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Test driving, but never buying
Carl Benz’s wife Bertha is credited with the world’s first test drive. Without the “father of the automobile” knowing, she and their 2 sons drove to see her mother.
As drive.com.au reports, the journey was to prove to Carl the car could be commercially viable. And we can also thank Bertha for standard brake pads!
I’ve owned dozens of cars, but I’ve test driven dozens more. There are many reasons why I didn’t buy a particular car.
In the mid-90s, Hey Hey it’s Saturday was still playing and the show made a big deal of the new Nissan Micra. I think Pluckaduck might have driven one around the studio. I was in the market for a new car (BK, or “before kids”) so I went to the Moorooka Nissan dealer and asked to test drive the poverty pack 3-door.
The test drive began with the salesman driving and literally throwing the car through turns, to demonstrate its similarity to the Mini “wheel at each corner” philosophy. When it came time for me to take the wheel, I was a bit more reserved. However, I didn’t buy – the trade-in may have been the problem.
Also in the 90s, the late 90s after I’d bought a SEAT Ibiza, I looked at trading it in on a just-released Mitsubishi Lancer 3-door. This model had vinyl seats, plastic door trims, unpainted bumpers and not much else. The salesman at the Mt Gravatt dealer directed me to drive up Mt Gravatt itself, which I did as he extolled the virtues of the “anti-submarining” seats and drop-away engine mounts in an accident – things I’m 99% sure the SEAT already had.
The car did drive reasonably well, but the trade-in on my SEAT was truly awful. This was the first time I’d heard a salesman say my car didn’t “book well”, which I’m now presuming was a reference to car value guide Redbook. So, the SEAT stayed with me and got a canvas sunroof.
In 2008, as Beijing hosted the Olympics, I test drove a car I’d always wanted to experience, purely based on the chutzpah of the Proton chief who said it would sell well (at an inexplicably high price). The Proton’s problems were admittedly bigger than the model name – Waja – but it was fitted with leather seats and Lotus fettling, so I thought it was worth a look, especially at the rock bottom prices the circa 2000 models were fetching.
I turned up at the Moorooka dealer (the place with cars on dirt/road base that sold all the penny dreadfuls) and they got the Waja out for me. I’d only gone a few hundred metres up the road when I was stopped by a police roadside breath testing unit.
I was as sober as a judge (of cars) so I had no worries there. But just as I was about to drive off, an older copper stepped forward to issue me a ticket for driving with the windscreen view “obscured”: I’d allowed the car yard to leave the $5,990 price and features written on the glass. No amount of assurances that I could easily see enough to drive would persuade him. I called the yard and they sent a guy up to scrape off the paint texta. There was no offer from the yard to pay my fine. The test drive ended there.
In 2011, the opportunity/need to buy a new-ish car surfaced on a change of job, so I test drove a new Nissan Micra and a Holden Barina Spark – both around a $15,000 purchase, on-road. I also test drove a Chinese-made Chery J1, but the less said about that, the better.
The Micra drove well for a 3-cylinder light vehicle, however my wife said it was an “old lady’s car” – even in the gold colour I liked, with a roof spoiler – so that option went out the window. Then I went to the local Holden dealer to try out the new model I’d seen launched: the Barina Spark. At the time I didn’t realise it was the modern version of the Daewoo Matiz, sold by Holden under their dubious reselling of Korean cars. With its Italian styling and quirky engine I didn’t mind the Matiz – and with a motorcycle-inspired dash on the Spark, it also looked like a fun car to own (and you know I like micro-cars).
However a test drive soon showed up its shortcomings: in the engine and the driver’s seat. I didn’t expect the Spark to be a bright spark in performance, but it didn’t have much to work with at all, much like the Chery had seemed all-noise-and-no-action. The Micra had been a much better drive. Plus, my long legs were left hanging off the Spark’s seat, unsupported like sitting on a ledge. So that purchase didn’t happen and I bought a 5-year-old Citroen C4 which had huge amounts of leather trim and had seen huge depreciation.
I often look for cars via price, rather than model. That’s how eBay informed me around 2017 that a Chrysler LeBaron convertible was for sale, unregistered, at a Nambour dealer, for around $1500. This car wasn’t just interesting because it was American – someone had spent a small fortune on it, converting it to right-hand-drive. The roof worked and it ran just fine.
One strange result of the drive-side conversion was that the passenger now had heaps of controls for their electric seat plus bonus buttons for the power windows, while the (non-factory side) “driver” had very few controls to play with. The dealer said they just wanted enough to cover what they’d paid at auction, hence the keen price. Due to it being so rare, I chickened out on buying it – even though an internet search showed it was worth 2 or 3 times as much. Regrets, I’ve had a few.
There are 8 million stories in the naked city – these have been some of them. In used cars sold privately, you can add in test drives of an 80s Ford Meteor, Mazda 121, 90s Volkswagen Passat, Daihatsu Sirion, Mercedes A-class, Holden Astra convertible, Land Rover Freelander and even an early 90s Holden Commodore (long before they were collectible).. plus fresh checks on cars I’ve (previously or subsequently) owned, like the Suzuki Mighty Boy, FSM Niki, Daihatsu Copen, Ford Ka, Range Rover and Toyota Corolla Seca.
Bertha Benz took the first test drive – I don’t think I’ve had my last.
50 days of sitting still – will it start?
I’ll pay you, in cars..
A character in the old Popeye stories, Wimpy, would try to con others into buying his meal, saying “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”.
That was the promise of a little payment that would not be kept. However, a bigger promise that was kept involved a strange little Eastern Bloc car that went on sale in Australia in 1989, which was apparently supplied here as payment for services to the Polish government.
That car was the FSM Niki 650 – and I’ve now owned 3 of these Polish-built Fiat-licenced 1972-designed cars, known in Europe as the PolskiFiat 126p. They have a tiny 2-cylinder air-cooled engine in the back – an arrangement like the VW Bug.
I got to hear about the payment in cars when I went to a Niki graveyard in Brisbane to scavenge some parts from a group of Nikis before they’re scrapped in a few months.
They’re all owned by Fiat mechanic Angelo from APF Motors – he used to run the Autostrada dealership in Macgregor to sell them new.
He says the white one above was the car they used to get Australian Design Rules (ADR) approval in 1988. Angelo pointed out that it has slightly smaller side vents. The ADRs on the cars went OK, but required the plastic bumpers.
Angelo says Nikis were around $3,500 landed here – and sold for $7,990 as Australia’s lowest priced car. There were plenty of red and white ones imported, but only a handful of blue ones.
He says the importer, E. Kandt of Queensland, was a woman working for the Polish government here, and getting paid in cars!
Apparently she couldn’t call them Fiat in the Aussie motor marketplace due to legal issues (even though Fiat wasn’t selling here then), so went with the Polish manufacturer FSM and called the car after her nickname, “Niki”.
A “Niki” badge was among the items I picked up today at the wrecking yard. Australia was the only place in the world where you’d find this model name on sale. I also grabbed some Niki-branded headlight protectors.
I paid Angelo for the parts, and it’s not even Tuesday.
Why owning a SAAB 9-3 will make you happy
It’s goodbye to the 2006 SAAB 9-3 with plenty of car memories – if only I could remember!
International Car of Mystery – with bullets, baby!
Is it possible somebody died in your car? Peter Grove replies, “possible? Possible.”
The north Brisbane retiree is the owner of a 1969 Rover 2000 TC, which left the factory the year after the Steve McQueen movie “Bullitt” gave us one of the most exciting car chases in film history, with a Ford Mustang and Dodge Charger slamming the streets of San Francisco.
However, Peter’s British car – with a clever bolt-on body design and a 2-litre twin carb engine – could arguably suit the “bullet” nickname more than Steve McQueen’s ride: because it has 2 bullet holes, which begin at the front driver’s side and finish at the rear passenger wheel arch.
Peter bought the car on the internet in 2011 and decided to have some rust looked after, around 3 years later. The lifetime engineer stripped the car of body panels and interior in his own homemade “rotisserie” before sending off the skeleton to the body shop. And that’s when his classic car turned into a conundrum.
“I got a phone call from the people doing this and they said ‘umm, got a slight problem. I think you’d better come down and have a look’,” he said.
“When I got down there, somewhere they had got hold of some police tape, taped it off. All part of a bit of a gag on their behalf. They put this dowel rod in (to the bullet holes in the rear wheel arch).”
“It came back, straight through about where the driver’s head would be,” he said. “The trim on the two seats was different to the back seat, so I think it’s been redone.”
I put it to Peter: “It is possible somebody died in the car.”
He replied: “Possible? Possible. But there is no other damage – superficial damage – around the car. If that had happened I’d expect it may have gone off the road, rolled over, you would have found major structural damage. There wasn’t any.”
I asked, “so that doesn’t worry you?”
“No, you can’t confirm it, it is just one of those things.”
There were two holes in the rear wheel arch, and the dowels provided evidence that their journey had begun through the front windscreen, fired from some height. The body shop also found lots of glass fragments in the heater core area under the windscreen.
The exit point was under the rear passenger wheel arch, so the bullets missed the wheel rim and tyre.
With the trajectory solved, the bigger question was how a Rover gets a couple of bullets, obviously aimed at the driver?
Peter already knew from the car’s books that the Rover’s first owner was in Belgrade (Beograd), Yugoslavia, with a notation that the person’s address is “Austral. Embassy”. The first ‘free’ service record makes reference to “authorised services in Yugoslavia”.
“I know the car was sold direct to a person. Right hand drive (in Belgrade) is not the norm,” he explained. “This would be ideal for driving over there. The driver could get out very quick and open the back door, straight on the side the passenger would get out onto the pavement.”
At the time, Yugoslavia was known as the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”. But just when you think perhaps some European Cold War spy games could be behind the bullets, the action moves to Africa.
Peter explained: “Then somebody said ‘well this car was in Sudan at one time’. How do you know that? I haven’t been able to verify it. The only thing I’ve had the verification of, is when I was doing the rotisserie and turned it, and took the back axle housing out, I got showered in sand – a hell of a lot of sand. Which I don’t think is normal (for Belgrade).”
Obviously the car was imported to Australia as a used vehicle at some stage, and then spent time with various owners (at one point, forgotten in a shed), before Peter had it restored and available for daily use whenever his more modern vehicle failed him. He says the Lucas electrics and the Rover engine haven’t failed – touch wood.
It’s this somewhat frequent use which brought the Rover to my attention. Peter parked it in a commuter car park and someone scraped the side of it – the rear passenger corner, in fact, where the car had already seen those battles with bullets.
He took it to the same rust and body wizard I use, and I first heard the story about the “spy car” from the body shop owner. It’s a fitting car for Peter. He’s worked as an engineer for everyone from VW to Ford to Massey Ferguson to the railways. And he also helped with the dish installation at the Pine Gap US satellite surveillance base near Alice Springs. He knows where the dishes are, under those spherical screens, but he has to keep it a secret – just like his car’s past.
Serendipity city, part 2: Toyota Corolla
Here I was, thinking serendipity simply meant “happy accident”. But as The Teknologist writes, there’s also the educated guess side of it. Serendipity was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754, based on inspiration from the Persian fairy tale “The Three Princes of Serendip”. The Princes make some very good guesses, in their travels. There’s also a story in there, about dividing up eggs with a Queen, that Benny Hill would have been proud of. Let’s just say testicles are mentioned.
I wrote previously about how repairs on my Subaru Vortex XT were helped by a serendipitous sunroof. Well, just a few weeks earlier, the legend of the three princes helped with a Toyota Corolla that was running rough.
The 1.6 litre engine (carburettor, no EFI) in the 1991 Seca seemed like it was missing, with fuel not being burnt in one cylinder. So I had my mechanic take a look at it. After inspecting the distributor, he figured it must be the leads or spark plugs playing up.
Cylinder-by-cylinder, he got me to start the car while its lead was disconnected. The problem seemed to be pointing to (I think) cylinder 3. So, as a final test, he changed the plug and lead for that cylinder – and found that the problem remained.
Just as he was about to throw his hands up in the air and curse an automotive mystery, he was visited by a very old memory: that Toyotas from 30 years ago often had a diaphragm in the carburettor break, and this allowed fuel to get into an area where it shouldn’t be, causing what seems to be a misfire.
He said it was something he hadn’t through about in many years, as fuel injection is so common now. He dismantled the carburettor and sure enough, the diaphragm had just a tiny tear in it. It was barely visible, but enough to allow fuel through.
The solution was to order a carb kit for the Toyota from the auto store. He got on the phone and was told it would take a day or so to arrive. This prompted him to recall how, decades ago, auto stores would have carb kits sitting on the shelf because they were in demand. These days, not so much.
On arrival, it was but a small part of the carb kit that was needed. I’ve kept all the rest of the kit in the glovebox, for future use if required. Unlike the Princes of Serendip, I can keep those eggs in the one basket.
“I need you cool, are you cool?”
When a test drive of my 1985 Subaru Vortex XT to the beach, after some overheating, gets interrupted by a bird, turns into a real estate show and ends with another XT up for auction. https://youtu.be/TJ3pOTe-DHo
Serendipity city, part 1: Vortex XT
Sir Richard Branson ran crying down a London road. He’d just sold Virgin records for a billion dollars in 1992, to found his airline, but was upset over saying goodbye to it. Despite the serendipity of a fortune to fly planes, Reuters reports he felt like he’d sold a child.
Selling my automotive baby wouldn’t take a billion dollars (I have had offers recently) but it would have to be a healthy figure, considering it’s only a few years ago that I finally achieved my childhood dream of owning a Subaru Vortex XT, albeit the stock standard version.
Along with the strikingly shaped car were some standout patches of rust: in the left side chassis rail, around the boot and on the edges of the sunroof.
I had repairs to all 3 areas in 2018 before getting the car back on the road, but in the last 40+ months they’ve all begun bubbling again. They were repaired quickly at a somewhat low cost, and now it shows. Let’s just say chassis rust was simply covered with new metal.. and body rust was just moved aside for filler putty.
Therein lies the problem – it seems that in neither case was the rust properly removed, with the metal then sandblasted and fully sealed. I’ve been learning a lot about oxidation this week, by studying the skill that another local body shop is putting into repairing my ride. The man behind the operation grew up in a cold country, repairing rust on cars which drove on salted roads. He knows how to stop the rot.
After a day at his workshop, the chassis rail was renewed and will be sealed inside with a particularly noxious substance, which has many warning labels. So that’s the underside done.
New rust spots around the body are also being revealed under plastic trim and will get the sandblasting treatment. There’s one nasty outbreak under the rear glass, perhaps caused by a hasty previous windscreen removal, with a sharp tool, that scratched the metal surface which was then left untreated. Add to that oversight, insufficient sealant – and rust will come. That’s a lot more glazing knowledge than I had last week.
Which brings me to my serendipity (apart from finding this very thorough body shop). The sunroof is a heavy metal lid, which has been gradually rusting on the passenger side.
Given that it can easily be removed, I didn’t expect it to be much of an issue to repair. However, on checking in at the workshop, I found my metalworking god scratching his head.
He said the sunroof was too eaten away at the edges to be restored. I’d have to get a fibreglass lid made, or have new metal cut to the ever-so-curved design, or just go with a piece of glass. Any of those options would cost a bit – and it’s then that I mentioned I had a spare sunroof at home.
This sunroof was salvaged from the Vortex car shell I bought, along with a “barn find” Vortex, when I went to see a man about buying hubcaps. I’ve had it for sale for years, and it’s sat unloved in the shed, until I pulled it out today to show to the body shop.
At first he didn’t say much, and I thought he was in shock at how badly rusted the spare roof was. But once he was able to put sentences together again, he revealed how marvellously preserved this metal was, for my car’s purposes. He grabbed a wire brush and immediately made positive noises, as he checked the shallow depth of the top rust spots. It made his day – and it will make the sunroof-sized hole in the roof a lot more leakproof.
Even the rubber seal around the outside was in good condition, just needing a good soak in an anti-mould solution.
I also learned the importance of looking at welds, and cleaning down bare metal before covering it. My body maestro put on his detective hat, while attacking a small rust spot in the passenger door sill.
He said the car looked to have had a new rear quarter panel at some time – with the Vortex a coupe, this covers quite a large area. He noticed that the welds on this side were not as precise as the robot-regulated shots on the driver’s side. Plus, the panel edge that’s usually under the plastic trim looks a bit rough.
There was one other thing he found, while going back to bare metal: what seems to be the fingerprint of whoever replaced the panel in the past. It matches up with where a hand would have placed the panel edge. In their haste, they didn’t clean it off before coating it. So the tiny amount of dirt or moisture from their thumb has left its mark on the metal, over the years.
So you never know how a previous owner or repairer will literally leave their mark on your car. That’s a lot more body shop knowledge than I had last week.
With so much attention going into the rust spots around my Vortex, I don’t think I’ll be doing a Branson and selling it. Anyway, he’s into rockets now – and I already own one, made in 1985.
Decent proposals – should you say yes?
The 1993 movie “Indecent Proposal” might have starred Warren Beatty as the man who buys a night with Demi Moore for a million dollars. But as imdb reveals, Robert Redford got the role, and he “walks better than anybody on Earth”, according to director David Lyne (who also made Flashdance and Fatal Attraction).
Twice in as many weeks, I’ve received very “decent proposals” to buy my cars, straight up from strangers who are admiring them.
The first was at Cars and Coffee with my Suzuki Mighty Boy. Friends beckoned me over to it, as I looked at other vehicles. A man standing in front of the little yellow ute was eagerly awaiting my arrival. He said “I like your car, how much would you sell it for?”
I said “I’m not really interested in selling it, as I’ve only had it a few months!” That seemed to put the brakes on his plans. He repeated how much he liked the Boy and moved on.
Then the following week, as I drove to the petrol station to fuel up the Subaru Vortex XT for a different car meet-up, I had another decent proposal.
As I waited to pull out into traffic from a business car park, a man in a 4WD pulled over and motioned to me. I thought he was saying “you leave the driveway and I’ll pull in.”
Once traffic cleared, I got onto the road and drove 200 metres to the servo. The driver followed me on the road and into the forecourt. Then as I filled up, he came over to chat.
Turns out, he used to own a Vortex XT, but sold it some years ago. He just happened to be driving down the road as I was waiting in the car park driveway, in the rare car he regretted selling (I know what he means). Surely a million-to-one chance.
This time the proposal was more direct: “I want to buy your car, how much would you sell it for?”
I gave him my usual response to family members, asking about my plans for the fleet: at the right price, anything is for sale. So it would have to be a very good price – many thousands – to tempt me.
In the end, he gave me his card and asked that I call him if ever I was selling it. But seeing as he was really looking for a turbo XT, I gave him some leads on a couple for sale online.
He’s a local mechanic who’s worked on the Subaru’s EA82 engine, so I said I’d give him a call the next time it needed work.
So, he may yet get to experience my Vortex XT like Robert Redford with Demi Moore (well, not exactly like that), but without a million dollars changing hands.
Alfa Romeo makes the earth move
Two things were eerily moving back and forth by themselves in the backyard of our Perth home on Saturday, June 2nd 1979: the water in the swimming pool and the wheels of an old Alfa Romeo 2600 Sprint.
An earthquake, northeast of the city, had just cut power to the family home in Balga, bringing an early end to “Swiss Family Robinson” on the Kreisler TV.
I raced outside, thinking the ground would keep moving and the house might even collapse. However, it was just a few seconds’ worth of wobbles – even if the pool and car carried on. I later heard that the Perth high-rise, where my father was working that day, also had a bad case of the fidgets when the ground shook.
The quake had happened near Cadoux in Western Australia, with a magnitude of 6.1 on the Richter Scale. It was enough to finally get the 1960s Alfa moving, after months of it sitting on the back lawn and playing host to my childhood driving dreams.
I would sit in the (probably leather) low brown seats, in the early morning before anyone else was awake, turning the silver-centred steering wheel and flicking black dashboard switches on and off. Hinged windows, front and rear, were opened and closed. I’d also try to figure out what the logo on the front grille meant – a person being eaten by a snake?! We didn’t have any Funk and Wagnalls to explain it.
The 2600 Sprint had a six cylinder 2584cc engine with twin overhead cams and a triple carb. It was capable of very high speed. Shannons reveals that it was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, then employed as chief stylist by Bertone. Fewer than 600 were made in right-hand drive. Shannons also confirms it would be worth quite a bit these days.
In 1979, the Alfa was patiently awaiting some restoration – firstly of its engine and then the paintwork.
My dad had somehow agreed to a friend’s suggestion that he should buy the dark blue Italian stallion, after a Frenchman had apparently “cooked” the engine during a trip across the hot Nullarbor with coolant issues.
I’m not sure how Dad got this purchase past Mum – the car cost $500, which was a lot more in the late 70s than it is now. She also worried that a 6-cylinder engine with a triple carb would drink fuel like Hannibal Lecter went through Chianti dinner accompaniments. She wasn’t wrong.
It was eventually brought back to life under the bonnet by an Italian workshop in Perth, after waiting on parts for weeks.
Then, the body had a basic respray. However, poor workmanship meant the paint on the roof bubbled badly, so it later sported a vinyl roof covering – such a 70s auto augmentation.
The Alfa went with us as we moved to Queensland in 1980, but within a short time its running costs forced Dad to consider selling it. He had to fill up twice a week to travel into the city. At first a 1960s Toyota Corona took on the daily commute, before a new Mazda 323 replaced both cars.
He sold the 2600 Sprint to a member of the local Alfa club, so at least it went to an enthusiast. Before it left our garage, he took us for a drive in it around the block. It had a nice exhaust note, and I think no rear seatbelts, which was a novelty for me.
Aged just 12, I never got to drive the Alfa I’d pretended to steer in the backyard.
However, it did give me a love of all sorts of cars that rock my world, more than that earthquake ever did.
Classic and Clunker 