Kettle on... time for some tall tales from the PC workshop
Danny celebrates his brilliant budget winter fleet
EXOTICA! 'It's my very own Festival of the Unexceptional. I am living the Nineties dream.'
Now that winter has bitten (and bitten hard) I have rested the older members of my classic menagerie and focused on the younger guns. The Triumph 2000 and Jensen Interceptor are rustproofed and perfectly capable, but I thought it wise to hand the baton over for the darkest months. While the GTV did the showboating in Cumbria and Yorkshire (see Team Adventure, p26), it has been the Vectra SRi 150 that has been my real winter warmer. It has performed faultlessly over 3500 hard winter miles, whether it be towing project cars or moving shopping/ car parts/furniture/ kids or dogs. It has been huge fun too, fast fun actually, with its 2.2-litre twin cam engine providing 144 eager horses.
It has been comfortable, with a superb heater that comes on strong after only a couple of minutes. All in all, it’s been way more than a dependable workhorse.
There were a few issues. The rear tailgate wiper has a short and blows a fuse every time I forget it doesn’t work. The engine light is on, and has been ever since I fitted an aftermarket coil pack (anyone have a spare GM item?), but there’s no dulling of performance or fuel economy, which has remained at a consistent average of 34mpg since I started using the car. It needs tyres now and the headlights could do with a polish, but as a car, a real-world family bus, it has been superb.
The magic number
But there are three others in the fleet chomping at the bit to impress and my trio of mid-sized Nineties family wagons (Carisma, Civic and 306) are all queuing for front line use after rectification work. My Dutch-built (Born in Born) Mitsubishi Carisma had to fight hard to gain its MOT after emissions woes almost caused me to throw in the towel.
It is a 1.8 with a GDI (Gasoline Direct Injection) engine, the first mass produced car ever to be fitted with such a unit and, as anyone who has owned one for any length of time will tell you, these lumps have a reputation for ‘coking up’ around the valves
