33 replies to this topic

[Lplus]

Best car for enjoyable driving - Lotus elan +2

Best car for reliable motoring - Vauxhall cavalier SRi. 185,000 miles on the original engine.  Only let me down once when it broke a valve spring and even then kept going long enough to get off the motorway.

Best car for fun boot and scoot - a 1275 mini I have now.

 

Worst car - Chrysler Alpine, Austin Maxi.  Even an Allegro 1750 Sport was more fun than those two.

[Cooperman]

As some may know, I did a lot of rallying both as a navigator/co-driver and later as a driver. I was asked recently what the best cars I ever rallien in were.

 

The best cars were the Escort Twin-Cam and Porsche 911. I did quite a lot of International and National rallies in both of those.

 

The worst cars were a 1964 Simca 1500 in which I did the RAC Rally in 1964 plus several other events, and the 1972 Marina 1.8TC Coupe (bloody awful car).

 

Most exciting was the 'works' Datsun 240Z's navigating for fellow extrovert Kevin Videan. Simply amazing fun.

 

Most satisfying (for me) is my 1964 historic Cooper 'S' which was built by my son and me and in which we won a lot of events together. 

[Tony75]

The best car I've ever owned has got to be my Mini 30, known as GOSH as the reg was G350OSH. I only owned her for about 10 months. She was cherry red with a white roof, had W&P arches, 5x12 minilights with black centre and chrome rim. I fitted Hi-Lo's, Spax shox, Momo leather steering wheel, MDF parcel shelf with JBL 6x9's, 8" MTX sub with a JBL amp. I bought her off my cousin down in Birmingham and my parents drove her home, only welding the points when they got to Stonehaven (about 20 miles from home). I still remember the feeling getting home from work that night and opening the garage. It really was love at first sight. In my short time of ownership, I managed to get nicked for driving like a tube and this later ended with a ban (quite rightly so). Finally, on the 20th May 1998 on my way to a job interview, a Lexus LS400 decided in wanted to pick a fight with GOSH. The driver didn't even look when he pulled out of the side road and ran over the front of GOSH. The front of the bonnet was touching the OSF tyre. I was heartbroken. The old chap took the blame without hesitation and GOSH went to be repaired. Unfortunately, the garage did such a bad job and caused more damage that they were forced to buy GOSH from me. I spent several years hunting for her again but she finished up parked in a tree with the engine making it through to the passenger footwell. Sorry for the long story, but I loved that car.

 

Worst car(s)

 

I think this title has to be taken by an 03 Vauxhall Zafira 2.0td. When new it had 82bhp, I think 80 of those horses were lame by the time I got it. It was slow, ugly and, worst of all, if you parked it facing uphill all the fuel drained back to the tank.

 

Fighting for the top spot though would be my Civic MB6. Rotten, drank fuel, bad handling and had virtually no power below 6k rpm. I hated having to thrash a car to get it to do anything, not a VTEC fan. If you didn't hit the limiter in a gear, you had dropped out of VTEC in the next gear, awful. So pretty much any overtaking had to be done in 2nd gear, hitting the limiter at 72mph. Hateful, hateful car.

 

I have had dozens of cars over the years, but these are the ones that stand out. I do feel that GOSH's title of best car may be lost when I eventually finish Project Gladys....

 

Cheers

 

Tony

[croc7]

A tie for the best, my ‘74 BMW 2002tii and ‘85 SAAB 16 valve Turbo ( bought new and driving it). Worst, by far, Subaru Crosstrek-dangerously underpowered.