Ian: (OT)
Daddy took the T-Bird away, not the Mustang, but I get the message....broke my heart letting that go. Buddy Guy's magnificent version of Mustang Sally still one of my all time faves.
I'm sure Alexandra would have loved to have, she grew up with it over 5 years in Bahrain but I can imagine all the pimply would-be suitors it would attract....
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Daddy took the T-Bird away, not the Mustang, but I get the message....broke my heart letting that go. Buddy Guy's magnificent version of Mustang Sally still one of my all time faves.
I have a tape of Buddy Guy, Junior Wells and guest Bill Wyman at the Paris Jazz Festival. Essential long-distance driving listening. [1]
[1] Motoring link.
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indeed.....Buddy Guy makes Clapton look like a gifted amateur. Then there's Stevie Ray, then there's Albert Collins, the other Kings (Freddie and Albert, but not B.B.) all on my CD changer in the truck..)
Now then: starter cars: I have taken all the sage advice above and have emailed daughter with details of what to look for then to call me when she thinks she's getting warm. I think we shall begin with a Fiesta/Micra/Polo search. Theoretically in T/Wells and environs there should be a few one elderly lady owners... Thanks again to all.
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Fantastic - Buddy Guy fans - in my social/ work circle no-one has even heard of him!! (as for Albert Collins ......) When my son recently spent a holiday in the states I told him he must go to BGs Legends club in Chicago even though he hates "the Blues". He came back and said it was fantastic (Matthew Skoller Band were on - what's more he bought me a Cd and a Buddy Guy polo shirt which I wear with pride) But here's the question. In 1991 Clapton did blues concerts at the Albert Hall, with BG, Johnny Johnson, Robert Cray etc and I recorded it off the radio. My tape is now old and worn and was never top quality anyway - does anyone know if it is possible to get a CD/vinyl/tape of this? Motoring link is that there is a great version of Crossroads on it?
Prepare to be shot down but my son and daughter have Clios and they love them and they have both been v. reliable. I note what you said about French cars but if my son can get to like Buddy........?
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I have some tracks off that concert which I got from Kazaa. It's surprising so few people in UK realise that British musicians in the 60's were largely responsible for keeping one of America's greatest heritages alive, starting with the Stones et al. Crossroads of course was a Robert Johnson original from the '30's and I think I have Elmore James doing it too. Back in the days of the Crawdaddy in Richmond (6/- to get in) that song was the rite of passage for all would-be bluesmen (think JOhn Mayall, Peter Green, Jeff Beck, Stevie Winwood, Clapton, etc etc) As for Johnnie Johnson, he was the maniac pianist on all those Chuck Berry tracks 50 years back and there is a great CD of him and Keith Richards getting together a few years back. Problem with the UK music industry is it's all canned stuff, you have to go to the States and places like Memphis St Louis and Chicago to find this stuff. It's that forgotten art of playing the instrument instead of some computer doing it for you.
If there hadn't been any blues there wouldn't have been any Elvis or any rock music. As a final blast my art teacher at school was Paul Oliver, who taught me to appreciate jazz and blues and now (as an Englishman) is the acknowledged greatest living expert and historian of the genre. We keep in touch from time to time.
As ever I am way off topic here.
Have emailed daughter re car options as set out here. Appears BF is muscling in with his ideas, told her get with the program or Dad will lose interest.
Hopefully filial respect will triumph over hormones. I said "hopefully".
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Off track also - but interesting stuff G. didn't realise that Johnnny Johnson was on Chuck Berry (another favourite of mine)recordings. have you read Bill Wyman's book "bill Wyman's Blues Odyssey" - I think you would enjoy it. good luck with the car hunt
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Old peoples cars are not always the buy they seem.
My dad bought me and my three brothers a Fiesta Poplar 950 cc Mk2 who was previously owned by an old dear from new. What a hunk of junk. Bought at 38k miles by 68 it was dead. Rotten underneath, with one failed gearbox and a misery to drive. Those short trips are murder on cars. Revving and using too much clutch from junctions are the worst!
You must have all seen them.
I would nominate a Polo 1.3 or Micra 1.3.
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The older model Polo (up to L/M reg) is very reliable and doesent suffer from the rust bug as much as cars such as the fiesta/micra. Its easy/cheap to fix if it ever does go wrong. I know many people are now anti-VW but this model is still a proper Polo made in Germany rather than the poorer but popular later model which was built in Spain along side the Ibiza. The 1.3 one is best as it is suprisingly nippy, the 1.0 is cheaper to insure. If you change the oil/coolant regularly and replace the cam belt at 40K the engine will last and last, my wifes old 19 year old Polo (150,000) never even had its head off.
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Most small cars except for the old Fiesta. I drove a 1.0 Corsa when learning, don't know how cheap they are. It was comfortable enough, and 'went' for a 1.0. The old Fiesta is terrible. Listen to any one and the engines sound like tractors. Mum had one that failed to get past 85 and sounded awful at 65k. Stepmum had one that needed a new engine at 75k.
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Some fine-tuning perhaps. Delete Fiesta then and focus (no pun) on Micra/Polo. I personally have magisterially ruled out Corsa on the basis of the rental I got stuck with at LHR from one of the Big Four (all they had left and I hadn't booked) which was arguably the nastiest small car (and I HATE small cars) I have ever had the misfortune to come across. Like a biscuit tin on wheels that didn't seem to have enough gears and was a tribute to a cost accountant's ability to root out expensive metal and substitute cheap plastic.
Given I will be paying the bills (who else) and my darling daughter is very good at textile design and theatre studies but drifts through life oblivious to its practicalities, whatever she ends up with must perform reliably above all and not be the cause of indrawn breath, teeth-sucking and shaking heads of mechanic at MOT time.
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I'd still swear by the Fiesta as long as you get one of the slightly newer shape ones. 96MY on Fiestas don't rust either, which is another reason to avoid the dreary old Classic style. I'd also avoid the 1.3 chain cam engine because it doesn't do the miles, and make sure it was after the facelift so it drives properly.
Post 95MY Polos will invariably be leggy and/or tired at this money. They make sense if you have more to spend - but at least £1000 more. £2k Micras don't particularly have the safety features of even a 3* NCAP Fiesta. The facelift in around '98 improved the safety features, such as side impact bars and airbags, but that'll be out of your price range. There are *loads* of very tired ones around London, so I'm not sure that they will be much more reliable than a good Fiesta at the same money, sorry.
As for an even older shape pre '94 Polo... how much life insurance does your daughter have? In terms of safety features, it's way, way behind as the basic structure goes back to 1981. I dread to think what it would do in eNCAP (it went out of production before the tests) but I wouldn't expect it to be much better than a Rover 100. If you told me your budget was £800, it'd be different of course and I'd recomend it to you.
Having driven my mother's for 4 years in which it never missed a beat from new to 65k, I really cannot recommend the Fiesta enough if your budget is £2000. For more, or less, there are better buys, but £2k really is the sweet spot for the Fiesta.
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Yes but will £2k buy a Zetec engined model because the old 1.1/1.3 engines are rather crap to be fair.
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I don't think £2k will buy a Zetec engined model. As to the old engines being pink fluffy dice. Well, possibly by comparison with the Zetec engine, but as student transport ideal. Nothing hi-tech to go wrong, cheap to maintain by your local (inexpensive) independent garage. Personally I would have been delighred to have a push-rod Fiesta as student transport. The only thing I would like to see on a car for my daughter would be a drivers air bag.
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The old fiesta engines may be noisy and rough but they keep going, which is all you want at the bargain basement end of the market.
I'm a big fan of airbags though having had reason to be glad of one recently.
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Noisy and rough isn't an issue, but I've heard they don't last, and seen it for myself, the examples being the two in my family that had knackered engines by 85k and 75k respectively. Maybe we were unlucky but it put me off shortlisting a Fiesta for a car of my own.
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That's why you buy one with less than 75k on the clock Dave! The life of that particular engine is reckoned to be about 75k.
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The pro-con Fiesta movements have convinced me! I shall call my beautiful but impractical daughter tonight and say it's a Micra or a Polo so you can start looking.
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If the design life is actually 75k, thats terrible. Buying one with 50k on the clock means you effectively have a car thats only good for 20-30k miles. Theres bound to be the odd well maintained one that will last well, but the two that have been owned in my family weren't researched and turned out to be unserviced city-only cars, which I get the impression is the case with many Fiestas.
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Not terrible just old technology.
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Uncles '83 MG Metro lasted 170k - he hammered it. Im going by cars that the family have had so Im biased, but 75k as an average life of an engine to be regarded decent must surely be poor?
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The Fiesta was Fords first small car. Previously Ford had publicly stated that it wouldn't be offering a small car as there was no profit to be made out of small cars. Ford engineers analysed the cost of building a the original (BMC mini) and concluded that it cost £25 more to build than the retail price, a fact later admitted by Lord Stokes. Now Ford uses "value engineering" which means they will not use manufacturer a 2p part where they could get away with a 1p part. Every car manufacturer now does it to a greater or lesser extent but in those days Ford were probably ahead of the game. Add to that customer expectations, it was quite usual to exchange an engine with that sort of mileage for a factory approved reconditioned engine available through main dealers. So, bearing in mind all the above Ford only needed to make the engine as good as it needed to be to make a profit. Phew!
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OT but on your remarks: when I worked for a Ford dealership in the mid 1960's it was commonly accepted that Ford embraced planned obsolescence. Just the sort of thing the boardroom weasels would call "value engineering".
For many years before and after the last war and right into when I was working with them, Ford cars were regarded as a second class "cheap and nasty" product. This may have stemmed from the mid-30's 8 hp "Y" which was deliberately marketed at £100 to rival the ubiquitous Austin 7. The Mk 1 Consuls and Zephyrs used to rust out almost from the day they were made, the Popular and the 100E relied on ancient sidevalve engines, vacuum wipers, 6 volts electrics, cable brakes and no water pump (Popular).
Not to mention the Pilot, a 3.something flathead v-8 with cable brakes which managed about 16 mpg! Their dinosaur trucks (who remembers the ET6) were a joke although the separate division of Fordson tractors went on for a good while.
Ford UK really only got their act together when they brought out the 105E Anglia in 1959 and the Cortina in 1962.
Ford UK, Ford Europe (Taunus etc), Ford US etc were very loosely connected with little commonality between markets. Strangely in the meantime US Ford produced market leaders which the others followed, the 1949 Ford Sedan (All those Highway Patrol B & W episodes with Broderick Crawford), the elegant Customlines of the mid-50's and the marvellous but impractical Victoria, where the whole roof swivelled up and stored itself in the trunk and the ground-breaking Falcon compacts which came in in 1960. Then it blew the affordable muscle car market wide open with the lovely 64½ Mustang, every college student's chick magnet.
By contrast in Australia the Falcon XK's, XP's, XR's were excellent cars for long distances, and the ute versions sold like hotcakes. All of these seemed to have exceptional longevity.
In those days nobody would look at a car with less than 6 cyls if covering any distance. They had to chase GM's Holden of course, which was the market leader and they were well made cars.
Right, that's today's history lesson, now I must get on to my daughter and condense all this erudition into something a 20 year old with a cellphone implant in one ear and a paintbrush in the other can make something of.
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Come on Growler don't keep us in suspense any longer. What car did your daughter end up spending your cash on?
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I really hate to tell all you helpful people this (actually I don't) but she has done a rideshare deal with a co-student. Not only that said co-student (female) has moved in with her and is picking up half the rent.
Maybe I'll be able to afford that new Ford F-150 SUV - the Harley-Davidson Edition - after all....
Notwithstanding, I have duly filed the useful comments on this thread given the likelihood of anything put together by two 20 year old females have a lifespan approximating that of a grasshopper, with the resulting need to return to Plan A. Right now at any rate it seems I don't have to lever my wallet open any time soon.
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Well you've been spared the phone call "Dad the cars making a funny noise", for a while anyway. LOL
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