Well that went well-NOT!

[Hooli]

I liked my Mk3 Escrote & Mk1 Orion. Nicer than the later ones with the fischer price dash.

[LynehamHerc]

But still inferior to K659MMD Cavalier that you got after pissing off the finance director?

Yep. He was got rid of a year or so later and I got N288OFL a Galaxy which was ideal as our youngest had since come along. You wouldn't believe how much stuff you need with kids.

It actually was a positive though as it caused me to set up my Fuck You fund and find out I was actually pretty good at investing. I wouldn't have been able to retire, comfortably, before I was 50 otherwise. Every cloud has a silver lining and so forth.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Great you got your money back and I agree smoke coming through the vents is definitely something nobody wants to see.
My weirdest fire experience( there’s been a few in 40 years) was in my 1976 Audi 100SE - one of the last 4 cylinder shape , fully loaded Special Edition. I was taking my two youngest brothers down to my Dad’s in Wales for Easter , the youngest, Gareth must have been 2 and was asleep on the back seat, at about 11pm somewhere near Sennybridge I realised what I thought was fog , was in fact smoke inside the car. I screeched to a halt , woke my brother in the front seat then opened the back door , dragged Gareth out and chucked him on the verge, as I grabbed the base of the back seat the air got under it and Whump!! It whooshed up in flames as I dragged that out and threw it in the road- it burnt in seconds leaving a metal frame and springs . It was horsehair covered in velour and not at all flame retardant.
The Audi never stopped, we all piled into the front and carried on the journey, with the sunroof and windows open..
Next day we discovered that the battery I’d robbed out of my Zodiac because it was better than the Audi one, but the Audi used half as much petrol, was a bit taller than the Audi one and I hadn’t covered it up , it had been welding itself to the seat frame for a 100 miles or more before it got hot enough to make the horsehair smoulder.
I got a different colour and cloth back seat base from a scrappy and swapped batteries with the shorter one in my Dads R16. Gareth was 40 this year and still doesn’t like Audis!

[mercrocker]

The first generation of Mk3 Escorts was great, I had a 1982 company van that went far quicker than it ought to have done, handled like a limpet on superglue and generally gave me a bed for the night and a good few quid of on-top-of-wage illicit earnings. Later on we had a 1.6L 3 door pool car which I remember giving the sales manage a lift to the train station in.

I think his request of "don't drive it like a fucking granny or I'll miss the train" was probably taken a bit too literally when I sped off through a newly-created shopping precinct to cut off a four-way traffic light stop. Good job there were no cameras back then....

Some time later and three or four jobs down the line we had some Mk4 Bonus 3 doors on the fleet and in comparison they were shit.....

[Hooli]

I think his request of "don't drive it like a fucking granny or I'll miss the train" was probably taken a bit too literally...

Reminds me of when the sales manager at the Ovlov dealer once told me to put my foot down or he'd be late meeting a customer as we went between sites.

He was always on his phone and the only time I ever heard him stop talking on it was as I turned down the slip road off the A27 Shoreham flyover doing somewhat over 70 and got MK1 S70 into a four wheel drift most of the way around the 270 degree turn, you couldn't do that in the dry. To his credit he never mentioned it, but never asked me to rush anywhere again either.

[paulplom]

My mk3 was a 1.6d on a C reg which was '86 iirc. I think the mk4 came out on a D reg.

[Steveb]

Back in about 82/83 a rich friend - parents had a lorry business- had an XR3. He took me out in it and said watch this-we wen5 around a bend like it was on rails compared to all our clapped out my 2 escorts.

[LynehamHerc]

And yet those Mk2s are probably worth far more now.