So this morning started out with a lift over towards Oxford provided by a friend. Never been in a Jag XF before.
Pleasant enough - though unsurprisingly has the usual modern car vices of too hard seats and too stiff suspension for my liking.
Fast forward a couple of hours: Oops. I may have done something very silly.
Well I've just A - Made a load of work for myself. B - Ensured my imminent demise. C - Made a load of work for myself. Though a little background on the WHY I have done this is probably needed for some of you.
Back between in 2001 and late 2005 I had a Saturday job at a little independent used car dealer out in the middle of nowhere in Aberdeenshire. I quite often found myself pursuing their trade ins which they deemed to old to be worth cleaning up to sell themselves. Which I used to be welcome to basically for scrap value - which in 2003 meant about 30p.
I got a few pretty good bargains I reckoned.
This Renault 11TC was £125 I think.
Indeed was my first encounter with a French car I think.
Sailed though the MOT and I got a decent year's motoring out of it. I really liked it, went really well for a 1.2 and despite being a very low trim level was really comfy. I only really sold it on because it turned out that this straddled the line between the pre and post facelift car and seemed to have been assembled from whatever they found laying around the factory floor. A lot of things didn't even vaguely match what either the phase 1 or 2 cars should have had. This was before there were nearly as many enthusiast groups and such around on the internet so it made finding anything an utter nightmare.
Plus by then it had done the main thing I wanted it to, which was keep the Metro out of the worst of the winter.
My first Saab was £60.
Don't get too excited. This was very much the good side, the other one had a huge poor accident repair on which had been painted with what appeared to be red telephone box paint. It was also absolutely rotten around the driveshaft tunnels and boot floor was basically a lot of air held together by some vaguely Saab shaped rust. The gearbox had serious issues (80% of the time getting from first to second involved manually switching to first and back to second, at which point second would be engaged with a sledgehammer) and the engine hadn't had an oil change in about ten years and made some truly interesting noises. This was bought as a "run it on nothing unnecessary till the MOT runs out" basis. It did then yield a good number of useful spares to keep others on the road.
The front wheel looks odd in that photo because I was in the middle of replacing the wheel bearing so things are just sitting there - which I think was about the only thing beyond a service I really did to it. Think I maybe changed the thermostat.
It basically expired about a week before the MOT ran out when a missing manhole cover in Aberdeen ripped out the lower nearside ball joint.
There was a free Astra 1.3 Merit (in beige) which I don't think I have a photo of, and a £20 Proton 1.5GL which I basically did my last learning how to do driving test relevant things like reversing around a corner on a local private road (we literally had a mostly paved mile plus long farm road 100 yards from the house which I was allowed to use with permission from the land owner).
However probably my favourite of all the random stuff that followed me home was this.
Reg number was E100MSE.
Which cost me either £20 or £60, I can't remember. It had a couple of days MOT left, so shortly after I got it home my father took it down to the local car guy in the nearest village to see what it might need for a test.
Sadly it was condemned as the rear suspension arms were rotten. Bearing in mind the car was worth...well...I'd just paid that for it it wasn't worth repairing. Now I'd have kept it around just as a lounge to listen to my music on the epic sound system in - but as my father was the one making the calls because I was at college, it turned out that I never saw the car again. I drove it about 3 miles in total I think. Which also means that the above is the only photo I have of it save for a horribly grainy underexposed one of the interior.
We were always a family who tended to forgive and forget, but that was one thing which I really did hold a grudge about for many years, just saying to bin it without even consulting me.
I always vowed that one day I'd properly own another one.
Fast forward to ~2010 when I was more a master of my own fate and had some usable disposable income, they'd basically gone extinct. So I stopped looking.
Until someone in a Telegram chat posted a link to the C&C classified as for this a couple of days ago.
Is was clearly somewhat scruffy, the photos weren't great but the ad sounded like it was written by someone who was into cars. Plus it was actually written in real English which in 2022 feels like a real rarity.
Initially I sat firmly on the "I absolutely do not need another project" idea. However having then looked up how many were left and realising it was pretty local I decided it had to be worth a look. If I didn't I'd forever question if I'd made the right call, and am not expecting to find another pop up really based on these numbers...
This is despite the fact that the car I'd already got on my driveway for the spring 2023 project was parked on what used to be my front lawn because I'm already out of space. So if I bought it something would absolutely need to move on - one in, one out and it isn't optional.
So I sent a message to the seller. What followed was an entirely pleasant E-mail conversation back and forth completely out of character with any experience buying or selling a car to the general public that I've had in the last ten years. It was arranged that I'd pop over this weekend to have a look at it.
I was going into this with the expectation of finding it to be quite rotten on account of a somewhat colourful MOT history, and knowing there were a bunch of little other things off the bat in need of sorting. So my expectation was likely to view it with an open mind, but most likely walking away happy in the knowledge I'd checked it out.
I got there and found the car...pretty much exactly as described. I didn't obviously have it up on a ramp and there's only so much you can do trying to lay on the ground on an active public road, but while there have been some patches here and there, it looks by and large pretty clean. I think the suspension arms (which wrote my original one off) have been replaced as they look far newer than the rest of the car.
The only rust I immediately found which will want attention sooner than later is some on the inner wings where some seam sealant has blown out. The outer wings bolt on and I don't think it will be the end of the world to sort once they're off. Might actually be far enough away from the strut tops because of how far back they're set not to be an MOT issue - but it wants sorting either way.
Interior was in decent shape, all the leather desperately wants drowning in leather feed, but everything's there and looks in decent shape. Bit of obvious wear here and there not no splits I've noticed yet. Especially glad the Monaco specific door cappings are okay as they'd be an absolute nightmare to find replacements for I imagine.
We had a quick trundle around the estate and the car seemed to drive fine enough. There's a drop-linky sort of rattle from the offside front and it's got the usual horribly baggy 80s Renault gear change that needs it's bushings replaced, but from the driver's seat that was about it. Temperature gauge sits higher than I'd like, but I'm positive I've seen that on these before, and the highly technical "how long can I hold onto the hoses for?" Test and "Can I smell coolant?" Tests say it's running at a perfectly sane temperature. Most importantly though the gauge got to that spot then stayed steadily there rather than jumping around all over the shop.
I was prepared for the brakes to be in a bit of a sorry state given she's only done a few hundred miles in the last five years, but they actually seem absolutely fine.
Despite having basically told myself it was going to be too much of a project before we got there, I had to admit it was actually a pretty good candidate for a rolling project to tinker with and fettle. To be absolutely honest with myself, much more in line with my abilities than some of the stuff on the Cavalier. Particularly that one bit of welding on the offside inner sill which I would almost definitely wind up needing to get someone in to do despite trying to be optimistic. Chassis leg I reckon I can manage, but the sill is a bit more complicated.
So a deal was done and we headed for home.
No petrol station shot as the seller had already very kindly filled it up for us! So have one in a random Waitrose car park instead where we stopped for a comfort break (after negotiating an absolute maze of a car park).
Reversing into that space was my first moment of "Oooh yeah, these are not small cars are they?"
It's always a little unnerving driving a car back when you've bought it - especially a 34 year old French barge which even when it was new had something of a reputation for flaky electronics. Double that when it's barely turned a wheel in the last five years. Oh, the temperature gauge showing about 3/4 on the gauge didn't exactly help my nerves either even though I'm 99% sure the temperature is actually absolutely fine.
However she wafted the 40 miles or so home without missing a beat and in utter comfort.
Did I mention, comfort?
I kind of expected that my 19 year old memory of the levels of comfort were very rose tinted. Nope, I was spot on. These are still the most comfortable seats of any car I've ever sat in. The XJ-S wasn't all that far off to be fair, but this definitely has the edge. Plus is a LOT roomier. For all the Jag was the size of a small country, the cabin really wasn't that big.
Unsurprisingly, by this point I'd compiled a bit of an issue list.
First and foremost...That tailpipe. Initially I thought someone had stuck a silly rear exhaust section on. I recall these being annoyingly expensive even back in the early 00s, so that wouldn't have surprised me. However a bit of quick investigation...
Figured out it was just a trim...so that's now gone. Much better.
She needs a clean. Like really, really needs a good deep clean.
Exactly as per the advert, the paint does indeed need help in several areas. There's some pretty epic clear coat peel.
Plus a nasty scrape running a good portion of the way along the driver's side.
The passenger's door catch clearly needs adjustment as it requires an unreasonably heavy slam to latch fully.
The LCD display for the clock/stereo/outside temperature display clearly needs either a cleaned zebra strip or replacement ribbon cable.
The warning light for the washer fluid level is lit...
...Though that may actually just need the fluid topping up. I haven't had time to check yet.
Heater blower is a bit squeaky.
Nearside front door speaker grill likes to eject itself from the door when you close it.
Few lamps out in the dash/switches, but nowhere near as many as I expected to be honest.
Does look good at night.
I do remember thinking that the style of lights they used on the central cluster in the dash with the brightly lit symbol on a dimmer field looked really smart. Still do.
Though speaking of the dash, it's hard not to mention this strangeness which wouldn't have been out of place in a Citroen to be honest.
I haven't tried the windows yet, nor the sunroof - which I didn't really notice until we were underway - that will definitely not be getting touched until spring!
Central locking does try to work, though it doesn't quite manage to actually get all the doors locked. Sure a clean and grease of things will sort that. I do only have one set of keys (and no remote sadly), which I'll need to resolve sooner than later - though it remains to be seen how much of a pain that weird door key is to get cut.
Overall, seems a reasonably solid base to work from. Hopefully will get a bit more of a chance to look at it further in the daylight tomorrow.
Did it make *sense* to buy? Probably not. However I have literally been after one for the last 19 years - so logic can take a back seat for a change. This is a car I've wanted forever.
I'm definitely not in the market for any more cars even though I get links to almost desirable ones...
