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£4750 off a Fiat Spider.

With my history of little british sports cars (and little Japanese coupes in aus), I've had all the hairdresser/rustbucket/unreliable gags going. usually from dudes in silver, diesel, automatic four pots*

*I now also own a 'sensible' car, which is a silver auto four pot...
 
Martian Sunrise said:
With my history of little british sports cars (and little Japanese coupes in aus), I've had all the hairdresser/rustbucket/unreliable gags going. usually from dudes in silver, diesel, automatic four pots*

*I now also own a 'sensible' car, which is a silver auto four pot...
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Yep, that is exactly what I was alluding to in my last post.
 
I recommend starting from a completely bonkers choice, such as a Lotus.

Then your 'sensible' last hurrah can be a silver convertible flat-six. :D
 
I did have a spell with a conpletely bonkers choice, a Caterham 7. It was fantastic, so good it "cured" me of cars in that after that everything else became as exciting as a Mk 3 Cortina. It took about 8 years before I bought another fun car in the shape of a Mazda MX5.
 
stevec67 said:
I did have a spell with a conpletely bonkers choice, a Caterham 7. It was fantastic, so good it "cured" me of cars in that after that everything else became as exciting as a Mk 3 Cortina. It took about 8 years before I bought another fun car in the shape of a Mazda MX5.
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I'd love to have a drive in a Caterham 7 - must do it at some point in life. I can see why it might make all subsequent cars seem a bit dull. Friends with motorbikes tell me the same - once you've had a 600+cc street bike cars are dull - however I'm not sure I'd survive the experience on a bike.
 
sean99 said:
I'd love to have a drive in a Caterham 7 - must do it at some point in life. I can see why it might make all subsequent cars seem a bit dull. Friends with motorbikes tell me the same - once you've had a 600+cc street bike cars are dull - however I'm not sure I'd survive the experience on a bike.
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I had a 30 min ride in one driven very enthusiastically. Quite an experience...
 
jay said:
I had a 30 min ride in one driven very enthusiastically. Quite an experience...
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A good friend had an early Caterham back in the early/mid 70's. It was quite a beast by the standards of the day and it only had a Lotus Twin Cam engine but it seemed very quick. I can't imagine what the modern iterations of these cars are like. He was a young, enthusiastic driver and was determined to get the most out of it, which he did. My enduring memory is of flying up to corners on country roads; wondering if we we going to make it round; seeing the front disappear round the aforementioned bend shortly followed by the rear with us in it! He was a good driver and never lost control of the thing but he did take it to the edge continuously which could be entertaining or terrifying for his passenger depending on what your outlook on life was.
 
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Snufkin said:
A good friend had an early Caterham back in the early/mid 70's. It was quite a beast by the standards of the day and it only had a Lotus Twin Cam engine but it seemed very quick.
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That engine "only" developed about 130bhp, so in a car that weighs half a tonne you get 260bhp/tonne. A BMW 3 series or similar car weighs 1.5 tonnes, so it needs to generate 390bhp for the same power/weight ratio. Quite a beast by any standards of any day, then, and try to get a 1.5 tonne vehicle to corner like one that weighs as much as a bag of crisps.
I can't imagine what the modern iterations of these cars are like.
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The very quick ones are shattering. However Caterham have worked out that it's all about the weight, so they have made a lot of light cars with small engines. A car that size with a little 800cc engine is still a hoot at sane speeds and will corner just as qiickly as a very powerful one. Mine was a modest one, but a hoot on a public road because you had all your fun between 40 and 80-odd mph, sorry I mean 70 officer. I considered other performance cars, at that time the Porsche 911 was affordable, especially the 964 model and the one before, but a 911 will get you into trouble because you are more likely to take it to 3 figure velocities and at that you are looking at a court appearance and a ban rather than a slap on the wrist or maybe a fine.

A Caterham is fantastic fun driven at speed but it will bite you if you make a mistake. The problem is that by the time you hit the limits you are going so bloody fast that unless you are an expert driver who knows exactly what to do it will have left the road sideways before you have worked out what is going on. I have done this at a track day when I forgot which way the track went after a brow, lifted off at about 90 and wahey - lift-off oversteer, spin and hello gravel trap. On public roads however it is very hard to find the thing's limits unless you drive like a total knob. My favourite trick when I had the thing in France was to steam into an empty roundabout without lifting off, gas it at the apex to stick the back down and then point it at the exit. Blokes in the passenger seat would be frantically trying to find the brake pedal on the approach and then wide-eyed and giggling as it came out the other side. The visibility, good surfacing and plenty of room on French country roundabouts will generally permit this kind of hooliganism, it's not the sort of thing that you can do in Hemel Hempstead in the rush hour.
 
I've used the one in Swindon, it does require a degree of caution and when you first approach it you think "what the ----" but it works.
 
stevec67 said:
I've used the one in Swindon, it does require a degree of caution and when you first approach it you think "what the ----" but it works.
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Completely OT - I used to work in Swindon and live outside, best fun was addressing that roundabout enthusiastically on my commute home in the wet...in a 205 1.9 :)
 
Probably about the time I knew it - I worked at St Ivel Wootton Bassett 89-91 and had friends in Swindon. I visited a few times through the 90's.
 
If anyone fancies a summer roadster this is now 199 deposit and 199 per month for 2 years or 2200 deposit and 99 per month
 
Snufkin said:
They are very nice to drive. I tried one just over a year ago and the thing that puzzled me was the car was quieter at 70mph with the hood down than with the hood up. I think Fiat are struggling to sell these at the moment in the falling/failing car market so not surprised you got a deal. As a footnote; I went to test drive a Panda Cross, which was great apart from the inadequate seats, and ended up having a spin in a Spider as well. I am sure you will enjoy it and it has the added bonus of being much less common than its Mazda cousin.
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Most ( if not all ) soft tops are quieter with the hood down.
My MG Midgets certainly were...
 
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