..or am I the only unfortunate victim of this italian job.
Although I couldn't complain about the car (much), I found spares could be a real problem, so much so that even SWMBO gave me the blessing to get another one cheap for spares!
Oh and the rust, well mine wasn't that bad but would have needed sills welding for next MOT at 8 years old.
Fantastic engine though - even the SOHC which mine was.
The only main problem, I had a real job selling it. No one knew what they were!
Haven't seen any on the road for years now, what happened to them all? Has an eccentric millionaire decided to buy them all up? Have they all been made into kit cars? Who knows?
If anyone has seen a silver Regata Weekend reg no G40BPA. That was mine.
Any observations welcome!
H
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Not a direct answer to your question but during a spell in Jordan in 1983 while consulting I had the use of a Regata for about 3 months. A fast comfortable and very spirited piece of work which I enjoyed very much. The eggshell body however made it obvious it was doomed.
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I had for a year or so a rather rare bird, the turbo diesel. They had worked out that the engine from a Ducato van could be shoehorned into the front. It went quite well for the time - the main fault was getting fifth gear when warm - but was traded in to a country dealer against a Corolla GT coupe; I got quite a good allowance, seemingly diesels were popular among the farming community; something to do with the price of fuel!
The dreaded tin worm was just starting to show.
I have not seen one for some time either; the last around here was a white twin cam that was not too bad, but in white any rust shows.
Tomo as was!
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A bloke I used to go sailing with had an estate version which on one occasion about 6 of us piled in with sailing gear for a weekend for the mercifully short journey from Burnham on Crouch to West Mersea. This was in about '96 or '97 and I was surprised to see it still going. He thought it was great and it had done about 130K miles.
The man concerned was a bit of a fan of Italian cars, having had a Maserati Biturbo at some point in the past. As he lived in Whitstable in Kent I thought that he was a bit foolhardy what with all that sea air !
Matthew Kelly
No, not that one.
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Yes I owned on of these lovely cars, an E reg turbo diesel saloon for just over a year.
I got it as I wanted a cheap diesel commuting car but on a budget of 500 quid.
Compared to a rusty smoking 1.6 Escort diesel and a 1.7D visa with no brakes the regata was an obvious bargin. Electric front windows! Sunroof! Central locking!
Fanatastic heating system display with LEDs that changed colour as you adjusted the temperature! Full set of dials including rev counter to about 7000 rpm (why? it would not rev beyond 3000 rpm).
I was able to haggle the price down as funnily enough the seller was having difficulty getting anyone interested in the car. I put 25,000 miles on the car in about 15 months of use during which I only had to replace part of the exhaust and do oil changes, so pretty reliable from a mechanical point of view. The electrics started to play up of course but mainy just the dash warning lights which could be ignored. The central locking became a problem when it refused to stay locked. The technique in the end was to lock via one of the back doors holding the button down and waiting for the furious clicking to subside before slamming the door. To be honest I don\'t know why I bothered as I\'m sure no one would have stolen it.
I enjoyed driving the car for a time as it had a kind of \'so bad its good\' charisma about it. I could park it anywhere as I didn\'t care if it got vandalised. I could get out of junctions and carve through traffic as others understandably wanted to keep their distance.
Also in the unlikely event that you could get in front of someone who had annoyed you, you could floor it and the turbo would wind up to full boost to deploy a massive cloud of smoke from the rear. And I mean massive. Still passed the emissions tests at MOT time though and returned 48 mpg without fail.
I scrapped it in the end when a repair bill of 400 loomed as I had at that point grown a little tired of the heavy clutch and the gear change that put up a spirited resistance to any change of ratio. Unsurprisingly I couldn\'t give it away and had to pay 20 quid to the scrap man, even after delivering it!
As bad as it was I regretted its passing after its replacement, a Rover 827 Sterling, turned out to be the most unreliable car I have ever owned.
Cheers,
Mat.
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