Comments below please!  Especially lists of the cars you’ve owned!

1997 Peugeot Boxer Auto Sleeper Symphony Motorhome (present)

Bought in a hurry as a replacement for the Hymer in 1997, paid about £15k for it, still worth only a couple or three grand less.  Great little van containing everything a large motorhome has in a tiny package that fits in a normal car park space.  Everyone’s amazed to learn it has a showeroom in it…

Spent thousands on it, including welding, repairs, head gasket, yadda, yadda.

It’s a 2.0 petrol and is very underpowered and thirsty.  I keep having grand ideas of dropping a 2.5 or 2.8 turbo diesel in it…  Or an LPG conversion.

I don’t intend to get rid of it any time soon, but when I replace it it’ll be for a custom built camper based on a recent Ford Transit 4×4, I hope.

1995 Mazda Mx5 (present)

Bough in a hurry for £3k or so in 1996.  It’s just ace, the handling is simply superb.  Anyone who hasn’t driven one call it a girls car or a hairdressers car.  Anyone who’s driven one knows exactly why people love them.  The best fun at legal speeds you can have I reckon.

Spent quite a bit on it, it’ll nearly be rebuilt by the time I finish with it…  Weekend driver, it’s kept as a hobby car more than anything else, and it’s still seems to be holding it’s value.

1994 Hymer Motorhome

Replacement for the Ambulance, to live in.  Bought for £15k, LHD, the test drive was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.  Bit of a beast to drive, but immensely nice to live in.

Traded it in a year or so later for something smaller and more practical.  Lost £5k on it.

1996 BMW 325TDS

Bought in a hurry (a pattern is forming) for a few grand.  Chipped it, nice and quick, and sublime handling.  I was thus converted to rear wheel drive and knew why so many people love BMWs.  Apart from repair costs.  £500 for a radiator replacement at a specialist for example.

Dropped a filing cabinet on it, then sold it to some guy for a couple of grand who though it would be easy to fix.  That was an hour after an eastern european guy crawled all over it and revealed it was a repaired Cat D write off.  Who knew!?

2001 Vauxhall Astravan

The replacement company van for the Combo, turbo diesel, decent enough, comfy, silver.  The brakes weren’t good enough for the engine though, I thought.

Can’t remember how much I paid or got for it.  Unmemorable.

1989 Ford Transit Mountain Ambulance Camper Conversion

Bought around my 30th birthday off eBay.  Saw it 3pm one afternoon, a few hours later I’d bought it for £1500, and the next morning I was on a plane to Newcastle to pick it up.

Partially converted into a camper van, I ran it as it was for a while, and then ripped it apart for massive welding for an MOT.  Rebuilt the camper conversion improving it, and then lived in it for a few months.  Great fun.

Sold it on eBay again for £2200, but I’d spent a grand or two on it, and many many hours underneath it.  A great project.

1999 Vauxhall Combo Van

Bought in a hurry as a company van for £2100.  Way over price.  Complete pile of dangerous shit.  Traded in for £800 a few months later.

1994 Mitsubishi Pajero SWB

I was living in pseudo-rurality and felt I needed a 4×4.  I found this 3.5 v6 special edition beast at an importer and bought it for £8k.  It was terrificly quick for a big lump, and with power everything, including power adjustable suspension, handled ace both on and off the road.

Alas I blew the engine up by failing to keep the oil topped up (I swear that dipstick had issues…)

Stupidly spent £4k rebuilding the engine and then quickly sold it on for £4500 to a man who got a bargain indeed.  Though, he probably would have needed to do the suspension after I bashed the hell out of it…

2004 Skoda Octavia vRS

Bought brand new in 04, for just under £15k.  Essentially a Golf GTi in bigger clothing, it was superb.  Terrific 180bhp engine, sharp sharp handling which was bizarrely better than the equivalent golf.

Sold it after a year or two at a £6k loss as it seemed to go round corners so quickly it scared the pants off me.

2003 Honda Accord Estate

A stupid brand new purchase in 2003 after seeing the cool clunk clunk Honda advert.  The electric powered tailgate sold it totally to me.  Nice quality, all the gadgets, but I found the 197bhp 2.4 VTEC immensely annoying, the semi-auto box was a very poor match for it, and as one has to rev the bollocks of those engines to get any performance out of it I was disappointed.  That engine and box in an executive saloon just didn’t do the trick for me.

Traded it in after a few months for a few grand loss.

2001 Saab 9-3 Aero

Bought brand new off the internet in 2001 as a personal import from Germany for £18k, a good £5k cheaper.  205bhp, loads of turbo power, immensely comfortable, but handled like shit with ride quality of a shopping trolley.

Traded in at a significant £7k loss after a couple of years.

1993 Saab 9000 Turbo

Bought in 1999, I think, for a couple of grand.  It was dark grey metallic hatchback, and had the biggest boot I’ve ever had on a car, including vans and estates…  Low pressure turbo.

1986 Saab 900 GLX

Bought in 1997 for about £900.  I naively paid too much, and spent hundreds, if not thousands over the next few years on it.  It was silver, and I loved it.

It was big, chunky, and a whole lot like me.  I used to love driving it into things, the best was reversing it with the door open which collided with a concrete pillar.

It was looked after by a main dealer mechanic in his mum’s back yard, many, many hours he spent on that, usually on the brakes, which seemed to be a bizarre design requiring a bunch of special tools.

Big scary moment in it when I spun it on a roundabout in Newcastle, the whole world stopped behind me as the back end slowly went round on a greasy road.  It had surprisingly elegant handling for a 2-tonne front wheel drive.

It finally ended up being traded in for £500 when the head gasket went.

1985 Mazda 323

My first car.  Bought in the summer of 1996 so I could hold down a summer job in Surrey.  Bought for £325, spent a couple of hundred on tyres, brakes and repairs. Sold after the summer for £300.

It was gold, great for hiding the rust, with a glorious brown interior.

I think it was a 1.3 petrol, a saloon, and I lived out of that car for months.  I recall having a fuel leak that melted the driveway of a B&B I was staying at, they weren’t best pleased…

As a first car, it was shit, unmemorable, quite possibly unsafe, but remarkably reliable.

Just had a looked, cleaned off all the mess on the engine and collarnt pipes etc, and I think it’s either from the air intake pipes – there’s a gas recirculation system which means it can be oily, or it might just be from spillage from the power steering fluid from the recent service.

I’ll keep my eye on the newly clean bits to see if any fluid appears from anywhere.

I spotted a split vacuum pipe too, which will hopefully account for less than smooth running recently.  I’m disappointed it wasn’t spotted at service.

Someone scratched the side with a key.

They started with an F, and then realised it was too big to provide good artistic clarity, so started again, with a second F.

Their thoughtful contribution to the aesthtics of the vehicle: FFUCKER

Nice, thanks.