Your Favourite Car

dynamicbrick

The SL was a cracking bike, when it worked...

Although the cylinder heads used to undo themselves, the wiring was illogical, the dry clutch was torture on hot days or in traffic, and despite the fantastic racket it used to make it wasn't very quick.

The RG500 engined RGV250 I built after the SL was insanely quick, but really needed three engines; one in, one spare, and one being rebuilt.

veronese68

I had a red 750SS with the full fairing. Not very quick, but fast enough around London. Wet clutch eliminated some of the problems, but was quiet. Bought it accident damaged and rebuilt it. Had it for 5 years, sounded great and was pretty reliable. I sold it with 30,000 miles on the clock.
I later bought a BMW R850 of similar age but with 24,000 miles, purely as it was cheap and to make a bit of money. It was horrible and the gearbox died on me. I rang round a few specialists and was told the gearbox had done well to get to that kind of mileage. WTF? Those things are supposed to be reliable.
I'll take me chances with a Ducati any time. More reliable than that particular donkey and it made me smile.

snoopsmydogg

Had a 600ss full fairing, great handling but underpowered. rejetted the carb, put on a stainless exhaust and fitted a 675 piston kit with which gave it a bit more oomph and a great sound but it just couldn't compare to the GSXR750i SRAD I owned before it.

proto

Yep, noise was fantastic with Lazer race cans. I trashed the wet clutch with the wrong oil at one time, and a clutch slave cylinder failed, and it suffered from carb icing, but other than that it was reliable. I upgraded the forks with some fully adjustable ones off an 851 (or 888?). Bit of a faff with spring length, but worked out well in the end. Nice bike, miss it.

Had a couple of Monsters too, a carb and an injected one, both 900cc. Hated the former, loved the latter. Electrics erratic to say the least but a nice bike, and also yellow!

proto

Regarding my favourite car, well, if I won the lottery, I'd buy one of these:

veronese68

proto wrote:

Regarding my favourite car, well, if I won the lottery, I'd buy one of these:

My Dad loves them. He always lusted after them, and to a lesser extent the later ones. He was recently in the market for a new car and I told him to buy one. He's in his early 70s and can afford one. He bought a nearly new Toyota as he said he'd look like a really sad old git if he bought a Merc SL. I think he's nuts, if you can't do whatever the hell you like at that age when can you?

dynamicbrick

If the lottery came up, there's a couple of unobtainium bikes from my riding days I'd dearly love for the fantasy barn;

Bimota Tesi 1D


Bimota YB8 Furano

VTech

The place im off to this weekend is a crazy bike tuning venue, they are the american choppa (sp) crew and last time I was there, they had a bike with 16" rear tyre !!! no helmet wearing either !

crumbschief

MattC59 wrote:

doublem_1 wrote:

A few of my very favourites:

My cousins father in law (tenuous connection, I know !) has two of those. One's a Martini racer, like this



He's also got one of the two surviving Lotus 11s and Alain Prost's 1990 Ferrari F1 car ?!!?!? :shock:

great pic the Martini colours are nice,i also love gin so that must be a win.

As for cars i have not owned many but my favourites for fun were a Mini 1275Gt a Ford Escort 1600 Sport and a 3.0 s Capri,great fun at 19 but they took all my money on insurance and parts,seemed worth it at the time.

BigLights

well, I quite like my current ride....Subaru Outback 3.0 - 240bhp, nice and nippy, drives very well, very characterful, and I can quite comfortably take it out on the snow or mud with winter tyres and low range gearbox. Superb!

My buddy has a Legacy Estate Spec B (basic tune 240bhp) which he has had tuned right up to 430bhp. This thing FLIES! I love it, I'd buy it off him if I wasnt' convinced it'll explode at some point.

I love subarus. Great 'Q' cars outside the Impreza range.

A KIRK

This is a hard decision, my favourite of all time has to have been my 1976 mini van with race engine, I loved this car



Then its either my my V6 alfa that I scrapped last year or my current campervan as its just so practical, I can chuck the bikes in and go, plus its fully converted to a camper

smoggysteve

The fact you "scrapped" your alpha says it all. Shame they are not the prestigious marquis brand they once were.

Poorly built excuses for cars. Shame as the Alpha GT is a nice looking car.

A KIRK

The thing is alas are so cheap to buy, lovely to drive yet expensive to repair so its cheaper to scrap than repair. Then just buy another for about £800. If you get a year to two years out of them, it's cheap motoring

VTech

SmoggySteve wrote:

The fact you "scrapped" your alpha says it all. Shame they are not the prestigious marquis brand they once were.

Poorly built excuses for cars. Shame as the Alpha GT is a nice looking car.

Almost all of the best cars in the world (exotics) are not built well.
Its just the way it is.

MattC59

VTech wrote:

SmoggySteve wrote:

The fact you "scrapped" your alpha says it all. Shame they are not the prestigious marquis brand they once were.

Poorly built excuses for cars. Shame as the Alpha GT is a nice looking car.

Almost all of the best cars in the world (exotics) are not built well.
Its just the way it is.

You mean the most expensive cars in the world, not the best.

VTech

Well, you may well have a point.
Panels rarely match when your up close.

smoggysteve

MattC59 wrote:

VTech wrote:

SmoggySteve wrote:

The fact you "scrapped" your alpha says it all. Shame they are not the prestigious marquis brand they once were.

Poorly built excuses for cars. Shame as the Alpha GT is a nice looking car.

Almost all of the best cars in the world (exotics) are not built well.
Its just the way it is.

You mean the most expensive cars in the world, not the best.

Anything TVR ever produced falls into that category. Ferrari F40 notoriously bad. Best cars seem to be Porsche, McLaren F1. German engines!!!! mmm seems to say something. Still would rather have a dodgy Ferrari over a reliable Merc or Porsche. BMW, Audi any day. Mate used to have a BMW M5 AC Schnitzer tuned car. Was brutal but broke down so often it was a joke.

Surprising for a German car

VTech

The Porsche is hard to beat, it is the best all round package although the 458 and aventador are simply stunning.

Enzo one said, when asked about the build quality of Ferrari, "when you buy a ferrari you buy the engine, we give the chassis for free so dont complain about what you get for free"
I liked that

As above though, german build quality is best, the veyron, aventador, 997, McLaran, AMG etc are all nicely build but some of the other exotics have very odd paneling.

Stevo_666

I was always quite fond of my old rice burner. Great track car

wastegate86

dynamicbrick

VTech wrote:

As above though, German build quality is best

Nonsense I'm afraid.

The most unreliable cars I've ever owned have actually been German - Alpina B3 and E34 M5. My mate's 996 was hysterically bad too, not to mention the C43 AMG he had. My Weltmeister Mercs were beautifully engineered, but that period of German car building has long since passed.

The best built car you can buy is the LS and GS series Lexus - good friend has a GS450h and it is obsessively built... A work of art if you care for seeing things nailed together properly.

My most reliable was a Nissan 200sx Touring company car - 156,000 miles from new, utterly abused, never warmed up, never warmed down, did over 200 trackday laps - never missed a beat once.

proto

Ask a RAC or AA breakdown fellow what car they drive, and I think you'll find that they favour Toyota

ballysmate

Back in the 70s my mate had a yellow MkIII Cortina. A Black vinyl roof was all the fashion in those days. Alas, his was without. His remedy was a tin of underseal and a paint brush. The rest of the car rusted as cars were prone to do in those days, but his roof never did!

markos1963

Same as my dads one, Jag Mk2 3.8 opalescent maroon, I was six and remember being taken to school in it. All the other kids and the teacher would come and have a look around it.

VTech

dynamicbrick wrote:

VTech wrote:

As above though, German build quality is best

Nonsense I'm afraid.

The most unreliable cars I've ever owned have actually been German - Alpina B3 and E34 M5. My mate's 996 was hysterically bad too, not to mention the C43 AMG he had. My Weltmeister Mercs were beautifully engineered, but that period of German car building has long since passed.

The best built car you can buy is the LS and GS series Lexus - good friend has a GS450h and it is obsessively built... A work of art if you care for seeing things nailed together properly.

My most reliable was a Nissan 200sx Touring company car - 156,000 miles from new, utterly abused, never warmed up, never warmed down, did over 200 trackday laps - never missed a beat once.

I was referring to sports car, high end luxury as I was questioned on that point. I can assure you that German cars in general are better than most, I grant you Lexus are well built but I dont really class them as sporty cars, they are more exec type cars to me.
Porsche have a history of building the best sports cars ever, your mate may have had a bad one but in general they are very good indeed.

fast as fupp

fiat 500 abarth

wastegate86

These days most cars are built well
Wouldn't say German cars are built any better than say kia!
Like most companies the manufacturing process is mostly soured out to countries like South America, Asia and Africa.
At the end of the day you get what you pay for with better materials,design, engineering however the more expensive the car the more money it takes to fix

VTech

The more exotic cars have a lot more (hand built) issues, which is what I was referring too.
Line up a 430 Ferrari and a 997t Porsche and you will see the difference in the way the panels line up.

imposter2.0

Favourite car? Gerry Marshall's Holden V8-powered DTV Firenza - 'Baby Bertha'. The most awesome car ever built.

hipshot

Alfasud. Decades ahead of its time. Drove like a dream. Most of them rusted to death years ago.