To be honest if I was after an oddball Alfa it would probably be a 75. Friend of ours used to have one. Wasn't the fastest thing ever in a straight line, but oh the noise it made. Made up for any straight line grunt by the ability to go round corners far quicker than it seemed like it should be able to.
The soundtrack though is my main memory of that car. That and that everything aside from the engine always felt like it was imminently about to fly apart at any moment.
Let's get caught up on the fleet movements then. The rest of the fleet update can come next as it's comparatively easy to follow. You were very much heading in the right direction.
I can't remember exactly where we were, but the first main order of business which happened was the BX moving on to new pastures.
This had always kind of been my plan from the beginning. My main plan with that car had been to save it from a potential trip to the crusher, get it properly appraised, improve what I could and then move it on to a long term custodian. If it had been a relatively easy route to get it MOT worthy I'd have happily done that, but I wasn't getting involved in major projects like large scale hydraulic line replacements involving dropping subframes and the like.
It has gone to a good home however. You may recall a lovely beige Talbot Alpine visited a while ago - yes, the owner of that car is the new keeper of the BX. It's been a dream car of theirs for many years, one I was happy to be able to help happen. I believe by this point she's actually very close to being roadworthy again. One of the conditions of sale was that they come back over with the car once she's on the road so I can have a proper shot.
The reason I needed to shuffle the BX on was to make way for what I had planned to be 2023's main project. Shown here after I'd done some fettling and cleaning up.
Which mechanically didn't need a huge amount doing...basically just recommissioning and a clutch release bearing as far as I could tell. With a couple of fuel lines replaced and the points cleaned she was up and running really nicely. The only thing she wasn't doing was stopping. I was literally a few days away from sending the brake calipers off for refurbishment (as new ones are really quite hard to find), and starting to cut out the couple of bits of rust that needed sorting (of which there was *astonishingly* little for a non restored mark I Cavalier.
It was a really solid basis for a nice rolling restoration, and shouldn't be at all hard to get into a roadworthy state. A very sensible classic too. About as sophisticated as a brick, generally okay for parts support aside from a few bits and pieces, tax and MOT exempt, and with every facet of ownership well documented so there should be zero surprises to worry about. It's an absolutely ideal practical classic.
This is the point at which you need to cut to the sound of the stylus violently sliding off a playing record, as I did something very, very silly.
Um...yeah.
This moment of madness requires a little bit of explanation though and to rewind to 2001-5 when I had a Saturday job at a tiny little used car dealer in rural Aberdeenshire. This was mainly centred around keeping their rolling stock cleaned, but did extend into more general dog's body duties as time went on. One of the highlights of this though was having the opportunity to pursue their stock deemed to be too old for them to bother with before they got punted on to the auctions.
I got a good few bargains out of that arrangement I reckon. Including my first brush with the French way of motoring, with this little 11TC.
Which cost me a whole £120, and I really rather liked. Even in what I now know to be basically base spec, it was really comfortable and went incredibly well for a 1.2. Its biggest vice I found was that it was an absolute devil to get parts for. Made right on the changeover between the phase 1 and 2, this car seemed to have been made using whatever parts they found rolling around on the factory floor, none of which matched the parts specified for either Phase 1 or 2 cars. Bearing in mind this was before the internet had become quite as useful source of information it has today. I'm sure the owners clubs etc would have been able to help out there these days - but back then it was an absolute nightmare. I have a distinct memory of it taking me weeks to find a CV boot.
There was also the first Saab, which was a bit of a wreck - but cost me £60 and was always planned to be run until either the MOT ran out or something broke, whichever happened first.
While it wasn't a pocket money car, they did me an absolute cracking deal on my Lada Niva as well.
The car which always stood out as my favourite though was this one.
Which cost me I think £60. Sadly I only ever got to drive it once, for a couple of miles before I bought it. I was at college at the time, which resulted in me leaving the house at something like 4:30 in the morning and getting back somewhere around 19:00 so having zero time available. So it was sent down to our local "car guy" under my father's care to see what it would take to get it an MOT. Sadly it was condemned due to rust in the rear suspension arms, and I never saw it again. Of course these days we'd be shipping a good set of arms over from France in a heartbeat - but this was 2003 or so when these cars were worth...well...what I'd just paid for it. I never quite forgave my father though for not consulting me before binning it, as I'd have kept it around for a while on the drive just as a very comfy lounge to listen to my music on the absolutely epic stereo system.
It was a car I vowed point blank that I would own again one day.
Fast forward to 2010 or so when I was more a master of my own fate and had some disposable income I started to look around a bit for one...and discovered they were all but extinct, and basically stopped looking after a year or so.
Until just before Christmas 2022, when the following ad popped up in a Telegram chat that I don't even check all that regularly right as I opened it up.
My immediate expectation was that this was most likely going to be a rust bucket that was going to be far beyond what I was willing to get involved in. However it was local so I knew I needed to actually take a look at it otherwise I'd forever wonder if I made the right decision. Not as though I was going to get another chance.
However when I got there I was pleasantly surprised. The description was pretty accurate, and while there were a few bits of rust needing attention, I'd definitely not have called it a rot box.
I'd made a very specific point of examining the exterior before touching the interior as I knew the moment I sat in it I'd be sold if my memory of how comfortable the interior was even vaguely accurate.
I had kind of expected a 20 year old memory to have exaggerated the luxury...it hadn't.
Suffice to say the 50 mile drive home was slightly nervous. The car while technically roadworthy had only covered a couple of hundred miles since it was resurrected from a 11 year slumber...in 2017. And we were driving straight off into Oxfordshire last minute Christmas shopping traffic. Great!
Thankfully the drive home was entirely without incident. Though unsurprisingly I had come up with quite a to do list.
[] The tyres were utterly ancient. The newest one on the car I think was from 2006, oldest dating to the mid 90s.
[] Something sounded absolutely horrific in the front suspension - likely drop links, but having had a lower ball joint fail on me without warning in the past that sort of noise always makes me nervous.
[] Steering wheel was way off centre and rotated distinctly not around where the centre should be.
[] Temperature gauge reads what looks to be very high (I've since been told by several people they do just read like that).
[] Speedometer works when it feels like it.
[] The exhaust rattles.
[] The driver's power window switch falls out every time you close the door.
[] Driver's door required usually 5-10 attempts to get it to latch.
[] Passenger's front door speaker grill ejects itself every time the door is closed.
[] Windscreen wiper blades were noticeably lacking in any actual blade.
[] Multifunction display on the dash was showing nonsense and the stereo didn't work.
[] Biblical levels of clear coat peel on the offside.
Probably a bunch of other things I've forgotten...it was several months ago now.
In all...she was in need of a bit of love. However she was fundamentally solid, and I had been reminded immediately of quite how well I felt that car fitted me back then. I felt it was a bit of a huge car at the time, but being a bit more a confident driver now it doesn't feel nearly so overwhelmingly vast...just substantial.
Oh, and oh, oh so comfy. Have some more up to date photographs, starting with the interior, which was always the 25's party piece, especially in the Monaco.
She looks a bit less sorry for herself after a good clean at least.
I will update further on exactly what's been done so far, what's still to be done and the overall plan. However one thing that needs to be kept in mind, and that's this car is a keeper. It's taken me a very, very, very long time to find this car, and given the Monaco is basically gone I'm not going to have a shot at another one. The odds of me ever finding this car were nigh on non existent too between me having not been looking for it, not regularly checking the chat the link turned up in, and me very nearly deciding not to look at it...it's near miraculous we actually ended up crossing paths.
More details will follow - along with the news on the rest of the fleet, but that will probably be slightly less involved than this was/will be, as you can imagine there's been a fair amount of fettling going on since the Bronze Barge arrived on my driveway.
