The Jolly Buffoon's Guide to Cars

Last night, down the pub, Matt's girlfriend Laura mentioned her search for a new car had almost ended with her getting a Porsche. At this point we all made disparaging noises, took deep intakes of air and sucked our teeth mainly because none of us like Porsches but also it would be a massive bounding leap from the small Toyota Yaris she drives at the moment. Thoroughly down heartened by all this Laura muttered that she quite fancied the new Fiat 500 Arbarth which I quite like. However before I could praise and encourage her Ben launched a scathing attack on the Italian manufacturer. 

Although Ben maybe right about Fiat's frankly appalling past record on reliability and their dealers being a bunch of thieving sharks I still think there is hope and Ben is a terribly wrong. Ben is a bad man he beats up ginger kids and steals sweets from babies and stuff...

Caught in the act! Ben stealing some ginger kid's dinner.

He is also an engineer who worships at the alter of V-tec and owns one of the car nerd's favourites; a Honda Prelude. He loves the twin cam engine and gets excited over the four wheel steering (ok so that is pretty cool) but fortunately for the rest of us he isn't this tiresome most of the time. Although he respects the Japanese for their ingenuity and reliability he bulks at ruthlessly efficient German enginnering, you can see the burning hatred in his eyes when Matt mentions his uber saloon BMW 3 series and this means his views on Fiat are not as rational as he likes them to appear. In my opinion Laura should go for the Fiat 500 Arbarth if she likes it and take a chance with the pitfalls that can come with Italian automobile ownership.

Being the Jolly Buffoon I reject everyone else's view of reality and substitute it with my own that's why I own the Graphite Pig. For those that don't know my car it is an example of the awesome Volvo 240. This bastion of the middle class has a leather interior (despite Ben's claims to the contrary) with heated front seats and electric windows, mirrors and aerial which is pretty good for a car made just over 20 years ago. I believe that if you want a car on a tight budget look for an underated classic like mine. The Volvo brand in the past had a poor image amongst the hip and cool and now no one wants these boxy classics which are well known for being long lived (a Volvo holds the record for the highest mileage of any car in the world) and being executive motors are quite comfortable.

A slightly modified Volvo 240 dispelling the myth that they're shit.

Large Rovers (see Nordschleife or bust post further down) are dirt cheap because everyone says they're unreliable and parts availability is poor. Whilst reliability wasn't Rover's strongest suit we should remember that Darwin's theory that the strongest survive means that the crap ones will mostly have been scraped by now.

Don't want an Uber saloon? Look to older skoda models which seems to have a strong following of music teachers and piano tuners. Good, solid, if a little dull motors which will get you there just not in style. If you want something sporty and you have roughly a grand get yourself one of these classic cheese wedges...

Yes you guessed it it's a Triumph TR7 and this working example is currently at £820 on ebay. Bargain! Anyway I've got to finish up here as I've recieved reports that there is sound Volvo 240 Torslanda estate in red up for sale and as we all know RED CARS GO FASTA! Until next time when I may own two cars *sigh* toddleroo.