Fast and cheap classic?

Triumph Dolomite Sprint. Can still show the boy racers a clean pair of heels and still return mpg in the 30s. Decent parts supply. Your budget will easily find a decent one.

Only those females with class. Darren is out to chase chavettes, with huge gold-looped ear rings and alcopops. They are genuinely impressed by his 'driving'...

They're fantastically fast round twisty bits, that lack of power means nothing if you can drive one properly. Works like this. Drive in binary mode. Throttle wide open or shut (rarely shut though:-)Rev engine well past the gearchange marks on the speedo, and never, ever brake unless you really have to. Cornering needs nothing more than a tug on the wheel. If you understeer, tug it more, it WILL go round and it WON'T turn over! If it's a really sharp bend, a little lift or if it's really bad, a dab of brake and a flick of the wheel to get the body rolling first, then back on full throttle and turn in! It's fantastic because you can drive like a total lunatic and rarely break the speed limit. For the full effect, you need an uninitiated passenger though.. :-))) When my grandad was taken ill in Glasgow, I drove his Reliant Robin back to Lancs down the M6 . Not sure how accurate the speedo was, so I cruised most of the way down at 70ish, but I had to find out how fast it would go coming down shap in the dark and saw the wrong side of a ton. Not something I'd do again in a hurry!

Mike P the dark

... only until they get to sixteen years old.

Ian

There is not, according to the owners' club, a known top speed for the Reliant trikes, because nobody has ever had the courage to keep on accelerating. Ninety something would have been quite enough for me, if I ever did something so irresponsible and illegal, which of course I wouldn't.

The 2CV handling is better, but the Rialto is amazing fun - it's got excellent acceleration, feels very fast, and has by far the nicest gearchange of any car I have ever driven.

Ian

PS Alas the Rialto has to go. Anyone want one, with new MOT, for three hundred quid or so?

"Mike P from the North" wrote

Ah - you mean like a Sopwith Camel?

By then they want something with a bit more space for the kids

Ah yes! I will never forget being picked up in one as I hitch-hiked as a teenager! Riding along the old A50 with its windows flapping like wings!

OTOH the R4 was a similar ride; one of those, with reversed gearbox 6v electrics and glass expansion bottle, was my first car.

MK1 Golf GTi?

Possibly, if it's a 1800 and not a 1600. The latter figures in my list of "cars I never want to drive again"[1]. All top-end, no low-end and - as is traditional with VWs - no brakes.

I'd add that a Skoda Estella 105S is up there in the list of #5 favourites.

Much better than they were given credit for IMO; I had one as a student and his'n'hers models when first I married... A lot of fun if primitive, especially with Toyota high-back seats fitted!

In news:d9mh25$960o$ snipped-for-privacy@central.aber.ac.uk, Andrew Robert Breen decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Fun if you get a good one though. I had an early 4 speed GTi, that was quite amusing, but bloody noisy.

Nah, the 5 worst cars I've driven also include the Mk2 Ashtray GTE, but it's higher up the list.

Mine would be as following (in reverse order, naturally)

#5 Vauxhall Vectra #4 Morris Marina 1.3 Coupé #3 Mk2 Astras. All of them #2 Alfa 33 Sportwagen 4wd #1 MGB GT (rubber bumper)

I've got no problem with the Avensis, ok it's boring, but they're quiet, painless to drive, economical and always belong to someone else. The Avensis is the car to pick when you're very tired, very skint, and can do the drive home on auto pilot. If you're *very* tired and skint, you can challenge yourself to keep the little green "econ" light on while trying to get home at least within the week.

This was through Oxford City Centre, was it? I don't see how, since there are very few bits of road with two lanes in each direction - inside the ring road, at least. I can only think of the Botley Road, past the station and the Woodstock Road going out towards the Lemon Tree (one of the two lanes is a bus lane).

And I wouldn't regard either of those two places as Oxford City Centre.

I do this, because I don't like the unpleasant noise that it makes otherwise.

Certainly, and handles well, provided you aren't trying to emulate Darren, who will turn it over on the first bend. Thankfully though Darren wouldn't be seen dead in one, so it keeps the stupidity level down. :-)

Lovely steering, which counts for a lot with me, and with the little engine the back suspension was just-about OK. And it was a fun thing.

OK, the one I met might have been a bad one. Given their reputation I can't believe that they were all that bad.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.. What was that you said?

Ages since I drove a Marina (actually, I think the last one I drove was actually an Ital), but ISTR the small-engined ones as better than the big-engine examples - less understeer.

Agree. Rtten suspension, steering, gearbox.. Nice enough engine though, albeit gutless low down.

Not driven either.

Had one on hire in .se a few years back. Clutch like a switch, n lw- end to the engine. Even after two weeks I was still stalling the (*^&%)_&. The only good thing about it was that at the end of the fortnight it stayed in .se . I've avoided them ever since.

Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics) ( snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I think you meant that the aerodynamics are "less terrible" and the look is "less odd"...

Would second the Marina, the 1.3 Ital Estate I owned would be second on the list.

Third would be the 1.3 Sunbeam for the permanent tappet rattle and terrible corrosion.

But the all time worst has to be the 1.1 (1.0 ?) Popular Plus Mark II Escort with the all round drums. Gutless, noisy, rusting heap of cack.

The TG demo of a 2.2 Honda Accord blitzing a DB5 and E-Type pretty much demonstrated how any lesser classic will fare against a modern

Do the same as they recommended, get an old car with duff leaky asthmatic engine and lucar non-connected electrics. Then put a proper DOHC 16v EFi engine and modern japanese electrics in it. Sort the floppy suspension and non retardant brakes while you are at it.