Perhaps I should put the doors back on.
It’s amazing how much lighter a car is if you remove the doors, windows, windscreens, bonnet, and most of the front end. It is, however, not amazing how blue it is if you paint it in the bluest bluey blue paint imaginable.
In response to some utterly unfounded and frankly libellous statements suggesting that I refuse to drive any car that isn’t a) British, and b) at least partially broken, I present the following evidence:
The wheels are real.
This is a 2009 Mustang GT, pictured at Muir Beach, CA on November 5th 2009. There’s a fine British pub here, where they have a giant bonfire every November 5th. I just happened to be in San Francisco for more fun training that week, and just happened to have a free evening to watch people set fire to things on the beach. Enormous fun for all and I have the best Mobile mechanic Miami has.
Anyway, back to the car. I had (through work, obviously) reserved a hip-and-trendy Toyota Corolla, doubtless in grey on grey and fitted with the optional economy light and go-slower stripes. I would not have been surprised had it come with pipe and slippers. However, after making friends with the extremely bored girl at the Hertz desk in downtown SF, I found myself in possession of the above electric blue Mustang and an entire day to kill. So, after spending two hours waiting at the Sprint repair centre for my phone to be fixed (number six now), I sped off over the Golden Gate in search of a proper driving road.
(If your mental image at this point is one of wide open spaces, glorious sunshine, and stoned people selling taffy – you’re sadly wrong. This was early November, so all the tourists had gone home and it was raining)
I know virtually nil about the geography of the Bay Area, except how to get places by train – so this was new to me. I know the 101 is the popular road, but this is nothing more than a four-lane mess clogged with RVs, trailers, caravans, minivans, and Subaru drivers. Highway 1 seemed like a much better bet, particularly as it looked like spaghetti on the map. So, after marvelling at the scenery once clear of Sausalito, I attempted to figure out what the manual gearbox was for and set off towards the beach.
This particular part of California looks a lot like North Devon. Twisty, narrow roads full of potholes.. 20mph speed limits through the villages but virtually none in between.. light but constant drizzle.. and a sheer dropoff one side of the road all the way to the coast. Obviously, this was a recipe for over-enthusiastic driving and I found myself at the beach rather too quickly. The car growls, it whines, it groans, it screeches – and occasionally it clunks and coughs as its suspension came straight out of 1955. I’m not sure if Ford were trying to recreate the feeling that you were in some way driving the school bully, but that’s very much what it feels like.
I put 250 miles on that car that day, just driving round the bay and attempting to get over the Bay Bridge before any more of it fell down. Enormous fun, but don’t tell anyone.
Things I miss, but shouldn’t – #1. The 1993 Rover Vitesse.
I bought this little wonder in 2004 as a stop-gap measure whilst commuting weekly to Oxford and waiting for the Primera to get fixed. It cost me a hundred and eighty quid, and came with a years’ MoT. Of course, I’d find out later that there’s no way it should’ve ever passed, but it had the enormous benefit of being big, comfy, able to hold a week’s worth of my crap, and – most importantly – working air conditioning. It also had an oh-so-manly boot spoiler, but we won’t talk about that.
This particular one was a 2-litre turbo that hadn’t really been mucked about with, but was shovelling out around 230bhp. Not a lot by most modern performance car standards, but if you could tolerate the gearbox whine it’d do 140mph without complaining. Supposedly.
It was one of the last things we sold before moving to the US in 2006, and I actually made twenty quid back on it in the process. I put 20k on it in that time, and it is sorely missed, at least partly because it left many any M3 owner open-mouthed at having been overtaken by something as common and rubbish as a Rover.
I’d love to have one again – but sadly the Sterling is about as close as I’m going to get, seeing as US sales stopped in 1991 – right as the mk2 was introduced. On the other hand, free imports start at 21 years old.. so only another two years to go. Will there be any left that haven’t rusted away by then?
Seems unlikely.
This is what happens if you take a 1971 Stag, drive it until 1978 when the engine gives up, and then store it until 2007. You will of course remember to carefully drain and replace all the fluids, seal the interior, and cover the car correctly. What you will forget is to remove the original British Leyland battery, which over the next 29 years will disintegrate, filling your front valance with battery acid.. which in turn will disintegrate, taking the entire battery box, half the radiator, the fan, and most of the front bumper with it.
…I think 50% of Oregon’s Sterlings now live in my barn. I found this little beauty on CL a couple of weeks ago:
Given the “rippling” around the driver’s door panel, there’s obviously a story behind this one.. and a story it is. It was hit in the side several years ago, and given the value of the average Sterling in the US, it wasn’t worth fixing – so a minor panel-beating with a hammer and it was back on the road. Last month, that came to an abrupt end when the radiator sprang a leak, emptying coolant all over Clackamas County by all accounts. Given that a replacement radiator costs upwards of $400, the car sat where it was, radiatorless and full of hay (yes, really).
It’s a 1990 827SL in Steel Grey with a grey leather interior. It’s *never* had any sort of dash lift, and the electrics all actually seem to work.. which is a minor miracle.. as is the complete lack of any evidence of leaks. It took a little coaxing to get it going.. but it does seem to run pretty nice, and yes – the radiator is toast.
I wanted it for the wheels – my 827SLi should have those wheels – but if I can round up a cheap door and front wing from somewhere, I’ll fix it up and keep another cheap Sterling on the road for a while longer. It’s only got 130k on it; it’s barely run-in!
This is a 1998 Freelander. It’s red, and was ours for about three years. It’s a 2.0 diesel, and is still on the road twelve years later. It had criminally poor A/C, but got 40mpg consistently and never broke down. It would pull just about anything, and was superb both on and off road.
This is also a Freelander. It’s a 2002 2.5 v6, and we’ve owned it since 2006. It’s currently got 87k on it.
Despite these cars look pretty much identical, the difference between them is like night and day. The 1998 was a joy to own, and the 2002 has been an absolute nightmare from start to finish. Just search on any Craigslist or eBay for v6 Freelanders, and you will find hundreds described as “mechanics special” or “for repair”.. largely because the problems these things have are so chronic the cheapest thing to do normally is to sell it to some poor unsuspecting Internet buyer who sees the Land Rover badge and thinks the worst they’re in for is some finest British electrical problems.
Oh no. Not even close. Head gasket failure, timing belt failure, thermostat housings that crack leading to either of the above, slipped cylinder liners, rattly manifolds, broken VIS motors, wobbly differential mounts, seized viscous couplings, dodgy ABS.. and all of that before you even hear the magic words “Lucas Electronics”.
A truly rewarding vehicle if you maintain it meticulously (by which I mean throw the factory schedule out of the window and at *least* double the amount of servicing work you do). If you ignore it for a *second*, it will spew all of its coolant all over Highway 30 and leave you stranded in a foul-smelling cloud of coolant and oil fumes.
Shame on you, Land Rover.
So I have a bit of a thing for Triumph Stags. When I was but a small boy, cars I drew looked like one of two things.. a Mini, or a Stag. This is unfortunate, because a Stag is just about the least reliable British car it’s possible to own. Granted, most of the problems are now well-known and can be sorted.. but this has its consequences.
Firstly, Triumph only sold 2500 Stags in the US between 1970 and 1973. In my estimation, maybe half of these are left.. and of those, maybe half have had the engine switched because the original melted/combusted/exploded. As it left the factory, the Stag has eight of the most fragile cylinders ever put under a bonnet.
The other side-effect of the Stag’s well-known reliability problems is this:
I currently have three Stags. The above two came from a guy who also had three.. but he restored one, decided it was too much effort, and sold the other two to me. The one on the left has been Frankensteined with a 283 Chevy engine, and obviously has been outside for long time.. even though there’s no rust whatsoever *inside*. It also – after some coaxing – runs and drives (unfortunately it doesn’t stop yet).
The one on the trailer is a very early 1970 – in fact, it’s about ten cars earlier than the earliest US-spec “normal production” Stags known to the registry. Unfortunately, despite good bodywork, most of this car is in bits in my garage. It did come with two engines though – a Capri v6, and the Stag v8 (suspiciously missing one timing cover).
Hmm.