my first car was a j-reg 1.4 8v GTa, 'peppy' handled well, and was reasonable to insure as a 19 year old.
then, 2 years later i bought an l-reg 1.4 gti, with the 103bhp multipoint injection 16v engine, the most comfortable and supportive standard seats of any car ive driven, and an engine i tried to kill every journey but it just kept coming back for more (shame the alternator mounts weren't quite so robust!
a few years later, when the gti was a second car to my integrale a friend let me know of his friend who needed to sell his 1.8 engined metro, for a decent price.
unfortunately the car was rotten scrap, fortunately the 1.8 engine cam with a set of jenvey throttlebodies and an emerald m3dk standalone ecu,
eventually ending up as this...
(i was young and daft
)it was looking scruffy, the standard colour was a sod to match so i painted it, in a small garage, with aerosols in rover charcoal metallic, painting the bumpers matt black for a more oem look,
at one point i even had 3 cars taxed, mot'd and insured at the same time...
it was a hoot, noisy stripped out, light, with a lovely smooth tractable engine with a proper throttlebody bark. it went well too. performance pretty much identical to the m3.
sadly, the use and abuse started to show, despite looking good on the outside it was starting to get scruffy underneath, rotting in places too awkward to repair, and too many irreverable modifications which i loved at the time but don't suit my current tastes.
so...
last summer i spotted something on ebay, i just could ignor it, even the mrs ok'd it..
a j-reg, white, non suroof, 3door 1.1c with only 24000 miles from new. no rot, never welded, only the very smallest amount of rear arch rust, which they all suffer from, even at only a few years old, let alone 20.
ultra low spec, no rear wiper, windy windows, i piece folding rear seat, no central locking, no rev counter, 4 gears and a carb with manual choke. not even a cassette player, just an analogue radio with a single speaker, this is exactly as it was when i collected it,
even inside the bootlid, where they all tend to rot around the numberplate lights and lock holes was totally factory fresh
so i removed the lights and bumpers, gave it a damn good clean
and have hidden it away in a garage surrounded by junk waiting for the day i have the time and space to do a full ground up rebuild with the best bits from my other one
and an ancient vid taken from my e30 before it was mine, with my blue metro in front. http://www.youtube.com/user/harroldino1 ... yfLOBp3ryo
yeaaaaaah good man, i still miss mine 
