Just proved my point. What's the difference between a 60's AZAM and a late 80s car to someone who knows nothing about them?

An AZAM would be bangtidy.

In a way my gripe is with the poor steel quality not the design. The 2cv design is undisputedly classic, it can't not be. The design is one of the reasons I bought my first 2cv ten years ago. Back then I liked the idea of driving a 'classic' car albeit of recent manufacture. Ten years ago 2cv's were seen as anachronisms certainly, but not as classics.

I understand that the earlier cars were of much better build quality. The blue 1960's AZAM in the link from James for example the one that sold for £3700, that was far and away the better car of the two yet some muppet paid over five grand for the 1980's bling car instead. This is where my head starts spinning. The AZAM was similar to this one, and definitely a classic.


http://www.leboncoin.fr/voitures/171624284.htm?ca=6_s

If I had the choice I would like a Ripple, but then I don't want less than 602cc's which rules them out. Later cars are faster of course and (were) cheaper to buy, but not as well made. It's this lack of quality that is finally beginning to gnaw at me, my car will rust again, and all that hard work will be for nought. I've seen old 2cv's left standing in French fields for decades that still looked pretty solid, yet later cars like mine dissolve as nightmarishly as a tab of acid.

All this brings me to my next observation. It's a purely personal one - but I want to own something of a hybrid, which means I'd be up for a 602'd ripple. I've though of a couple of non-Citroen projects too, both entail buying a relatively old but cheap classic and uprating them by putting in the larger engine and brakes from its bigger brothers. My love of classic cars means that I wouldn't ever destroy an original survivor to achieve this, but there are lots of old cars out there that are incomplete, or 'awaiting restoration', and buying one of those appeals to me.

I want to create stuff not buy it, and with the ever increasing prices of the A series vehicles they are quickly moving out of range. Now I'm thinking of fitting old Austin A40's with the later Marina 1800 engine, or how about an old Standard ten with a triumph Vitesse 6 squeezed in there? It's not customising as such, just the equivalent of 602-ing a ripple - but for much less money. I just don't buy into 'expensive' classics - literally.

It's in the painting and upholstering part that I get my kicks, so to see the car finished to how I envisaged then it seems to me like 'job done'. There's only my shaky finances and eventful personal life preventing me from taking on another project. I might be on my own at the moment in thinking that this is the last hurrah for classics anyway, so all you UK doubting Thomas's watch for ever more stringent controls of just what you can and can't run on the road very shortly.

For me, largely because I've convinced myself of it, it's now or never time, I need to enjoy myself by doing these things while we are still allowed to. It's got to the stage that some today might pay a fortune for a car that they won't be allowed to drive in their own period of ownership.

Okaaaaaay. If that's what you want to do, just be careful you don't burn your man sausage on the exhaust.




I understand your feeling there, but with a sizeable number of MPs being classic car owners/enthusiasts (There's actually a Parliamentary classic car club), I'm fairly sure they'll look after their "interests".

Why then, have they let the DVLA Fkuck up the engine change system, so you have to prove where you got the engine from, which messes up 602ing a ripple dropping an 1800 in to an A35 and all sorts of stuff like that?
I dislike the government.

They haven't though. Change the engine number from the ripple engine to your 602 and bingo, problem solved.

Would your insurance company notice when some dopey bastard rear ends you?

When I changed Belinda's engine from 1200 back to 602, the DVLA told me it wasn't a problem changing up in their eyes, but it would be changing down, if it put your car in a different tax class. Even then, I was able to produce a "receipt" - in effect, a mucky hand written note saying that £XX.XX was paid on a certain date for a 602cc engine (number ########) through ebay with 2 signatures on it.

Simple.

I think it will be more a case of type approval becoming ever more stringent. A modified car will be seen as a custom, or a 'non standard road vehicle' which will invite all kinds of scrutinies by folks not interested in approving it.

Added to this the increasing fervour of the climatists will lead to the introduction of newer and tighter emission controls. Once the manufacturers have sorted out theirs, it'll be our turn. Driving a petrol engined vehicle on the road in fifteen or twenty years time will be as welcome as a turd in a swimming pool.

Possibly the worst case scenario of all, which could easily happen is war. Look at Egypt today, the middle east is unstable. Anyone that remembers the Suez crisis of '56, or the oil shortage of '73 will know how quickly the taps can be shut off, and the resultant chaos that ensues over here. That's why I think it madness to pay huge sums of money for old cars, if all of a sudden you can't drive them any more what would you do with them?

This happened not long ago. In 1977 I paid £880 for a two year old Kawasaki 250cc motorcycle. Back then there was no CBT or molly-coddling lessons, you just bought your bike, stuck on L-plates and rode off to your death. Those that survived long enough to pass their test carried on biking by buying a bigger machine, while the original 250cc bike went to a new learner, and the cycle ( ) repeated itself.

What happened next is the killer. The government of the day decided that all learners be restricted to 125cc machines. This meant two things for all those young chaps that had just bought a 250cc bike at vast expense.

1/ They couldn't ride it anymore.

2/ They couldn't sell it either.

Think about it. Your the owner of a 250cc bike that you took out on Hire purchase over three years. Six months to one year in the government bans you from riding it, so you need to sell it and buy a 125cc bike instead.

Your hire purchase agreement doesn't allow you to sell it as you don't own it yet, but it's no use to you and you need the cash in order to buy a bike to ride to work. The next problem is who do you sell it too? Bikers eligible to ride 250cc machines wouldn't want it, they had passed their test on one and moved on to bigger and better bikes, while the usual learner market that used to buy up the cast-off's was now gone. You were stuffed!

Consequently, in the rush to get rid of 250cc machines the prices collapsed. I paid £125.00 for a one year old Kawasaki 250 in 1984, compare that to the original one I bought a few years earlier. Did the government compensate people for their loss? Did they bollocks.

The same happened years later in 1997 when handguns were banned after the Dunblain shooting. At the time I had a Sig-Saur 228 semi-automatic pistol, and a 5 inch 357 Smith and Wesson with custom Pachmyre hand-grips and a lightened trigger action. Those guns cost me a total of £1200, plus the cabinet to hold them at another £180. Compensation? £200 for the lot, nothing for the costly ammunition, nothing for the cabinet, expensive leather holsters, or ammunition press.

Bent over and brutally fuc*ed once again by her majesty's government - they love it.

Which is why I say don't get caught up in believing this or that old car is 'worth' so and so much, because it isn't. It's worth how much it is worth to you, all the rest is hype.

Or how much someone else will actually give you for it, the same as everything -shares, houses, gold etc.