We all like a good road trip don't we? I recently completed this trip for a car, and while the content is not exactly retro, Hopefully you might get something from this....Specifically, inspiration.
All too often there are people in the For Sale section posting “I would love the car, but its too far away”.
This thread is aimed a you guys. You know who you are.
Too far? Really? In Britain?
UK is not that big a place, and the chances are its only a few hours to the car you want. Sure, you might get unlucky, living in Cornwall and finding a car for sale in Scotland but its still not THAT far is it?
If its a car you really want, then surely distance should be no object? This is Retro Rides, where most purchases are done with the heart rather than the head. If you add up the exact cost of collection and rate that above your desire to own something you want, then perhaps you should have a look at www.economicallyviable-rides.com instead. Even if the car is a non-runner, you can trailer it....get it delivered....if you want it enough, you will find a way.
I'm writing this up to show that buying a car blind, over long distance is possible. Not only is it possible, its easy. Not only is it easy, its actually pretty good fun too. This isn't a one-off for me either....I tend to do this two or three times a year.
So, during some pre-Xmas ebay browsing I stumbled on something that caught my eye. Like I say, not fantastically Retro, but the kind of thing I have been thinking about for a while now. The auction was set to end on Xmas eve. It wasn't a fantastic ad (see Akku's tips on making a good ebay ad elsewhere on here) The description was brief, but covered the basics. The photos were quite small, washed out and obviously taken with a telephone. But....it mentioned everything I consider important and the guys feedback was good. He seems to sell a lot of cars regularly, so probably a part time trader on the side. One negative feedback mark for an issue I would consider minor, but all the other evaluations said the vehicles were as described and the chap was on the level. I put on my maximum bid in the last few seconds and waited.
The auction finished with me winning for £30 under my max bid, and that was that. I contacted the chap to arrange a collection date and he seemed easy to deal with, I paid a deposit by Paypal and he agreed to tax the car for me before I collected it so I could drive it straight away.
A few days into the new year, and its time to go. 6am. Time to get up and pack....
Wallet with monies – check. Necessary papers and documentation – check. Telephone and camera -check. TomTom – check. Sleeping bag – check. Done.
7 am, and my brother in law turned up for the first leg and we headed off in my daily driver – a 306 Hdi.
130K on the clock, no synchros on 3rd or 4th and an interior that rattles like a washing machine full of Lego. North for 40 minutes, then turn left picking up the autoroute to Toulouse. Destination Blagnac. We hit Toulouse at rush hour, but the peripherique chugs along steadily with few stops. An hour and 45 mins after leaving, we had arrived.
In an ideal world, I would now tell you how I was invited into the British Airways executive lounge, where I quaffed champagne with some supermodels while waiting to be called for my flight. Sadly, the reality contained a lot more orange.
Budget airlines are great. Well, no, budget airlines are curse word, but the concept is great. Easyjet, Ryanair and the like will take you several hundred miles and usually with a bit of hunting and advanced planning, cost significantly less than a train ticket for the same distance. I have travelled all over western Europe with these companies on tickets that very often cost me less than a tenner – I once even managed the Holy Grail of budget flying and managed to get one of Ryanairs £1 flights! On a train in UK, £10 hardly gets you beyond the end of the platform these days, so cheap flights are becoming more and more useful to us tat-hunters.
Today though, I had paid a bit more. The trip was quite late notice, and with the holiday season, prices are higher so in the end I paid around £60. Still, its not an outrageous amount is it?
I queued up to have my shoes x-rayed and then joined the scrum at the boarding gate. This is my one gripe about budget flying...it brings out the worst in people queueing. Why the scrum to get on? Sure, seats are not allocated, but the plane is not going to fly off without you – sit sit the hell down and wait eh?
So, I got onboard and settled down for leg two – an Airbus a320 series with a quadzillion miles on the clock For the first time on one of these flights, I found myself sitting next to a proper mental. He spent the whole trip talking to himself quite loudly and alternating between flicking furiously through the inflight magazine, pausing to rip the occasional page out, fold it up really small and tuck it into his pocket, and writing on a notepad in the smallest handwriting possible, it just looked like dots and squiggles packed solidly over the whole page. An hour and a half or so of staring at the back of the seat in front of me, and we touched down. Ah, Blighty.
I went to get my worthless foreign currency changed into real money (yeah, I know I could probably have had a better deal out of the terminal, but the clock was ticking) and I was straight on to leg three, departing immanently downstairs. A train. No, I don't know what type of train it was.
An hour of listening to the great British public talking on their phones later, and I arrived. Destination Littlehampton. The seller had agreed to meet me at the station and was good to his word.
This was the first time I saw the car. The reason I had travelled all this way.
I live in the southern part of France. No, not the classy Mediterranean bit, nor the cool skiing bit, it's the hillbilly farming bit. Its quite mountainous where I live and winters are harsh. Snow cuts me off from town for days on end and the roads are often hellish. Buying a front wheel drive cabriolet would be a really stupid thing to ….... oh.
;D
Actually, I already have a 4x4.....I have thought about a cabrio recently though with two possibilities in mind. Either buy cheaply in winter, clean it up and sell in the springtime for profit, or perhaps keep it for a season myself. Time will tell. Why did I travel all this way for a bloody Peugeot? Well, its a Left Hand Drive, so while it cost a bit above the going rate for a UK car, it cost a fair bit below the going rate for a French car, so even including travel and re-registration costs, I should be able to turn a profit on it. Not a fortune, but enough to be worthwhile. Besides, this whole adventure was something interesting to liven up an otherwise dull January.
A quick look round the car showed it to be as described, and we ran back to his storage unit, 5 minutes away. The electric windows were non functional, but this had been said in the ebay ad. The car ran fine otherwise so I handed over the notes and while he counted, I filled out the papers. A shake of the hands and off I went. The car was running on vapours so I went to the nearest petrol station and filled it up, pumped up the tyres and checked the fluids. I was a little alarmed to see some lumps of mayo on the dipstick, but figured it was possibly (hopefully) just condensation.
I stuck the GPS to the window and set off for leg 4 of the trip, destination Dover.
Its always exciting in a new car for the first time, taking it easy and listening out for strange noises, keeping a eye on the gauges, getting a feel for the handling and how it sits on the road. My first impressions were good. It pulled well, was quiet, ran straight and didnt pull to the side when braking. As confidence in the car grew or these first few miles, my speed increased and soon I was onto the M25, heading for the M20. The radio reception want great though.
I pulled over at the next service station just for a general check over and all was well. The fluid levels had not changed and the mayo had disappeared. I had noticed when I did the tyres that it was missing the spare wheel, which was a bit of a pisser to be honest, so I bought a can of tyreweld and hoped for the best.
I had planned this trip so that I would stop at a breakers yard on the route somewhere and pick up a gearbox for the estate car, but I had called round the breakers kindly listed by southern RR'ers in another thread and very few had one and those that did wanted big money, so I let the idea drop and headed straight to Dover. I stopped in Tescos as normal and stocked up on essentials that are not available in France...decent cheddar cheese, bacon, and bread rolls. Loaded up I went to the port.
It had been a blustery day (The landing approach in the plane had been quite alarming actually!) and the ferries were all to hell with delays and cancellations. I was in plenty of time for my booking, but things were running very late in the port. I went through and queued,
but had to wait a few hours to get on and set sail.
The crossing was smooth enough though,and I landed in Calais at about 10.30 local time.
I was tired. Normally on these trips I sleep in the car, hence the sleeping bag, either all night or if I feel up to it I drive non-stop, just grabbing an hour or two's kip in petrol stations as and when I need it. However, the weather was pretty stormy and with wind and rain lashing my soft-top, I knew sleep would be out of the question, so I rolled into Boulougne and got a hotel room.
In France a few years ago, hotels like this Etap hotel and the Formule1 chain were known to be quite basic, but nobody minded as they were cheap and ideal for overnight stops on the road. Sure, you wouldnt want to spend your summer holidays in one, but when you just want a bed for a couple of hours, they were perfect. Prices have shot up though, and this bloody prison cell costs €37 now. It used to be €22 a couple of years back. I didn't think it was still possible to buy televisions that small.
I bailed out while it was still dark, and after a quick check of fluids, I was on the way again.
Dawn broke as I drove and the vast emptiness of France became visible.
I swerved off the autoroutes soon though to avoid Paris at rush hour and took the western route down via Rouen and Chartres to Orleons. It makes a welcome change to be an a-roads for a while, breaking up the monotony of the motorways.
At Orleons though, it was time to re-join and make some proper progress. The A20 runs from there south, and is free for most of its length. Autoroutes in France are great....wide, smooth and quiet. People have good lane discipline and although they tend to tailgate a bit, driving is much more relaxed than in UK. The wee pug sat nicely at 120 - 130kph, and the kilometers rolled by.
As a side note....GPS devices that warn of speed camera locations have now become illegal in France. Radar detectors and jammers have always been very illegal, and the feds have detectors to detect your detector, but GPS warning of camera locations was ok until the beginning of this year. If your TomTom has this ability, you should now dis activate it before getting to France. If you are pulled and the cops find the system activated, you face a fine of about €130, seemingly.
Speeding is becoming more of an issue in France. Whenever I have done this trip, I usually never see a single copper, or perhaps one speed trap somewhere along the whole journey. This time, I saw 5 traps on the A20 alone. Always an unmarked car tucked into a service road with a device either on the car or on a tripod next to it. 2 motorbike police are often stationed ¼ mile or so further on to pull you over and fine you on the spot. Sarkozy is having a serious clamp-down on speeding and other driving offences, fines have risen sharply and it would seem that the days of a foot-to-the-floor blast across France are a thing of the past.
Lunch was had on the move. Sweaty triangular petrol station sandwiches are my staple diet on these trips.
As the miles rolled by, you soon realise that France is a massive place, and very thinly populated compared to UK. Frankly, the vast majority of the trip is boring as hell, with little to see.
The car ran faultlessly apart from the passenger window vibrating open every hundred km or so.
With the motor non-functional, I had to shove it back up by hand. Eventually, I bought a roll of tank tape and bodged it up.
The non-functioning windows proved a hassle at the toll booths, leaving me having to get out of the car each time as the doors were too long to open next to the both and lean out of to reach the machine.
Off the autoroute at Montauban, and I was on the last stretch. 100Km of A-road and dual carriageway, then the final 50km to my wee village through twisty backroads.
I got home at about 6pm. I had zero'd the counter when I picked it up and its now at 1305. I used about 95 litres of fuel, so that works out at around 7.3l/100km or a tad under 39mpg. Not bad!
Back home and in the cold(very cold) light of day, I am very happy with the car. It runs really well, with hardly any scuttle-shake and rattles. Actually, it runs better than the estae car and is more comfortable too. The interior now stinks of unwashed me and empty sandwich packets, but the whole car will get my usual deep clean as soon as I have the time.
The windows obviously need looking at....its just the doors, the wee rear windows are fine so probably the usual Peugeot fault of broken wires where they pass between a-post and door. It needs a head unit, which I will have to buy. I have an amp, sub and some speakers, which have been lying in the garage for ages. I reckon I will ICE this car up a bit, as it will not be used as my work vehicle.
So thats it. Flights, train, fuel, ferry, hotel and food cost me about €300 in total, which given the distance I have covered, I would say is pretty reasonable.
If I had longer notice to find a cheaper flight and if the weather had meant I could sleep in the car, the costs would have been closer to €200.
Have you seen a car you like for sale? Is it about 3 hours drive away? Don't you DARE post “I would buy this but..........
Just go and get it.
All too often there are people in the For Sale section posting “I would love the car, but its too far away”.
This thread is aimed a you guys. You know who you are.
Too far? Really? In Britain?
UK is not that big a place, and the chances are its only a few hours to the car you want. Sure, you might get unlucky, living in Cornwall and finding a car for sale in Scotland but its still not THAT far is it?
If its a car you really want, then surely distance should be no object? This is Retro Rides, where most purchases are done with the heart rather than the head. If you add up the exact cost of collection and rate that above your desire to own something you want, then perhaps you should have a look at www.economicallyviable-rides.com instead. Even if the car is a non-runner, you can trailer it....get it delivered....if you want it enough, you will find a way.
I'm writing this up to show that buying a car blind, over long distance is possible. Not only is it possible, its easy. Not only is it easy, its actually pretty good fun too. This isn't a one-off for me either....I tend to do this two or three times a year.
So, during some pre-Xmas ebay browsing I stumbled on something that caught my eye. Like I say, not fantastically Retro, but the kind of thing I have been thinking about for a while now. The auction was set to end on Xmas eve. It wasn't a fantastic ad (see Akku's tips on making a good ebay ad elsewhere on here) The description was brief, but covered the basics. The photos were quite small, washed out and obviously taken with a telephone. But....it mentioned everything I consider important and the guys feedback was good. He seems to sell a lot of cars regularly, so probably a part time trader on the side. One negative feedback mark for an issue I would consider minor, but all the other evaluations said the vehicles were as described and the chap was on the level. I put on my maximum bid in the last few seconds and waited.
The auction finished with me winning for £30 under my max bid, and that was that. I contacted the chap to arrange a collection date and he seemed easy to deal with, I paid a deposit by Paypal and he agreed to tax the car for me before I collected it so I could drive it straight away.
A few days into the new year, and its time to go. 6am. Time to get up and pack....
Wallet with monies – check. Necessary papers and documentation – check. Telephone and camera -check. TomTom – check. Sleeping bag – check. Done.
7 am, and my brother in law turned up for the first leg and we headed off in my daily driver – a 306 Hdi.
130K on the clock, no synchros on 3rd or 4th and an interior that rattles like a washing machine full of Lego. North for 40 minutes, then turn left picking up the autoroute to Toulouse. Destination Blagnac. We hit Toulouse at rush hour, but the peripherique chugs along steadily with few stops. An hour and 45 mins after leaving, we had arrived.
In an ideal world, I would now tell you how I was invited into the British Airways executive lounge, where I quaffed champagne with some supermodels while waiting to be called for my flight. Sadly, the reality contained a lot more orange.
Budget airlines are great. Well, no, budget airlines are curse word, but the concept is great. Easyjet, Ryanair and the like will take you several hundred miles and usually with a bit of hunting and advanced planning, cost significantly less than a train ticket for the same distance. I have travelled all over western Europe with these companies on tickets that very often cost me less than a tenner – I once even managed the Holy Grail of budget flying and managed to get one of Ryanairs £1 flights! On a train in UK, £10 hardly gets you beyond the end of the platform these days, so cheap flights are becoming more and more useful to us tat-hunters.
Today though, I had paid a bit more. The trip was quite late notice, and with the holiday season, prices are higher so in the end I paid around £60. Still, its not an outrageous amount is it?
I queued up to have my shoes x-rayed and then joined the scrum at the boarding gate. This is my one gripe about budget flying...it brings out the worst in people queueing. Why the scrum to get on? Sure, seats are not allocated, but the plane is not going to fly off without you – sit sit the hell down and wait eh?
So, I got onboard and settled down for leg two – an Airbus a320 series with a quadzillion miles on the clock For the first time on one of these flights, I found myself sitting next to a proper mental. He spent the whole trip talking to himself quite loudly and alternating between flicking furiously through the inflight magazine, pausing to rip the occasional page out, fold it up really small and tuck it into his pocket, and writing on a notepad in the smallest handwriting possible, it just looked like dots and squiggles packed solidly over the whole page. An hour and a half or so of staring at the back of the seat in front of me, and we touched down. Ah, Blighty.
I went to get my worthless foreign currency changed into real money (yeah, I know I could probably have had a better deal out of the terminal, but the clock was ticking) and I was straight on to leg three, departing immanently downstairs. A train. No, I don't know what type of train it was.
An hour of listening to the great British public talking on their phones later, and I arrived. Destination Littlehampton. The seller had agreed to meet me at the station and was good to his word.
This was the first time I saw the car. The reason I had travelled all this way.
I live in the southern part of France. No, not the classy Mediterranean bit, nor the cool skiing bit, it's the hillbilly farming bit. Its quite mountainous where I live and winters are harsh. Snow cuts me off from town for days on end and the roads are often hellish. Buying a front wheel drive cabriolet would be a really stupid thing to ….... oh.
;D
Actually, I already have a 4x4.....I have thought about a cabrio recently though with two possibilities in mind. Either buy cheaply in winter, clean it up and sell in the springtime for profit, or perhaps keep it for a season myself. Time will tell. Why did I travel all this way for a bloody Peugeot? Well, its a Left Hand Drive, so while it cost a bit above the going rate for a UK car, it cost a fair bit below the going rate for a French car, so even including travel and re-registration costs, I should be able to turn a profit on it. Not a fortune, but enough to be worthwhile. Besides, this whole adventure was something interesting to liven up an otherwise dull January.
A quick look round the car showed it to be as described, and we ran back to his storage unit, 5 minutes away. The electric windows were non functional, but this had been said in the ebay ad. The car ran fine otherwise so I handed over the notes and while he counted, I filled out the papers. A shake of the hands and off I went. The car was running on vapours so I went to the nearest petrol station and filled it up, pumped up the tyres and checked the fluids. I was a little alarmed to see some lumps of mayo on the dipstick, but figured it was possibly (hopefully) just condensation.
I stuck the GPS to the window and set off for leg 4 of the trip, destination Dover.
Its always exciting in a new car for the first time, taking it easy and listening out for strange noises, keeping a eye on the gauges, getting a feel for the handling and how it sits on the road. My first impressions were good. It pulled well, was quiet, ran straight and didnt pull to the side when braking. As confidence in the car grew or these first few miles, my speed increased and soon I was onto the M25, heading for the M20. The radio reception want great though.
I pulled over at the next service station just for a general check over and all was well. The fluid levels had not changed and the mayo had disappeared. I had noticed when I did the tyres that it was missing the spare wheel, which was a bit of a pisser to be honest, so I bought a can of tyreweld and hoped for the best.
I had planned this trip so that I would stop at a breakers yard on the route somewhere and pick up a gearbox for the estate car, but I had called round the breakers kindly listed by southern RR'ers in another thread and very few had one and those that did wanted big money, so I let the idea drop and headed straight to Dover. I stopped in Tescos as normal and stocked up on essentials that are not available in France...decent cheddar cheese, bacon, and bread rolls. Loaded up I went to the port.
It had been a blustery day (The landing approach in the plane had been quite alarming actually!) and the ferries were all to hell with delays and cancellations. I was in plenty of time for my booking, but things were running very late in the port. I went through and queued,
but had to wait a few hours to get on and set sail.
The crossing was smooth enough though,and I landed in Calais at about 10.30 local time.
I was tired. Normally on these trips I sleep in the car, hence the sleeping bag, either all night or if I feel up to it I drive non-stop, just grabbing an hour or two's kip in petrol stations as and when I need it. However, the weather was pretty stormy and with wind and rain lashing my soft-top, I knew sleep would be out of the question, so I rolled into Boulougne and got a hotel room.
In France a few years ago, hotels like this Etap hotel and the Formule1 chain were known to be quite basic, but nobody minded as they were cheap and ideal for overnight stops on the road. Sure, you wouldnt want to spend your summer holidays in one, but when you just want a bed for a couple of hours, they were perfect. Prices have shot up though, and this bloody prison cell costs €37 now. It used to be €22 a couple of years back. I didn't think it was still possible to buy televisions that small.
I bailed out while it was still dark, and after a quick check of fluids, I was on the way again.
Dawn broke as I drove and the vast emptiness of France became visible.
I swerved off the autoroutes soon though to avoid Paris at rush hour and took the western route down via Rouen and Chartres to Orleons. It makes a welcome change to be an a-roads for a while, breaking up the monotony of the motorways.
At Orleons though, it was time to re-join and make some proper progress. The A20 runs from there south, and is free for most of its length. Autoroutes in France are great....wide, smooth and quiet. People have good lane discipline and although they tend to tailgate a bit, driving is much more relaxed than in UK. The wee pug sat nicely at 120 - 130kph, and the kilometers rolled by.
As a side note....GPS devices that warn of speed camera locations have now become illegal in France. Radar detectors and jammers have always been very illegal, and the feds have detectors to detect your detector, but GPS warning of camera locations was ok until the beginning of this year. If your TomTom has this ability, you should now dis activate it before getting to France. If you are pulled and the cops find the system activated, you face a fine of about €130, seemingly.
Speeding is becoming more of an issue in France. Whenever I have done this trip, I usually never see a single copper, or perhaps one speed trap somewhere along the whole journey. This time, I saw 5 traps on the A20 alone. Always an unmarked car tucked into a service road with a device either on the car or on a tripod next to it. 2 motorbike police are often stationed ¼ mile or so further on to pull you over and fine you on the spot. Sarkozy is having a serious clamp-down on speeding and other driving offences, fines have risen sharply and it would seem that the days of a foot-to-the-floor blast across France are a thing of the past.
Lunch was had on the move. Sweaty triangular petrol station sandwiches are my staple diet on these trips.
As the miles rolled by, you soon realise that France is a massive place, and very thinly populated compared to UK. Frankly, the vast majority of the trip is boring as hell, with little to see.
The car ran faultlessly apart from the passenger window vibrating open every hundred km or so.
With the motor non-functional, I had to shove it back up by hand. Eventually, I bought a roll of tank tape and bodged it up.
The non-functioning windows proved a hassle at the toll booths, leaving me having to get out of the car each time as the doors were too long to open next to the both and lean out of to reach the machine.
Off the autoroute at Montauban, and I was on the last stretch. 100Km of A-road and dual carriageway, then the final 50km to my wee village through twisty backroads.
I got home at about 6pm. I had zero'd the counter when I picked it up and its now at 1305. I used about 95 litres of fuel, so that works out at around 7.3l/100km or a tad under 39mpg. Not bad!
Back home and in the cold(very cold) light of day, I am very happy with the car. It runs really well, with hardly any scuttle-shake and rattles. Actually, it runs better than the estae car and is more comfortable too. The interior now stinks of unwashed me and empty sandwich packets, but the whole car will get my usual deep clean as soon as I have the time.
The windows obviously need looking at....its just the doors, the wee rear windows are fine so probably the usual Peugeot fault of broken wires where they pass between a-post and door. It needs a head unit, which I will have to buy. I have an amp, sub and some speakers, which have been lying in the garage for ages. I reckon I will ICE this car up a bit, as it will not be used as my work vehicle.
So thats it. Flights, train, fuel, ferry, hotel and food cost me about €300 in total, which given the distance I have covered, I would say is pretty reasonable.
If I had longer notice to find a cheaper flight and if the weather had meant I could sleep in the car, the costs would have been closer to €200.
Have you seen a car you like for sale? Is it about 3 hours drive away? Don't you DARE post “I would buy this but..........
Just go and get it.
