Ooooh, Alpina!

wish i bough an alpina even an old one woulda been nice, still live and learn and my E36 aint that bad :)

That is VERY cool!

Of course you don't, is that anything new?

I thought a hint was given: on the E28 - the few who survive- suspension=20 turrets front and read rust like the is no tomorrow. Nothing major: just=20 a final, non-reversible MOT-failure.

No no: you buy it and drive it. You are already whining after 1 trackday=20 with your state-of-the-art 75 loosing all its coolant.

That Bimmer will use the double of fuel during the same exercice and=20 most likely will also dump all water.

"Officially" the car -25 years- of age- has done only 6800 miles per=20 year. Barely run in then...

Go on: offer the bloke 2k and come back sobbing after a week. Why not=20 part exchane with your 75: it's a double winner as you will know how=20 much your welded up 75 is worth.

Sit down when he answers you, it might prevent that you fall...

Tom De Moor

Oh, just f*ck off will you.

You're a waste of space - arrogant, often as clueless as others, despite your claims of being some kind of expert.

Not all old cars are money pits. Only you don't appear to realise this. Maybe they are where you're from, but it's possible to buy an E28 that will give you a lot of fun for many years without spending up to £6k on it.

You can weld in new turrets

Everything is possible giving time, money and dedication. To some that is the definition of money pit.

Wether the result in the end is acceptable or worth the work, remains another question. There are plenty of projects out there in which thousands of pounds have been "invested", up for grabs. The cheaper they come, the harder they bite afterwards.

Most of the time both parties are to blame: the seller for a fair bit a lying and cheating, the buyer because of being too blind, too eager to strike the deal of the century.

If a car 25 years old is bought, you make a budget and worst case scenario. Such cars come in 2 ways: pristine and expensif, wrecks and cheap as chips.

Which of them is after a few years of ownership is the best deal, varies but I have a certain inclination. A 25 year old car as daily driver? very cheap, everybody does it: look around you.

There are gems to be found in the dirt, even on Ebay. They are gems because they are rare to find. However there are plenty of shining stones.

Tom De Moor

One thing I've learnt after stripping a couple of golfs is this - if you can see rust *anywhere* on the car, you'll find rust that needs welding when you strip it down. In the case of the golf, 3 places needed welding, and none of them would have been picked up during an MOT test. On my other golf, a year older, the repairs wouldn't have been worth doing. IMO the only sane way to buy something like this is pretty much Tom's attitude - either buy an absolute minter, that's definately not rusting, or go into it fully aware of the fact that you're likely to lash more on repairs than the car cost. Although I can't see 4-6 grands worth of welding in any car - maybe at Belgian prices, but not British. A full respray would be around £3k, and I really can't see corrective works running to more than a grand on top of that.

Certainly in the world of Golfs, a 1 or 2 owner 16V GTI with low miles and FVWSH will fetch around £3.5K. A good golf, without the pampering and not quite mint will fetch around £1.5K. It's perfectly possible to buy the £1.5K car and make it as good as the £3.5K car. But it will never be worth £3.5K. OTOH you have to decide what you want to do with the car - if you're going to drive > 10000 miles a year in the thing, it's not going to be worth £3.5K after long anyway.

As for whether or not running a 25 year old car is a sane proposition as a daily driver, it all depends on the owner's attitude to maintenance and the car - I've had new cars with lower miles piss me off more (Ka, clutch slave cylinder and rust - both very common faults with the car) than my Golf. Wait for things to break, and your car will be unreliable. Acknowledge that it's not a new car and actually replace things before they fail, and it can be as reliable as a new car IMO. You obviously spend more, but IMO it's outweighed by the fact that you've got reliability and you're not spending money on depreciation. On something like the golf, there's the advantage that there's very little to break - I'll soon have replaced the entire cooling system, and a full set of new brakes is next after that, so there's not a huge amount left to go wrong, barring items that fail very rarely.

You aren't going to threaten to go find him and give a beating now are you.

I know that a lot of the retro-rides guys won't own anything much newer. Some of them have a 30 year old car as a daily driver, a 70 year old car=20 as their weekender and several projects in between.

An old car can be good. My =A3300 Saab 900 Turbo was 23 years old. It was= =20 my daily doing about 14000 a year. Nothing was overly worn, the engine=20 drove like a clock and the only fault with the trans was the mounts were=20 worn. There was some surface rust on a couple of edges, but after=20 checking it much deeper it was very solid apart from under one wheel=20 arch which cost me =A370 to have welded.=20

You get the question, which car do you regret selling? For me it was=20 that one. I have only been driving for 6 years so I have tried to experience as=20 many of the cars I loved as a kid/younger man. Most have either been=20 motorsport monsters or known beasts. The Octavia is the only one that=20 was "just a car". The Celsior/Lexus is my try at a proper luxury car. I=20 know I tend to buy at the bottom end of the market. That is for the=20 simple reason that I change often, usually 1-1.5 years at most. I get=20 most of the cost of the car back and just take a hit for any=20 running/service costs. Even the rangie rover got me back most of the=20 cost. I lost a bit, but it wasn't a total loss and it gave me a taste=20 that I might like a better, newer, better maintained one later. I think=20 in the back of my mind, I know when to sell before things get expensive.=20

I also know that unless I go totally top gear, the=20 Porsche/Ferrari/Lambo/Maserati might have to wait until I can up the=20 budget. Although I do admit to having the hankering for a later 924 just=20 to say I've owned one, and just to see if they are as bad as the=20 "pundits" say or as good as the owners say. I never really like the=20 front engined models as a kid, prefering the rear engined ones. But the=20 shape has grown on me, but even I'm not stupid enough to think I could=20 run a 928.

--=20 Carl Robson Audio stream:

It's a shitty old Beemer, unfortunately a few people seem to like that thing and, as is quite often the case, the price some people will pay can be quite seperate from actually worth.

Personally I'd be embarrased to drive something that looks like that on the outside (unless I particularly wanted to pretend to be in my late

30's / early 40's and going through a mid-life crisis) and certainly wouldn't dare let anyone see inside it with an interior that bad.

Errrrm, I think the price someone is willing to pay is exactly what it's worth. You're confusing market value to what YOU think it's worth!

Irrelevant

I don't like it myself, but surely, what people are willing to pay for it is exactly what it's worth...?

Erm, haven't you just described yourself there? ;-)

Once you've been at places where they close the blinds and start dancing on tables after somebody lied a cheque down, you will know better. ;-)

Tom De Moor

Why does a Talbot Samba convertible zoom around in my mind?

Tom - Sorry David - De Moor

Then you think wrong.

Errrrm, that's exactly the same thing but thanks for repackaging it in different words.

As relevant as anything else here - which is not much, so I agree completely.

To that person, at that particular time, in a moment of bidding madness on eBay, Yes.

Quite possibly, yes. Just 6 or 7 years in advance.

I've driven some shit, with terrible exteriors and interiors (*cough*Subaru*cough*) but there is a point where you have to step back and say no.