OK, OK, I'll put 're-built 2CV' back up near the top of the list, OK?
There are very few 2CVs on the road around my patch of north London.
I know what the car's merits are, I used one for years and still remember it fondly - even the need to get it push-started in the winter when the ignition got too damp over-night for even the starting-handle to work. (I'm sure there was a way to get that fixed too, but the local Citroen garages weren't really interested in 'old bangers' - they wanted to sell me a new car).
Many's the time I've overtaken Jags and Mercs struggling up the steep passes of the Lake District, with my fully laden 2CV growling eagerly for the next bend.
Here's a true story:-
I'd had the 2CV serviced by the local Citroen garage, preparatory to a long drive from Salford to Cornwall via central London. All went well until I was belting along the M1 on the outskirts of London, when there was a rattle-rattle-BANG from under the bonnet; but the car carried on going at full throttle 60mph+ so I thought I'd thrown up a stone or something.
Then I hit the queue to get off the motorway. Damned car stalled when I changed down, but picked up again when I let the clutch in. But each time I lifted off the throttle, the engine died; it would only run at full throttle. Now, this is not good in heavy traffic, and not good on a Sunday afternoon in a big city one is not familiar with. Particularly when one still has another 200 miles to go and people depending ... this was in the days before 'mobile phones' too.
Happily, I spotted the friendly chevrons down a dingy side-street, and roared my way towards it in 1st gear at rather too much of a lick for the road, slipping the clutch to keep control as I jerked to a stuttering halt outside the mercifully open double-doors of an archetypal back-street bodger's garage.
A greasy-overalled gentleman wandered out, muttering and scowling; I picked up a few words, such as 'merde' and 'shit' and 'vache', and many others that were not part of my GCE O-level French, and in a very strange accent. "I say, this car seems to have something wrong with the engine ..." "mutter ... groan ... gesticulate ... execrable Anglais ... dimanche". He opened the bonnet, leaving a huge smear of dark grease on the paintwork, and poked around, and pulled out a loose Bowden cable with a lump of metal on the end. "Who work on carbretta, eh? EEEdioTTa! ... See? screws here, here, four, gone; not good! Carbretta, choke, merde! ... "
He vanished into the gloom of his work-shop, and emerged a few minutes later with a wire coat-hanger and a box of bits and some tools including a large hammer, and proceded to curse in some alien tongue while buried head-first in the depths of the sick engine. After about ten minutes, he emerged, wiped the spit off his chin then onto the headlamp rim, and said "OK, go now, feexed". I tried the starter, and she purred into life; the throttle worked smoothly, all seemd well again. I took out my wallet, he grabbed a bank-note seemingly at random, cursed some more, and closed the doors behind him as he retired once more to his lurking place.
The rest of the journey was relatively un-eventful. The engine continued to run perfectly happily for several years ofter that, with the bit of coat-hanger and a hand-made tin substitute for whatever vital part the Citroen garage had failed to bolt down securely. I never used that Citroen dealer again, and no-one who serviced the car ever commented on the non-standard parts - and never replaced them, either.
I could never find the establishment of the grimey saviour again.
Interesting that newly-rebuilt 2CVs with new galvanised chassis seem to go for about as many pounds as I paid for my new one in 1976 - and not a lot less than a new C1 .
Sorry, not in the market just now. Intriguing idea though. If I can resist frittering money away on computer stuff, I might manage to get my ZX de-dented enough to make it sellable and then cope with all the stress of selling and buying. Or find a buyer for the non-runner Morris Minor currently occupying the garage, so that the 2CV would at least have some refuge. I'm not good at organising myself or dealing with 'things', though (which is how I come to have a neglected car in the garage in the first place).
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.