Not so super supercar tales

Talk about your cars etc here. Keep it sort of sensible and on topic please.
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Warren t claim
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by Warren t claim »

From my admittedly limited experiences I can safely say the Jaguar provide a better car at 10% of the price.

We still live in a time of cheap, powerful Jags at pocket money prices. Let's rejoice.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by Junkman »

Yeah, but I don't want to waste the rest of my driving career on better cars.
I only want the worst ones.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by Warren t claim »

Junkman wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:42 am Yeah, but I don't want to waste the rest of my driving career on better cars.
I only want the worst ones.
Your 405 probably drives better.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by LynehamHerc »

Warren t claim wrote: Thu Jun 27, 2019 11:31 pm
ghosty wrote: Wed Jun 26, 2019 1:52 am

Is there any more to this tale?
Of course there's a part two! As well as apart three depending on how loose we can be with the supercar description.

Let's wind the clock back 20 years. Mike was a pre minimum wage slave who had the Mike Brewer gene running through him which boosted his £3.50 an hour job nicely. Buying and selling heaps bought rotting on driveways for an extra hundred quid or so saw him investing in property. Back then a two bedroom terraced house could be bought for about ten grand and rented out easily. Once he owned a couple bought for cash he got interest only mortgages to snap up a few more. Another lad who traded the odd prestige motor fancied a piece of that action but despite claiming his finances were AAA+++ didn't have a spare ten large to get himself started so offered Mike a deal. This Multi Coloured Swap Shap deal involved exchanging a terraced house in Birkenhead, tenanted of course,for an early Aston Martin Lagonda that he couldn't shift. Obviously, I was positively beading at the prospect of sampling the finest car to leave Newport Pagnell and blagged myself a drive. Have you ever driven one? Probably not so I'll save you the trouble and tell you now that they're much slower than an XJ12, even a pre-HE example and the handling is fucking strange! The steering wheel is like the width of your hand but isn't very high geared meaning much twirling and although I'll admit this was a bad example it felt like a body on chassis car where the body is about to slide off the chassis! The Atari instruments are worse than those fitted to a Mk2 Astra and those touch control switches give it the top of the range Martin Dawes TV feel. All this was overshadowed by the leaking exhaust manifold filling the cabin with fumes almost as badly as my old VW camper with a rotted heat exchanger not helped by only the NSF and NSR being the only working electric windows.

Would I buy one? Fuck no! I'd rather have a shonky Ferrari 400i.
There's a Lagonda about 2 miles from us that doesn't seem to have moved since we've been here, so at least 15 years. It's partially hidden away a bit away from the road so you can't tell the state its in. It's on the drive on one of those 'old money' type of houses so was probably parked up when the chauffeur left.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by Junkman »

Warren t claim wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 1:05 am
Junkman wrote: Fri Jun 28, 2019 12:42 am Yeah, but I don't want to waste the rest of my driving career on better cars.
I only want the worst ones.
Your 405 probably drives better.
The problem with the 405s is that hardly anything drives better.
They also don't rust and nothing really breaks, so you are stuck with them.
Imagine a Bristol 405 in contrast though. Marvellous.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by Warren t claim »

After searching this thread to quote elsewhere I noticed that I promised a part three to my supercar tales so after a wait of nearly two years here it is.

I'm going to have to be a bit vague and alter a few details about this to protect the guilty so please forgive me.

This is a tale of two siblings. One was a mega successful local businessman and his much younger brother was a tyre fitter. I got to know the younger sibling due to me being involved in a complicated deal involving me being the middle man in selling him a container of imported used tyres. At the time (1993), he was buying a Mk3 XR3i off me with the money he got in compensation for breaking his leg falling down a hole when he was only three years old, an injury he didn't even remember getting fifteen years later.

I dropped the XR3i off at his tyre depot one Sunday afternoon and happily counted out my £1500. While I was there I couldn't help but notice a black Testarossa parked in his unit. After enquiring about said Ferrari he told me that it belonged to his brother who owned the building his tyre lot was in and the Ferrari was in for some new tyres that were due to arrive on Monday.

Being nosey I asked whether he'd ever driven the Ferrari and he admitted to taking it out for a spin every now and again. Being a cheeky cunt I asked if there's any chance of a quick spin around the block and after some reluctance, he said "fuck it, get in!" Eager to impress me on that hot summers day he gave it a bootful of revs in the yard on the way out as it needed rear tyres anyway and unleashed all 330 BHP.

My passenger ride only lasted about three miles as he didn't want to risk being seen by his family out in the Ferrari so after maybe ten minutes we retuned to the tyre yard which is when the world dropped out of his arse. Outside his unit he'd managed to warp the tarmac and it was fucking obvious that it was the Testarossa that had inflicted the damage!

Much quick thinking was required and the best we could manage was to use the XR3i to drag a partially full skip from the double glazing factory next door onto the damaged tarmac, fill it with old pallets and tyres and set fire to it in the hope it would melt the tarmac back into shape and any long term damage would be easier to explain than stealing a supercar!

To my surprise, this actually worked and to this day his brother doesn't know what happened!
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by mercrocker »

I used to work with a lad whose Dad had made some big money in oil. He started off as a deckhand on a BP crude carrier in the early Sixties and came ashore, worked his way through the trading side of the business and managed to run a very lucrative consultancy. His toy was a 2.7 Carrera RS - one of those with the lurid blue wheels and matching sidewinder decals.

Every now and again there'd be a shit-storm at work and Simon would get the hump and take one of us back to the parental cottage out in the Forest (itself a frenzied 30 minute drive each way away), get the 911 out and drive it like he was possessed down the back lane behind the house. In reality, I don't recall him getting out of third but it was opposite lock to opposite lock all the way - and back again. It sounded like the entire underside was getting grit-blasted but his Dad apparently never found out.

He found out about Simon's Asian fiancee though and kicked off about it - not because of her race (well it was partly) but because Simon wanted to work around the world and he thought the girl would become a problem in some territories (correctly as it turned out). The upshot was that eventually Simon gave his Dad back the Caterham he had bought to try and keep him on-side in a commendable show of fuck-you independence.

Simon had a shocking record with company cars, one of the Mk2 Astras ended up over a dry-stone wall (without damaging the wall) and another got destroyed in London in circumstances that remain unclear. Boss of the car fleet was a dry old stick called Peter who used to regularly shake a handful of repair bills under Simon's face, calling him a "bloody disaster area" something that made Simon wince uncomfortably - I reckon his old man used to go on at him like that too. This Peter fella had been some kind of amateur rallyist himself back in the day and I remember him pushing really hard to get a company Manta B (one of the last) instead of the dreary old shit he was supposed to be having.

Thanks to Simon I did get a taste of go-karting (he and his brother were amateur competitors) a good go in his Caterham pre-hissy fit and the aforementioned Porsche shenanigans. I also very nearly prised a Saab 96 out of his hands until his old man got wind and gave it to Simon's sister who had a paddy because she wanted a 2CV. Families, eh?
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

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Dropping a passenger off at a certain local car hire establishment reminded me of this tale from 1981 which I hope you think is worthy of a thread bump.

The Claim family residence had the advantage of having three gardens, and since Grandad_Claim passed away a year earlier they'd all been left to deteriorate. Grandma_Claim was giving some serious thought to selling the family home so an external refresh of the estate was required. This would involve plenty of trips to the landfill site with assorted trees and shrubbery.

The family fleet at the time consisted of a 1978 Viva HC saloon owned by Mutha_Claim, a 1979 Opel Manta owned by her younger brother and finally a 1972 FD VX4/90 bought as a project by younger brother and his mate. I honestly can't think of another time that this Ford family had three GM cars at once. The VX4/90 was in a permanent state of disrepair so tip runs were out of the question. The Manta and Viva had boots so tiny that we'd still be doing tip runs today! What was needed was a Transit. SWB. Petrol. Mk2. Hired from the local van hire company.

Riding in a Transit was a real treat to an 11 year old W.T.C, so I went along with my (10 year older than me) uncle to collect it from the rental firm. When we arrived the wife of the van hire firm informed us that the van allocated to us was still in Yorkshire as the renter had overslept. As she basically ran the firm on behalf of her husband, a man incapable of holding a driving licence for more than a few months before failing a breath test, in fact a 14 year old W.T.C though it strange that I'd have a driving licence before he'd get his back!

The brassy, trophy wife made a few phone calls and found us a van at their compound a few miles away. As there was nobody at the compound to bring the van to us she told her valeter to take us there in her car and when we had our promised Transit, he should fill her car up and return back to base.

We get ushered out of the office with this 19 year old valeter and he grunts us in the general direction of his boss's Aston Martin DB6. No that was a bonus to both myself and Uncle_Claim! I'm pointed towards the back seat and get in. Valeter gets behind the wheel and proceeds to thrash the poor Aston the few miles to the compound like it was a 950 Mk1 Fiesta from the rental fleet! Forty years on I'm in utter awe of that valeter's total lack of respect for what he was driving and his casual ability to slide the arse out on corners!

TL:DR
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by AutoshiteBoy »

The closest I came to supercar ownership was when the last recession was bit; I was at a classic car auction in Carlisle and literally nothing was doing. I was only there as I was en route to delivering a Rover 25 and made the stop off. In there was a 1990/91 Aston Martin Virage in the green they are always in. Auctioneer tried to get the bidding away at £14k, but nothing. A chat to the auctioneer afterwards (I'd bought stuff from him previously). He said £17k would buy it. I made a phone call to my mate who was an Aston specialist and he told me to swerve it: the Virage would never be worth anything (specialists, eh? He now sells them for a minimum of £50k). I had £17k burning a hole in my pocket, but bottled it. I'm pleased I did as financially, my world imploded shortly afterwards.
Roll forwards to 2015 and I get a bit of inheritance and go to see said Aston specialist again looking at a modern (VH platform) 2008 Aston V8. However, there's a bloke working in my office block with a DB9 and after observing the abuse he got just going through the Tyne Tunnel everyday (literally nobody would let him merge) I decided against the idea and bought a Freelander instead. Admittedly, I did have a large dog at this point.
The Freelander cost a fucking fortune to run.
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Re: Not so super supercar tales

Post by AutoshiteBoy »

Two other supercar tales. I was often let loose in stuff at work. I was given the keys to a Mercedes SL, I believe with a twin turbo V12, automatic naturally. I found it completely underwhelming. Yes the performance was phenomenal but it was otherwise bland. The only kick was the massive surge and how often can you use that? No magnificent noise. Nothing delicate - it was just typical Mercedes. I much preferred the V12 E-type I used extensively for around 16 years.

I was also let lose in a Bentley Brooklands, the last of the SZ shape which a member of this parish has a brace of. Tyre squeal, dubious handling and body shudder. But that those so much more of an occasion than the Mercedes.
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