Well,
Given the unanimous scorn poured upon me from a great height over my planned purchase of a lovely 1983 Austin Maestro, may I put the following alternative to the room?
tinyurl.com/6qe32gv
Go on, do your worst. I can take it :-)
Mods - apologies if I should just have appended this to the original thread. I created a new one simply because it was a different car, if you see what I mean?
Last edited by: Badwolf on Wed 29 Feb 12 at 23:44
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Superb cars. We had an 86 1.6L for a while. Unbelievably rapid for a sober looking shopping hatchback, sipped fuel, and utterly reliable apart from a dicky thermostat. Unfortunately, like most of them, it was stolen and vandalised so extensively that the insurers wrote it off.
I still want a GTE 16v in this shape to this day. :-)
Last edited by: DP on Wed 29 Feb 12 at 23:49
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£1250 for an F plate Astra. Having a laugh aren't they?
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We had a 8v 2.0 GTE stunningly fast - but worrisome on some parts of town.....spin its front wheels in third gear.
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A mate had one as a company car once. While I couldn't touch him in a straight line, he couldn't compete with me at all on the wiggly bits.
I drove a Skoda 130 Rapid at the time, which tells you everything you need to know about Astra handling.....
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Those Skodas handled remarkably well.
Unequal length, double wishbone, front suspension. Semi-trailing arm rear. The same as 911s at the time IIRC.
They did seem to have the least torsional stiffness of any car I've ever driven, you could see the things twisting on uneven surfaces. Perhaps it helped the handling?
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>> £1250 for an F plate Astra. Having a laugh aren't they?
Yes, they are. I wouldn't pay anywhere near that. The tricky part is trying to persuade the seller that they are living in ga-ga-land...
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Your paying for that which you cant easily replicate - looks like a nice car and frankly, you could spend much less on a car and end up spending for more than £1200 quid after you patch up an apparent 'bargin'.
80's stuff is on the rise now as its getting scarce, if you want a bargin prices you need the 90's stuff, but if you want 80's, ya gotta pay the higher values or buy a cheap heap and spend the next year filling in holes etc. Choices choices.
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That car can't be far from me, I live just east of the Mersey from Sale. The registration plate seems familiar so I have a feeling I might have seen it on the road before although with that mileage it would not have been very often!
Looks like a decent car but all the rubber bits will most likely need replacing including the tyres as there is a danger because they are legal they get left.
I think cars like this are now too old to be a credible banger and are only really suitable for cheap classic motoring with the view to semi restoration. E.g new tyres, bushes, belts etc.
If I was looking at bargain Astra I would pick out a genuine early model type F, maybe a 1994 one with the airbag but the 8v engine. Should still get very good reliability (ok it has a cat but they can be cheap to replace on popular models) but also feel a bit more modern.
Stu, I have seen a Proton MPI if you're bored of the mail order bride car :)
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They were the best of the bunch at the time, half decent build quality, good modern engines (Family II) - there's a plug under the bonnet to change it to unleaded petrol. Good performance for its size. Light years ahead of that horrible Maestro.
Has four new tyres
Last edited by: R.P. on Thu 1 Mar 12 at 07:32
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Rattle, your psychic right?
Ive been eyeing up a Proton Impian, not quite an MPI but very close - would ya mind not bugging me haus :-)
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And should it ever need a clutch, it takes 30 minutes, and I still have the tools :-)
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Deathtraps on wheels..
Last edited by: madf on Thu 1 Mar 12 at 09:28
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I was thinking that mad f, I'd rather have the Miracle Maestro as a runabout - simple to work on as well.
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>> Deathtraps on wheels..
>>
That's right. lethal cars - should never have been allowed.
That's why nobody survived the 80's.
Oh.... most did.
Any vehicle, properly looked after shouldn't be a 'deathtrap'
If you mean they weren't stacked full of safety devices, then I'll agree - but then again, if driven properly, and within their design envelope, there is no reason they would be involved in a serious accident.
(unless hit by some idiot not driving properly etc......)
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More so than anything else from that era, Madf? I had a basic Escort of that vintage; it weighed 830kg empty, and I was fortunate that the biggest thing it hit in the four years I kept it was a roe deer, and that came off second best. Anything bigger might have been seriously unpleasant.
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>> £1250 for an F plate Astra. Having a laugh aren't they?
One of my friends paid 1200 quid for an F plate Astra, and we heaped scorn upon him for shelling out well over the odds for a decidedly old-shape, old-tech car.
In 1997 :-)
Last edited by: Dave_TDCi on Thu 1 Mar 12 at 17:06
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>> £1250 for an F plate Astra. Having a laugh aren't they?
>>
A poverty spec. F plate Astra at that. Could get a much newer nice Vectra* CDX for less than that.
* yeah, I know, many folk wouldn't put 'nice' and 'Vectra' in the same sentence ;-)
I don't think it's even got a clock...
Last edited by: spamcan61 on Thu 1 Mar 12 at 19:12
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I had what must have been one of the last of these on a '91 J plate. A 1.6L.
It was great for a 50 mile commute, sipped fuel but the handling was, ahem, interesting in the wet.
It gave new meaning to understeer, nosteer would have more accurate.
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I don't make that comment lightly. No doubt they were no better or worse than any car of their era.
But hidden rust inside sills, and A,B and C posts will have removed structural integrity from the safety cage and frankly if you hit anything hard and sold at any speed your seatbelt anchorages may give way before you are crushed to death..
It's all very well driving a 30 year old Mercedes E class: lots of thick metal and a long bonnet and big engine to take any crash impact. An Astra? Nothing.
And remember there are muppets driving who gape at old cars, forget to brake and hit you.
(Happened to me in a Lotus Elan - fortunately at 2 mph so no damage).
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I had one of them and a 1.3L as well.
75BHP from that engine was a gem !
Low weight as well not like today's safety lard on the roads.
I hear 120mph was achievable !
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(a) It's fugly.
(b) It's four hundred quids worth, max.
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Never understood why it's referred to as the Astra E.
It was more commonly known as the Mk2 Astra.
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I asked about this a while ago. Aren't there three generations of RWD Kadetts to be taken into Konsideration?
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If it is as genuine, straight, and low mileage as advertised, I actually don't think it is a lot of money. This car must be one of a literal handful in existence with this mileage and in this condition anywhere in the UK, if not Europe as a whole.
Can only go up in value as well if its condition is maintained.
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Wonderful car - my brother-in-law ran a 1987 one from new and couldn't break it, which is amazing! You'll be welcomed over on the Vauxhall Opel Drivers Club website. www.vodc.co.uk/ It could do with some attention from a rustproofer though to keep it in this condition if you intend to use it all year round. The cost of this will be offset by cheap running costs for years to come. E.g. www.rustmaster.co.uk/index_51625.htm or www.before-n-after.co.uk/
Last edited by: Victorbox on Thu 1 Mar 12 at 14:54
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The rear arches are the major weak point in terms of rust, as they really trap the crud. My mate's GTE 16v was in lovely general condition at 6 yrs old, but was just starting to bubble up.
Joyriders generally dealt with mk2 Astras before the rust became terminal though. :-( When I was living in Oxford in the early 90's, it was actually very rare to see one without a mangled, twisted drivers door lock.
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>> in the early 90's, it was actually very rare to see one without a mangled, twisted drivers door lock
That would be my main concern with buying a MkII Astra now.
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I found removing the rotor arm a very cheap 100% effective immobiliser on my Cavalier Mk2s.
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My wife had a black 1.2 one of those Astras when I first met her. It did seem remarkably fast when she was driving anyway.
Her sister had bought it new, run it for a year or so and then rolled it. Sister didn't want it back after it was repaired so my wife bought it from her. She ran it for a while until she in turn rolled it. Anyhow, it was fixed again and she had it for years until it was stolen, guess what, the thieves rolled it !
The insurance didn't bother to fix it that time.
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much better than a maestro. good cars in their time thos astras
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Now, this floats my boat even more than this Astra, or the Maestro:
bit.ly/zMzIJ6
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He's not gonna be as cheap as the Maestro to fix if he goes wrong, like. (not by a long chalk!)
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Now that is a little cracker.
Something dont quite look right about the mileage in the speedo tho - looks clocked.
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I take it you're from one of the smaller breeds of wolf, BW. A working friend in my student days had a green Acclaim. He was about 5'3"; I couldn't even get into it.
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>> Something dont quite look right about the mileage in the speedo tho - looks clocked.
>>
>>
Clocked or not, <600 miles a year ? Mile and a half a day ?. It's not impossible that on that part of the Fylde, the population profile being what it is, that somebody retired very early, used it to pop out for a paper once a day and its up for sale after they have popped their clogs. After that sort of usage pattern, having had a genuine low mileage car from an elderly user myself, I'm surprised its in such good nick, but I stll wouldn't touch it with the proverbial
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Could we just just back up a little here Badwolf? Run the brief by us again please. Would it be fair to assume that the objective is to obtain a car for light daily use, hopefully fairly reliably so at a bargain basement price? Is there a concurrent agenda of finding something which might be regarded as a classic or is it purely a budget transport solution you are seeking?
If you want to expand a little I'm sure there's a few of us here who take such quests seriously enough and with great enthusiasm to help !
The answer in the end will of course be "Mondeo" but let's have some fun getting there. It's sort of our "Mornington Crescent" really isn't it?
Don't let anyone talk you into any of those Dai-hoharry-protodua-bishi jobbies. You're still too young for that malarky.
:-)
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Surely if you were of a mind to own something of this vintage, a MK1 Golf would be order of the day?
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This was a car that Vauxhall very nearly got right.
There were some very silly mistakes which ruined it.
One of the most glaring was that most of the Belmonts which were made around this time had a 2" gap in the sealant in the middle of the top edge of the rear window - they all leaked in.
Prior to 1990 model year, the cams were made of cheese. Replacxing them was almost a routine task.
The body wasn't quite stiff enough to keep the dashboard and interior trim quiet.
The engines had a few detail problems - the heat from the exhaust would fry the HT leads and spark plug heat shields. (I notice the car in the add has bare HT leads goingf to the plugs - they won't last long!) Eventually, this was fixed by using a thick metal tube to protect the HT lead's connection to the plug.
Vacuum advance uits in the distributor, and the advance springs in there would fail frequently. For a while, the economy diaphragms in the carb didn't have the drilling completed properly - the cars were running rich when they should have weakened off for cruise.
Fuel pumps, cam cover gaskets, and CV gaiters were also frequent failures.
But, compared with other similar cars of the time, they were good cars for the money.
Last edited by: Number_Cruncher on Sat 3 Mar 12 at 23:40
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“ Would it be fair to assume that the objective is to obtain a car for light daily use, hopefully fairly reliably so at a bargain basement price?”
Spot on, Humph.
“Is there a concurrent agenda of finding something which might be regarded as a classic?”
Again, spot on.
“If you want to expand a little I'm sure there's a few of us here who take such quests seriously enough and with great enthusiasm to help !”
Well, I have a very soft spot for normal, work-a-day cars from the early eighties. I have enough mechanical knowledge to carry out a service on such a car, but anything else would have to be trusted to a Man Who Knows.
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Then the answer is......
Drum roll....
Sierra !
:-)
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>> Sierra !
Yep i'd agree with that seriously.
Especially with the 2.3 Diesel plucked straight from the Peugeot 504, pity they didn't stick the turbo on it though, OHV all cast iron engine, simpler than an A or B series to work on, economical and virtually indestructible.
The last Ford made that needed only a basic tool kit and could be diagnosed and repaired by anyone.
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>> >> Sierra !
>>
>> Yep i'd agree with that seriously.
>>
>> Especially with the 2.3 Diesel plucked straight from the Peugeot 504, pity they didn't stick
>> the turbo on it though, OHV all cast iron engine, simpler than an A or
>> B series to work on, economical and virtually indestructible.
>>
>> The last Ford made that needed only a basic tool kit and could be diagnosed
>> and repaired by anyone.
>>
As with most modern relaible cars.. any fool can service and fettle them with simple tools.
(An OBD2 reader with codes in English is so simple an 8 year old could use one).
I exclude of course the rubbish made by the French...
Last edited by: madf on Mon 5 Mar 12 at 10:55
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>> (An OBD2 reader with codes in English is so simple an 8 year old could
>> use one).
Trouble is there's never an 8 year old about when you need one.
>>I exclude of course the rubbish made by the French..<<
Like the Yaris?...;)
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Vauxhall Astra E - Am I Bonkers II - The Revenge - DP
