E30 Zone

Car........

I say first car, first car on the road to keep it simple.

I did have a Mini when I was 14ish and a Renault 5 when I was 16, but first road legal car I had when 17 in 1991 was this beauty.....

1982 Ford Escort 1.3L, in luxurious Sunburst Red (Faded and rusty of course). Cost £250 and about £400 to insure.

Had fun in this car, topped out at 105mph. Had brakes fail at 80mph entering a 30 limit with S bends, that required a change of underpants!

Had a handy number plate BWM264X, got a parking ticket once and the warden wrote BMW264X! Result, no need to pay.




So lets see yours...........

Don't have a photo to hand but it was a Mark 1 Escort 1100 Coupe LHD cost me £125 and I sold it to my "sparks" mate who was working/helping for me for £50 as it had a "newish" battery ;o)))

Second car though I have this photo, was repaired by a mate and a full respray, new rear quarter and axle, bought for £1300 from a mate and sold for £1275 after 3 years and I got a payout from the insurance.



I thought I was a driving God in it coming down from Holland Park past the Hilton hotel late one night retying and just changed down put foot down as I came on to the roundabout before Shep Bush Green and did a 180 and ends up going backwards missed everything and just kissed a kerb with a tyre no damage at all.

My first car at 17 was a hellrot red e36 316 saloon I did pass plus and got my first year insurance cheaper than a mate who had a 1.1 metro was back in 2003 tho, sorry no picture at hand

Mine a 1962 mark one Cortina 1500 cc , painted in matt black army paint (as you do when you're in the military and you want a paint job on the cheap) , red leaded underneath with a furry roof headliner and a 12 foot long fibre glass whip ariel .I paid £40 for her and kept her until I moved onto a ford corsair 2000 V4 where I gave it to a garage who wanted the Cortina for spares in exchange for welding the Corsair .

lol
yes first car , I had a 1981 fiat 127 super ! for about 8 months ,,, until I smashed it into the railings down park lane !

I blame the bus & that damn rain

brutus wrote:lol
yes first car , I had a 1981 fiat 127 super ! for about 8 months ,,, until I smashed it into the railings down park lane !

I blame the bus & that damn rain

My brother had a 127 , you could always tell it was him driving towards you as the door skins had parted company from the frames and flapped like a pair of wings , a total rot box

a mk1 escort .... what else

At least mine was blue......

It had house carpet as floor mats, took me a week to work out how to work the screen washers as the carpet covered the foot operate thingamajig........

MK1 Escort, cheap (twenty years ago) cheerful and RWD

Some funny stories too

Mine was a 1982 1.3 Vauxhall Shove It (Chevette).

Of course I couldn't leave it standard, it had Astra GTE seats, spotlights, modded carb and a full Peco exhaust.

Lovey blend of gold & brown hues there Steve, pulled off in style

Yup ! got to love the 80's.

I sold it to buy Ford Sierra , which of course I fitted twin 45 and a full Cosworth body kit. The Shove It was rolled down a bank and written off 2 weeks after I sold it.

I then traded in the Sierra for the E30 that started all of this

sorry no pics of my first car,

mk1 astra gte had a full 45mm carb set up, straight through exhaust (load as F**K!) all in white.

how i never got points or lost my license i'll never know. sold that to buy a stripped out mk2 escort with a 2.1 pinto on 45's.

Somewhat embarrassingly for a 17 year old in Yuppie-era 1988, mine was this 1973 Fiat 126:



A hand-me down from my gran, it had just 17,000 miles but needed a replacement clutch. It had the mighty 594cc air-cooled two-pot, and I saw an indicated 80 mph flat out down long motorway hills on the rare occasions it ran properly.

Fortunately, I only had to endure it for a few months before being given my mum's 1970 Morris 1000 Traveller, which at least had a 'proper' engine with reasonable performance.

Jesus325iTouring wrote:Car........




.

That looks like it's made out of 3 different cars!!

Jesus325iTouring wrote:Car........




.

That looks like it's made out of 3 different cars!!

steve_k wrote:sorry no pics of my first car,

mk1 astra gte had a full 45mm carb set up, straight through exhaust (load as F**K!) all in white.

how i never got points or lost my license i'll never know. sold that to buy a stripped out mk2 escort with a 2.1 pinto on 45's.

Was that the one with the digital dash?

Gert_8 wrote:

Jesus325iTouring wrote:Car........




.

That looks like it's made out of 3 different cars!!

Just two, Sirra in the middle and Escort front and back, you should know Jesus by now......... ;o)))))

Speedtouch wrote:Somewhat embarrassingly for a 17 year old in Yuppie-era 1988, mine was this 1973 Fiat 126:



A hand-me down from my gran, it had just 17,000 miles but needed a replacement clutch. It had the mighty 594cc air-cooled two-pot, and I saw an indicated 80 mph flat out down long motorway hills on the rare occasions it ran properly.

Fortunately, I only had to endure it for a few months before being given my mum's 1970 Morris 1000 Traveller, which at least had a 'proper' engine with reasonable performance.

They are retro cool though now, lime green is a nice colour, did you have to start it by pushing the lever up and down by the handbrake?

Escort MK 2 1.3L olympic blue
My dad had it from new as a lease car from his work and I bought it from him when he left.
18 year old lad in a three year old car in the 70`s...
I took it to work when I was just 17 and it caused a proper stirr
Great car.

Mart.

Satan wrote:They are retro cool though now, lime green is a nice colour, did you have to start it by pushing the lever up and down by the handbrake?

Yes, I gather they now have quite a following, quite why I'm not sure, as they are pretty crap really, main bugbears being lack of poke, bouncy handling, poor drum brakes, wandering steering/badly affected by crosswinds, lousy demisting in winter, general poor build quality, rust, etc., etc.

Indeed, mine had the dual levers by the handbrake for choke and starter.

I later had a 1998 Fiat Cinquecento SX, which was leagues better than the 126 and more economical - up to 70 mpg!

Satan wrote:

steve_k wrote:sorry no pics of my first car,

mk1 astra gte had a full 45mm carb set up, straight through exhaust (load as F**K!) all in white.

how i never got points or lost my license i'll never know. sold that to buy a stripped out mk2 escort with a 2.1 pinto on 45's.

Was that the one with the digital dash?

i think that was the mk2 as mine never had it.

Satan wrote:

Gert_8 wrote:

Jesus325iTouring wrote:Car........




.

That looks like it's made out of 3 different cars!!

Just two, Sirra in the middle and Escort front and back, you should know Jesus by now......... ;o)))))

wouldn't surprise me at all

thing is, is that front end on the piss or is it my eye sight????

LOL it was just one car, many additional sheets of metal holding it together mind, it was a rust bucket with patches on patches, metal sheets riveted to the bottom of the doors etc.

Its just a poor quality photo which is curled up and bent, then taking a photo of that just makes it look like it does.

Jesus325iTouring wrote:LOL it was just one car, many additional sheets of metal holding it together mind, it was a rust bucket with patches on patches, metal sheets riveted to the bottom of the doors etc.

Its just a poor quality photo which is curled up and bent, then taking a photo of that just makes it look like it does.

being a ford it really don't surprise me, kitkat foil had more tensile strength

1st Car aged 17 = 1976 VW Beetle 1300 no mobile phones back then so no pictures

So true, if I recall, the battery tray was, well, not really there

I remember, as does my best mate, sitting outside his parents house till 3 in the morning seeing how foggy we could make it inside by smoking fags with the windows shut. After several hours the result was reasonably foggy, cancer and a car that never, ever smelt the same again.

Also, with the same mate, I saw him chuck his fag out the window one day, however I knew it had come back in, thought I would not say anything and see how long it took him to say as saw him shifting his eyes about trying to see where it went. After a minute or two a searing pain in my back, the burning fag was between me and the seat

Gavla wrote:1st Car aged 17 = 1976 VW Beetle 1300 no mobile phones back then so no pictures

Fox Talbot did invent the camera in the 1800's or something Sure you don't have any pictures? Or was it covered in Hippy stickers, CND, Ban the bomb etc etc

At 17 I had a '71 viva HC. I had it approximately a week before driving it through some old biddy's wall and 'parking' it in her garden.

Didn't happen where I used live did it, Mildenhall?? Someone piled a Viva into a garden there. Oh, and further down the village, a Viva went head on into a Jag, the Jag won.

This was in Dorset around 1985. It was a horrible car in every respect but it was transport, briefly.