It's been a busy time of late at Jon towers, namely starting some casual work which required some training, then a visit from some UK friends before a slight overlap of visiting parents, too. Therefore, the absolute best time to contemplate buying some new scat. Mrs_Jon has never really gelled with our pool car, the 505 (better know as the turd) though it's gone down well with visiting friends and family and so has served its purpose well. I'd had a feeling for a while that it'd be best to move it on whilst it's still a working car but laziness and complacency overruled this and it remained in the driveway, adding oil to the ever-increasing filthy patch at its parking spot. Here's the turd polished in preparation for sale:
The general idea was to replace it with:
- something newer
- similar in size or larger
- more common
- in better condition.
After all, it's a pool car and so things like power steering for guests used to moderns along with a central locking system that actually works outweigh the more interesting elements which attract me to new motors. What actually happened was that the car of my dreams (no, really) became available again after I narrowly missed getting it a few months back so I bought that instead. The only thing vaguely correlating to the criteria above are that it's only 27 rather than 29 years old.....
GR8* paint work couldn't even deter me. I guess viewing it in the dark and having already considered it bought before arriving to view it put paid to that. It was for sale up in Auckland and the agenda on the day I bought it was to drop my mates off at the airport, pick up my parents and buy a car. Naturally, the day started with a lie-in, then a couple of hours kayaking, followed by a mad-cap rush to do everything else, including undertaking the 180km trip north to Auckland on a Friday afternoon. Since my mates flew out very early on Saturday morning (and we wanted to spend as much time with them as possible) yet my parents wanted picking up in central Auckland around tea time, we all met up together for a meal at their hotel. Buying a car suddenly became a very sensible thing to do, as I'd unwittingly* created a situation whereby there were too many people to fit in to one car.
I'd been in contact with the seller since November, when he'd bought the car. You could say that I'd almost badgered him in to offering me first refusal should he sell, which to his credit he duly did. He probably knew he had me hooked, since I'd let slip to him how long I'd wanted one (16 years!) so it was hardly a difficult sale, though one I wasn't truly over the moon with, mostly because it looked like this:
Nice paint job on the rear door there. The other side is only slightly less crap.
In case you're wondering, the issue wasn't that it's a Citroen Visa GTi, rather that it's a very scruffy and rather smelly one, with plenty of small niggles and also a bit of rust. Despite all that, I really don't think I regret it!