoked it unless you count the Kate Bush i had on the MP3 at the time. It didn't even go with a bang. Just tootled slowly without power into a very conveniently placed lay-by.

RAC to the rescue then: he described cambelt death after less than two minutes under the bonnet. It was a nice ride home on the tow truck though...

Then i was saddled with the problem of disposing of a scrap car that wouldn't move under it's own steam. Three cheers for the "we buy any scrap car, good prices paid" merchants in the back of the paper. They said thirty quid, and seeing as it was clogging up my parents' drive, i couldn't say no.

What i could do though was try to take anything of value off such as the stereo and battery, but they wouldn't budge an inch with the poxy "World Of Pound" spanner and screwdriver set that i had at the time, so i couldn't even get anything of value from it bar the handy UK map of all Vauxhall/Opel dealers in the UK circa 1990. In fact, i've still got it mounted on the back of a door in my flat.

Nice car, shame it couldn't have lasted longer...

The Good Car File: 1996 Vauxhall Corsa 1.5 LS TD

I was out of work again (you should see my CV...) but had just managed to secure temp work packing for a very well known retailer that sounds like a Jungle. (I'll say no more.) i did have a car, a J-Plate Rover 216, £150 of car which saved my life when a Deer ran out of nowhere on a quiet country lane at 1am in the morning, and straight into it. I now needed a car as well as a new pair of Y-Fronts.

I was going to get rid of the 216 anyway, it was drinking petrol, and i'd already spent the value of the car on Petrol in three weeks, and because it wasn't the tidiest of 216's, it did attract a lot of police attention, and resulted in me having to "do a producer" at my local police station when one keen young policeman took a vested interest in the roadworthiness and insurance situation of it (don't worry, i always run legal, always. It's never worth the risk.)

So i sold the Rover for £100 scrap as i had no idea where the Deer had come from whatsoever or if he was insured, and looked for a diesel car. After a near miss on a 309, which was a very valid lesson in why you should always, always check a car on ebay before buying and don't rely on the photos, i desperately took a day off work to look at a tatty Corsa 1.5 turbodiesel in Thetford, Norfolk for £375.

I didn't have high hopes, but the seller wasn't a goon, the car seemed honest enough, if dog rough and i was desperate, so money changed hands.

I expected it to last a month, and it lasted three. It was an absolute peach to drive, and 60mpg. Plus, it could move some when asked, with that peppy little Izuzu engine, plus cheap tax.

Really, i was buying an engine and steering components and four seats because the body was shot and the brakes were only just adequate. The washer bottle used to ice up a treat in winter and take ten miles to defrost despite wrapping rags around the bottle to try and keep the cold out. Then the fan belt started slipping and i had to apply copious gallons of Hycote Belt Slip to get that to work properly.

Then i had to do an emergency stop thanks to some wally coming out of a Quarry in a Lorry (does that rhyme?) which blew the rear wheel brake cylinders, and having been laid off (again...) i just couldn't afford to fix it, which was a shame because i was looking forward to cutting back the badly faded red paint when the weather got better and turning a profit on it...c'est la vie

Lada you than me?...

Rock on Tommy?

September 1991. I'd just started secondary school. In other news, you could buy a four door "family" saloon brand new for a mere £3,640. The only problem was it was a Lada, after Skoda at that time, the butt of many a joke. However, this didn't stop people buying them in droves, and why not?, having never had one, i've heard that they were a bit rough and ready, but a new, box-fresh motor on your drive for only £3,640. To put this in perspective, a Skoda Favorit 136 Forum, the cheapest Skoda then available, was £4799. A Mini City was £5395, and a Sierra 1.8 LX was £11,464.

I really think we need another car like this. I doubt you would make a car, once you put in raw material, labour, distribution, and marketing costs for under £4k nowadays, but with the right obsolete design (Old Kia Rio or Maestro) and low labour costs, i think you might get a Lada style car for around £6k.

We can't get the old Lada back, because as far as i understand it, it was getting harder and harder to meet British emission standards.

The last Lada was sold in the UK in 1996, although the Lada factory is still apparently going strong. However, if the ad above has put you in the mood for a bit of nostalgic, cost cutting motoring, you can't turn back the clock, but you can buy with not many miles on the clock, for a price not too far removed from the one above: here

The Duff Car File: 1988 Fiat Uno 45S

It was January 2000. I was 19, just been laid off and didn't have much on the Horizon. And i needed a car. Ironically, i forget why i didn't have one at the time, but that's history. I did have some money, but not a lot, but fate lent a hand when my Dad rang round the garages (i was way too shy to do this, believe it or not...) to see if they had something under £200 with MOT, and blimey, they did, a garage i'd bought a couple of cheapies from before, had just had a Fiat Uno turn up, the price: £90 with four months MOT. Dad said we'd best get down and look pronto, we did, it was in that shade of pale blue that all Mk1 Uno's used to seem to be in apart from Rosso Red and Bianca White, it, to be honest, looked OK, so i handed over the cash and was warned that it "took a bit of warming up with the choke", it was Winter so i thought, stupidly that it was something to do with the weather. Several stalls and cut outs later, i managed to get it to my parents and get it running constantly. Then i tried to operate the heater to get heat somewhere else bar the windscreen. No such luck. Oh dear...

I took it down to the jet wash and gave it a blast and the water froze on it a treat, revealing a tidy enough body and the interior was very pleasant, if arctic.

I was in love, but she was an unforgiving Italian mistress, stalling at every junction for the first ten minutes of a journey, with an array of disco lighting on the dash, and promptly refusing to start afterwards. This seemed to happen no matter how much choke you applied.

When it was on the run though, it was near enough faultless, apart from when the handbrake cable snapped, and still very cold, i would put a woolly hat on my head, wear my thick and uncomfortable Swedish Army issue jacket and stick one of my hands on the window vents, and when that got warm, swapped it with the other.

I then got a part worn tyre which had a nail in it, then another crap one as a exchange, but it was icy murder and time for it to go.

I found a cheap Vauxhall Astra with a working heater and a leaky boot, and the Uno was sold on, the Astra was stolen and dumped 100 yards away and the wheeltrims stolen, i left a note under the windscreen of the kind person who took them to please take them off his Renault 19 and put them back on my car. I got a letter from the Council asking me to remove my scrap car from the car park. I never did see the Uno again...

A moment of quiet cash contemplation...

It's all about motoring for pennies here.

Something i've been keeping my eyes on recently is the humble Skoda Favorit. Why?, you might ask. Well, i live in a high risk insurance area, which makes buying cars hard work because of the telephone number style quotes that you get for some of the most trifling cars that nobody would steal (£600 fully comp i was quoted once for a £400 Volvo 440 Turbo Diesel that i had my eyes on on ebay once.) I personally think that this is ridiculous for someone who's been driving for nearly 13 years with maximum no claims

However, just out of interest i did a quick quote check for a Favorit a couple of months ago, £220 a year, fully comp. Ok, it's tinny, but there's a good car in this now largely forgotten Skoda, it did win awards for the best sub £5k class car back in the day, because it was the most Western of all the Eastern European cars. If i wanted to get another car for £220 a year fully comp, i'd have to source out a Allegro or Chevette and have it on a classic policy. Nothing wrong with that though but finding a half decent Allegro or Chevette for under £500 these days is like trying to describe the taste of supermarket hot counter chicken. A hard task.

They're still out there though, there's a few (but just a few) cheap low milers out there. A lovely 1995 Flairline estate was on Auto Trader recently for £595. A bit over my money but at 32k, who's complaining?

Here's one: Buy one while you still can, remember you heard it here first!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1994-SKODA-Favorit-Lxie-Red-MOT-and-TAX-good-runner-/280725249728?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item415c875ec0

The Duff Car File: 1992 Proton 1.5 SE saloon

If i had to say what was the worst car out of the 35 i've owned then i'd have to say this one. Bought when i was so hard up i had to sell the best car i ever had (Pug 405 Style non-turbo diesel) to pay arrears and a $**!!** parking ticket, and i needed a car with T&T for £250 withing 50 miles of where i lived. Well, let's just say that it wasn't a hard choice to look because out of Gumtree, ebay, and the Auto Trader websites, there were only two cars and the other had been sold, so i went to look at the Proton, it seemed to drive OK and the story fitted, the archetypal old gent's car that had only done 64k, i handed over my £250 and was on my way.

Then it rained on the way home, heavily. The overgeared power steering completely lost all feel through the cheap "Hoo Flung Dung" (Taiwan's 7th biggest provider of quality tyres and nylon wigs) remoulds, and before you could say "i leave my entire estate to...", i was genuinely convinced that i would die in this metallic blue coffin. It swayed, the back end seemed to lift and the nearest side gust would gently push me onwards into the opposite side of the road.

I swore and screamed and cursed like i'd never had before. I did make it home in one piece though, sweatier, but home. I swore that night that the thing was going by the time the V5 came back from Swansea.

The next morning, brighter, but still breezy, I thought i was being harsh and i wasn't giving this Malaysian cheapie enough time and respect, so i thought i'd carry on with it, business as usual.

Then i nearly flung the back end out on a roundabout two days later. So a trip to B&Q ensued to try a trick from the days of Hillman Imp racing: Ballast.

Firstly, two bags of sharp sand were tried. No bloody use, more skip and slide on the back end. then four bags. again, no use, and then i gave up using the boot for ballast and put it in the rear footwells (still in the bags you understand...), and...no bloody use again, so i gave up.

The fuel economy was dreadful, and the contents of the washer bottle was so rancid that it smelt like vat gunge clearout day at a Whiskas factory. The Blaupunkt stereo was nice though.

I'd had enough, now i had a clunker on my hands. It was so bad i had to deny it was my car on one occasion. The V5 arrived at 9.45 am one morning and by 10.30 am the thing was listed on ebay, Gumtree and Auto Trader for £275.

Typically there was no response for a fortnight, until one Sunday afternoon when i was due to go out, i got a mysterious call from a Welsh chap, if he paid cash could we hold onto it for the rest of the afternoon?.

Of course we could. I was a bit dubious but he actually did turn up five hours later and we did a deal. He wanted to use it for rallying. The best of British (or Welsh) to him, especially as he had to drive it 100+miles home. And it was starting to rain...

That's not to say that all Protons are bad though. I had a £185 Persona 1.5GLSi Auto which was, against all odds, a little gem. More on that later...

Hello!

Hello!, and welcome to my blog. My name is Lewis Heyward. I work as one of the motor trade's great unsung heroes, the "Bucket Monkey" or to be more precise, a Car Valeter.

This blog is about motoring for pennies at a time when due to (rightly or wrongly) new legislation, a government hellbent on getting everyone on public transport, insane road tax charges for certain cars, cars that are no longer possible to fix when even putting a headlight bulb in is a "four c**** and a b******" rating in the Haynes manual of life.

So how did i come to attempt to write this blog then?, well i've been car mad since i was a little 'un. We didn't have a car but somehow (i don't know how though...) i got hooked on cars, and i had tons of Corgi "Grey Porridge" style toy cars (Escorts, Metros, and my beloved Corgi Sierra and 2CV's...) but no actual full blown car of our own, because we didn't have the finances for one, not even for a scrappy Datsun 120Y or Marina.

Where we lived didn't even have much accessible public transport, so we were very limited to where we could go, and to be honest, we were pretty much house bound, a horrible situation for anybody.

Shopping was even worse and at times when we bought something bulky, we carried it home in my (then) baby brother's buggy. I'd walk home with my folks and wonder what it would be like to have a car and go for days out.

We didn't get a car again until 1991, when i was 11. (a rotten 1982 1.6L Cortina)

With harsh memories of walking everywhere for nearly ten years (i won't include the years of being pushed in a pram for obvious reasons...) and near-non existent buses and overpriced train travel, i decided when i was 15 or so that i would get motorized mobile transport as soon as possible. This started with a desire for 50cc mopeds, envying my School freinds riding their £50 Puch Maxi's around fields (which i could imagine being very harsh on the posterior if it was the non-sprung "S" version...)

I got my first moped, a £275 Honda Melody, when i was 17, and it's hard to put in words how much freedom it gave me, freedom not to be stuck within 3 miles because i was limited to a knackered old pushbike, freedom to actually go places without being charged a fortune for them. I even used to use the Melody to commute to my first job, 17 miles from home. It was slow, (22 mph tops) and it was bloody cold, but i was free, really free!

I got some more bikes, then i passed my driving test and now it was serious business, Car Time: my first driveable car was a Pug 205 Diesel, a trade in at a local garage, with short T&T.

Now i was really mobile, there was now no limit, except for the fact that i was a very nervous new driver so i kept local, then made trips to Skegness and Lincoln. I was 19, loaded with spare cash and a car, i felt like king of the world, as so many of us do, when in this position!

One car led to another, and another because i got bored with cars very easily. First it was the 205, (which developed a slipping clutch) and then a brilliant 309 Diesel with sporty old school bodykit, then another, then another, and now i've had 35 cars since 1999, mostly Bangers.

Bangers, because firstly, they're cheap, obviously, and secondly, by the time they were bangers, when i started driving, they were cars that i'd grew up admiring and wanting, and when they were up for four hundred quid, well i guessed that i'd best take custody while i still could.

The noughties were a golden age of Bangerdom, old cheap cars that you could mostly fix for yourself for under £500, and they didn't have to have a beige interior either.

You could fix them yourself, but they were so plentiful, you either ignored the problems, (Renault 5 Campus with worn brakes, which being a novice to cars i didn't notice, until my Dad offered to drive it one day...) or sold them via the local rag (Mk3 Fiesta 1.6S, rotten.) and then you'd buy another one, because they were so cheap. (1988 Fiat Uno 45S, £90 with four months MOT)

Fast forward ten years. It's now 2011. It's Bangers Jim, but not as we know it...,The "Next Generation" is here. All those modern cars with £9-15k price tags a decade ago are now today's bangers, the first ones designed with electronics and main-dealer mechanic tinkering only in mind are now today's sheds. That's not necessarily a criticism, that they've lasted ten years is a bonus in itself, at one point it would be a good innings if a car could last ten years (or less if you had a Lancia, but that's another story.), and yes, they run well, and are undoubtedly are safe in a crash, but they ain't cheap to fix.

And that's why my little blog is here. Like all of us, i've suffered in the recession, being out of work more times in the last three years now than actually in. When this happens, your motoring life suffers, at times i've had to make do without a car, but even now though i live in the sprawling metropolis that is Peterborough, the local bus won't take you to the door of a job, and cycling's not really an option unless you really know the city, (which i don't, will have to remedy that someday...), likewise a moped/scooter unless you live in the city centre, so you really need a car: no car, no job. no freedom.

So this blog is about motoring for pennies, some of it is going to be serious, and some irrelevant, some educated, and some completely thick as it's just my own personal opinion. The opinion of a man who is worried about the future when the only banger choice is a 51 plate Renault Laguna with a slipping clutch and no history...