Hi!
This morning, I bought a temporary insurance for temporary plates on eBay. First 'first'. With the number I got (via SMS) I went to the office and got me a pair of 5-day plates.
Then I went to the train station, bought the cheapest ticket which would get me there - and boarded the train to go collect a car (2nd first - so far I've always took a second man & car as backup).
The train took me direction north-east, into the beautifull Pfalz, with it's endless array of ancient volcanos and vineyards. Due to the nature of the Pfalz region - I saw mostly this:
And a lot of this:
3 hours later, I arrived in the beautifull city of Pirmasens, which had the luck to have just escaped it's affiliation with the Saarland. Being in Pirmasens, or how it'S residents like to call it - Pirmasibirsk, was 1st number 3, btw.
I was collected at the train station by Chris in his yellow Mini convertible (no pictures sadly), a fellow Mini driver who I've not seen for quite a while - so that was nice & kind. He drove me to the location of my desire. He had also visited the car for me some weeks ago, as a pre-check.
And there she was:
I inspected her, found a lot of stuff that was missing, not working or broken... Had a hard debate about the price and after a lot of haggling we agreed on 750€. The car had been advertised for 1200 - that's OK I guess. I hoped to snap it for 600-650€ - so I bargained a liter of fresh oil and agreed with the 750. Put on the plates, followed the seller in his Peugeot who had kindly offered to lead me to the next fuel station. as the tank was... About, ca. - drained. ;D
Getting there was hard work - the power steering had failed, which was the main reason for the low price. The auto gearbox however shifts realy, realy nice and smooth as silk, the engine runs well & smooth - the two biggest main components are sound. Phew. So I took off from the fuel station, onto the Bundesstrasse (A-road) and started to get confident with the car.
The first tunnel - slow down to 30 - take a breath - and fully depress the accelerator pedal beyond the resistance of the kick-down switch. A split second of noting - and suddenly the engine roars, the rev counter snaps to 5000RPM and I get pushed deeper into the comfy leather seats, the gearbox changes gear, the rev counter nears the red line for the second time - and in my ears is the loud, raspy growl of a high reving, refined sixcylinder engine at full chat. And the corners of my mouth start to defy gravity - I start grining like an idiot and slow down to 30 again and end up waaay too fast with 75MPH again, only seconds later.
And at this point I knew; even if the car needs lot of attention, time & money thrown at it. Even if it will drain my pocket with fuel costs - I have doen everything right!
And this car is many firsts for me:
- first Coupé
- first six cylinder
- first car with more than 120HP (180)
- first car that's faster than 200km/h \ 125MPH
- first car with a displacement larger than 2.5l
- first car with leather
- first car with air con
- first car with airbag
- first car with autobox
- first realy stupid buy ;D
And I realy, realy hope to find a place to keep her. It's from January '88 - a very early Coupé whichwas introduced in march 1987. Which makes it from the first production year. And even rarer is it's colour - Champagne Metallic, Code 472, was discontinued in mid '88. When new, it cost 85.000 Deutsche Mark - a proud sum of money. In '88, 18.000 Deutsche Mark bought a a brand new Golf with some extras!
The main reason why I had to be this car was, I a) wanted a Coupé from the first generation, without the chrome trim. I wanted a six cylinder and it had to be a colour that differed from the usual black (every W124 Coupé seems to be black...).
And this... Realy floats my boat! Golden paint, brown interior - I'm in love! Even if it looks much better on pictures than it realy is... It's a lot of work, it will never be a collectors piece with 320.000km / 198.000 miles on the clock.
I had some sleepless nights this week - now I'm happy I beat the little voice of reason in my head. ;D
And home, with the wagon which is sold and will be collected in 2 weeks.
Thanks for reading!
This morning, I bought a temporary insurance for temporary plates on eBay. First 'first'. With the number I got (via SMS) I went to the office and got me a pair of 5-day plates.
Then I went to the train station, bought the cheapest ticket which would get me there - and boarded the train to go collect a car (2nd first - so far I've always took a second man & car as backup).
The train took me direction north-east, into the beautifull Pfalz, with it's endless array of ancient volcanos and vineyards. Due to the nature of the Pfalz region - I saw mostly this:
And a lot of this:
3 hours later, I arrived in the beautifull city of Pirmasens, which had the luck to have just escaped it's affiliation with the Saarland. Being in Pirmasens, or how it'S residents like to call it - Pirmasibirsk, was 1st number 3, btw.
I was collected at the train station by Chris in his yellow Mini convertible (no pictures sadly), a fellow Mini driver who I've not seen for quite a while - so that was nice & kind. He drove me to the location of my desire. He had also visited the car for me some weeks ago, as a pre-check.
And there she was:
I inspected her, found a lot of stuff that was missing, not working or broken... Had a hard debate about the price and after a lot of haggling we agreed on 750€. The car had been advertised for 1200 - that's OK I guess. I hoped to snap it for 600-650€ - so I bargained a liter of fresh oil and agreed with the 750. Put on the plates, followed the seller in his Peugeot who had kindly offered to lead me to the next fuel station. as the tank was... About, ca. - drained. ;D
Getting there was hard work - the power steering had failed, which was the main reason for the low price. The auto gearbox however shifts realy, realy nice and smooth as silk, the engine runs well & smooth - the two biggest main components are sound. Phew. So I took off from the fuel station, onto the Bundesstrasse (A-road) and started to get confident with the car.
The first tunnel - slow down to 30 - take a breath - and fully depress the accelerator pedal beyond the resistance of the kick-down switch. A split second of noting - and suddenly the engine roars, the rev counter snaps to 5000RPM and I get pushed deeper into the comfy leather seats, the gearbox changes gear, the rev counter nears the red line for the second time - and in my ears is the loud, raspy growl of a high reving, refined sixcylinder engine at full chat. And the corners of my mouth start to defy gravity - I start grining like an idiot and slow down to 30 again and end up waaay too fast with 75MPH again, only seconds later.
And at this point I knew; even if the car needs lot of attention, time & money thrown at it. Even if it will drain my pocket with fuel costs - I have doen everything right!
And this car is many firsts for me:
- first Coupé
- first six cylinder
- first car with more than 120HP (180)
- first car that's faster than 200km/h \ 125MPH
- first car with a displacement larger than 2.5l
- first car with leather
- first car with air con
- first car with airbag
- first car with autobox
- first realy stupid buy ;D
And I realy, realy hope to find a place to keep her. It's from January '88 - a very early Coupé whichwas introduced in march 1987. Which makes it from the first production year. And even rarer is it's colour - Champagne Metallic, Code 472, was discontinued in mid '88. When new, it cost 85.000 Deutsche Mark - a proud sum of money. In '88, 18.000 Deutsche Mark bought a a brand new Golf with some extras!
The main reason why I had to be this car was, I a) wanted a Coupé from the first generation, without the chrome trim. I wanted a six cylinder and it had to be a colour that differed from the usual black (every W124 Coupé seems to be black...).
And this... Realy floats my boat! Golden paint, brown interior - I'm in love! Even if it looks much better on pictures than it realy is... It's a lot of work, it will never be a collectors piece with 320.000km / 198.000 miles on the clock.
I had some sleepless nights this week - now I'm happy I beat the little voice of reason in my head. ;D
And home, with the wagon which is sold and will be collected in 2 weeks.
Thanks for reading!
And they'r not too bad on fuel either; I got 29MPG 
