Top Gear...

Are you sure it's wise to take a 10 year old French car that close to salt water?

Of course, the same applies to the Alfas, and the 620Tis and the C900s, also....

I did think about it, 'cos it's only an hour's drive from here, but old cars and salt water don't go well together.

What about 13 year old lancias? will they be ok? ;)

-- Chet

Blah blah blah - Its ok if you're scared Steve, you are quite old and probably brittle by now ;) I'm sure theres a car wash nearby anyway :D

What the hell.... you do it if you want, just don't come crying to the group when your calipers seize, and youre wheel bearings, and the inner arches revert to ferrous oxide.

Its french not Italian ;)

Even worse.... although you don't see many rusty 405s, Peugeot didn't galvanise them, so you're asking for trouble on a salty beach.

Funnily enough, the bits that are playing up on my German car were made by French companies.

Why don't they rust? I'm sure someone told me they were galvanised once...

If they were Italian they wouldn't just be playing up, they would never have worked in the first place ;)

Of all the cars that I have owned, and it has been a reasonable number of cars, the only time I've suffered a problem with an alternator it was french (Paris-Rhone). On a two year old car, the stator turned to green dust.

That's impressively s*it engineering. Not even the Italians managed that, and I can remember a Fiat Mirafiori I had where the entire wiring loom turned to green dust. But at least it lasted for five years before doing so.

No car wash will wash it out of all the small gaps on the seams and joints.

Buy one, beach it, sell it?

Well a scrabbley FWD is just not going be any fun on a wet beach at all. Something disposable with a good power to weight ratio and RWD is what you want. LSD would be good too so it lets go and throws sand rather than stopping and digging holes.

Must be in retaliation for the crap Bosch bits on BX's

There is quote floating around by Glen Armstrong about the Saturn V, something like this "Glen, how confident were you about the mission?", Glen "Well when I was sat on the launch pad I thought, I'm sat on top of 1,000,000 parts and most have been supplied by the lowest bidder".

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Just wonder what the people at Porsche, Jaguar and BMW are thinking about future loans of cars to Top Gear?

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

They're probably delighted with all the cheap advertising, how much would a

Could have been worse.... could have been supplied by Magnetti Marelli :-)

With Solex a close 2nd.

Don't know about BMW, but I reckon Jaguar will have no hesitation in lending them cars again, and I can't see Porsche complaining given that the shortarse raves about them at every opportunity.

Saw one of them 'motoring' on the M5 / M42 a few months back. Must have been an MG/Rover test hack. I was doing an indicated 100mph, and he flew past me a good 30% faster. The V8 on full chat sounded lovely.

Reckon they could be an absolute bargain buy in a few years, and probably one of only a handful of cars that could replace an Alfa, IMHO.

Handbags down girls...

But in a few years, with petrol at £2.00 per litre and the average mortgage at 4,000,000, car insurance being 2500/mth on average and the bugger being in the top band 10,000 road tax could you afford to run one?

Doubt it worries them - they'll dispose of press cars long before the results of any such treatment shows up.

Sand is impossible to remove. After a complete car wash, there's still gonna be bags and bags of it in all the little nooks and crannies.

And that's why I'll never vote Lib Dem :D.