Transit Tales. Owned or rented.

[bub2006]

Well I too have a transit tale. And also that school kids can be mean vindictive little bastards. When I was growing up we didn't have much money and being 5kids,2 dogs and 2 adults we tended to have large estates with cushions thrown in the boot but if we were luck proper 7 seaters like a Volvo estate or Peugeot 505. We had only one minibus that my dad purchased at night in the rain and he thought was white. He was wrong.

Reference to school kids being cruel cunts though,my school car park was surrounded by school buildings. To the left we had maths and English blocks on two levels,to the right we had the ground floor design and tech block and the upstairs was special needs classes. It was called quarrydale comprehensive on stoneyford road Sutton in ashfield if anyone wants to look on street view to see the layout.

Back to transits and why my dad was wrong.
It was a lovely morning the day my dad flung open the curtains. Spring in the air and my dad bellowing at the top of his voice "oh for fucks sake,you've got to be fucking joking" when he laid eyes on what he thought was a white MK2 2.0 pinto transit van on an A registration. It was indeed an A registered MK2 2.0 pinto but it definitely wasn't white. More a dayglo yellow,in a similar vein to ford Mondeo SI citrine yellow. Black bull bar on the front with cibie spotlamps and rostyle wheels. It also had air horns. I recall it being rather a bizarre layout. Conventional front driver plus 2 passenger seats and then it gets odd. The middle row was literally the full width of the van. The one door on the passenger side was actually a door in the conventional sense and not a sliding door and the handle was a nightmare to get to due to the bench seat obscuring it. The rear door was a tailgate and not the usual barn doors. Very odd in all honesty.
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It was around 1998 so the tranny was maybe 14 years old which is the equivalent to 2009 ish today but as we all know,cars over ten or so years old bought in an housing estate in Nottinghamshire back in the 1990s were usually hanging. This has now set the stage for kids being cruel bastards and transit vans.

It was a nice morning when I skipped to school gayly wearing my cap,shorts and blazer holding my neatly tied lunch in my hands and saying farewell to daddikins.
Bollocks did i.
I wondered to school in trainers with holes in them and no socks as was usual for a lazy stepmother who treated her kids like normal kids yet my dad's kids( me and you get sister) were treated very differently so I had a make do and mend attitude and tended to be mad at the world. This day I'd thought it was an idea to set off the school fire bell and leg it. Excluded for one day when caught and had a hiding from my dad for it too. My dad had to attend a meeting at school with the headmaster on the morning of my return. Those with braincells will be ahead here but here we go. He drove me to school in that fucking van. Pulled into the car park with the air horns blaring and playing the stereo full tilt At 845 in the morning when ALL the classes surrounding the car park were full. Twas a site to behold for evil 12 to 16 year olds and their mockery lasted longer and hurt more than any beating that bastard gave me till I left home.


TL/DR
EMOTIONAL DAMAGE.

[Warren t claim]

[Warren t claim]

[Warren t claim]

[NorfolkNWeigh]

My earliest Transit memory is a Godfrey Davies Luton in 1970, my Dad rented it to move house. It came straight off the Ford stand at the Birmingham Motor Show at Bingley Hall and was the poshest thing I’d been in up to that time- it had a radio FFS!
A few years later , times were a bit tougher and he rented vans from a back street hire place in Oldbury- complete bags of shit. One that sticks in my memory is a purple swb with sliding doors, the passenger door literally fell off during a trip back from Wales when we moved down there. My Dad put the door in the back and made me sit on the outside because I was the oldest and wear the seatbelt, the first time I’d ever worn one, I think.

I’ve owned a few MK1 and 2s mostly 1600 pintos, the best was a LWB Mk2 factory V6 crew cab van with a bulkhead and lift up tailgate. Paid £300 at Wellingborough auction in the mid-90’s , it wasn’t as fast as I expected and had a terrible gear change ( Mk4 Zodiac side linkage box - in 1979!) Didn’t have any need for it, but me and mate considered getting into rallying just to keep it as a service barge, ironically sold throughMotoring News for £1000 as a rally barge.
When I was buying and selling I always bought any cheap Transits , knowing they’d sell as soon as the local paper came out on Thursday lunchtime.

In 2003 I traded in my Y reg Ulysee at Cab Direct in Stoke on Trent for a 6 month old ex-hire Transit Tourneo Executive on strap. I hated it before I got home, sold it on a rent to buy to another cab driver within a couple of months. It went like fuck, cruised at 100 and was pretty good on fuel, the rear aircon kept failing and the local Ford dealer was useless, replacing everything except the perforated pipe that ran front to back and was noticed by the Council tester after 6 months.Shouldn’t complain because the lad that had it came into some cash which meant I settled the finance and ended up with a few quid.

Just remembered the A Series beavertail me and two mates shared for a few months in the mid 80’s- York diesel that would only start with Easystart. Did a bit of scrap and moving cars until , somebody rented it to “ Dirty Hippy Dave” for a week, he drove round collecting scrap from estates, only trouble was the owners didn’t know it was scrap or that he’d taken it! Came to ahead when we read a description of our truck in the local paper in a story about a man’s pride and joy classic car- a scabby Daimler V8250 , that had been stolen.We made the dirty hippy buy it that night.

[Guest]

I grew up with them as my family used them for work. I remember the first one bought new in 1968. It was bought in Southampton for some strange reason (we were down in West Wales) The first thing done was to cut a hole in the roof to raise the centre bit and slightly alter the seat layout so that it could be used as a PSV.

My father liked using it instead of a car as us three children could sit far apart and not fight.

Whilst many others came and went I think we had that one for nearly 30 years. It was sold to a local farmer, it my still be in a shed somewhere.

I remember driving the later face-lift 1972 one after it had been un PSV'd back to an 8 seater.

I also remember my brother having some quite hideous 17 seater ones that seemed based on the parcel van.

In more modern times he seemed to buy Mercedes based small stuff although I do remember a few cheap LDV's.

Most of the ones I have driven have been hire vans. I particularly remember a Mk2 Luton that was so underpowered that I had to change down on the flat due to a headwind.

[mercrocker]

I grew up with them as my family used them for work. I remember the first one bought new in 1968. It was bought in Southampton for some strange reason (we were down in West Wales)

Possibly ex-factory?

[BusmansHoliday]

Walked out of the office with the keys for it on a Monday morning but couldn't find our Transit in the line of vans behind the office. Not unusual, been know for somebody to leave it parked outside the labs at the other side of the car park and walk back.
By Tuesday we realised something was wrong. "Oh, there was a pile of glass on the floor" said one of the managers from the department downstairs.

We got the N/S/F door back from a 'scrappies' in Stainforth (Donny) only because you still see the company I'd etched into the paint!

[Hooli]

Pure Stainie that

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

The Mark 3 was okay - I never drove an earlier one. The Mark 4 was alrightish but the current one is appalling. The most awful and uncomfortable heap of unreliable shit ever. I can’t drive one for more than an hour.

The only van I actually like driving is the Trafic/Vivaro.