Twelve Cars In A Year!

ah poop!

So, a lot of love for the mk1... Fear not Darkspeed , i've not checked, but i'm pretty sure that they will be a five stud wheel so they won't fit. Besides, i'm not a fan of the Borbets to be honest, they're just not my kind of wheel... I'd rather fit a set of Ronal Teddies! However, as much as i don't like the Borbets on the mk2... It has to be said that they do look quite nice on the mk1, odd how that works when the two cars look quite similar! I do have a wheel in mind to put on the mk1, what i'd quite like to put on it is a set of white Weller 8-spokes of 15" diameter, so if you have a set kicking around with a 4x100 stud pattern, and you don't need them anymore please feel free to let me know! Ok then, time to hit the open road... In the mk2 incase anyone was wondering!



I've been doing plenty of driving about in the Carlton, however i've not really taken it for a proper drive, i can't explain why as i just don't know. I like the car, although it has to be said not as much as i like the mk1, but i'm just feeling a litttle lack lutre of late, and frankly i can't be arsed! This is not good for the story, or your reading pleasure, so this evening i decided i would just have to man-up, and go out in the rain. To be honest, i think the problem is the rain, it just doens't inspire me to go out driving. Still never mind, lets go. Right then into the car, and pop a CD in... Oh good, The Doors... Riders On The Storm! Perfect, that should help my mood! There's a killer on the road, His brain is squirmin' like a toad, Take a long holiday... Let your children play... If ya give this man a ride, Sweet FAMILY will die... Killer on the road, yeah... Great, thats cheered me right up! I'm in a driving mood now, oh yeah baby!! I've always loved that song, but i think before the drive ends i'll be changing it for something a little more upbeat!

I figured that i'd just meander my way through the New Forest, not really going anywhere, just see where i'll end up. The thing is, it's raining, and it's dark, i never used to mind driving in the dark, and if i'm honest i still don't mind driving in the dark, or the rain for that matter. But it does suck the joy out of the drive a bit, i'm not really enjoying it, not at all. It's not the car, the car is lovely, i'm inside, i've got the wipers on, i'm warm, and even my bum is getting toasted on the wonderfully heated seats. Make no mistake, this is a lovely car to drive, and if you were some sort of salesman in the early nineties, and had come from a mk1 Carlton to this mk2 Carlton you would've felt very special indeed, if it was mine in the nineties i would've been chuffed to nuts, infact even now i'm pretty chuffed to have been able to have called it mine, it really is a superb car to drive. However this evening as i wound my way through the twisty New Forest roads it has to be said that it wasn't as good as it was when i was doing it in the summer, it felt more like a chore than a pleasure, and thats not good. I think part of the problem with the Carlton is that the speedo is in KM/H, and only in KM/H, the route i followed this evening seemed to pass by several government sponsored fund raising stations, which dotted the route through the new forest. As i approached each one i must say that i was glad that they give the motorist a fighting chance by having them covered with a huge reflective sticker, but i'm approaching them constantly trying to work out how fast i'm going in MP/H. I've never been good at maths, therefore my drive was filled with my mind racing, trying to figure out what 30mph looks like in kph, what does 40mph look like, what's 50? I think that i'f i were to keep this Carlton the first thing i'd do is track down a set of gauges in MPH. But, as you all know i'm not, so i'll try not to worry about it! It does make me wonder though, who changed the original gauges from ones that had both MPH and KPH on them from factory, to a set that only had KPH? Who would do a thing like that? And why?



I stopped somewhere near Bournemouth for a coke, just for a bit of a break really, well, that and my mouth was dryer than a Nuns gusset! As i sat there looking out through the window of Pizza the Hut i couldn't help but think that this is a very smart looking car. Yes it's clearly from another time, but it still looks modern enough to be parked anywhere without raising so much as an eyebrow. It's very understated, but thats what makes it so cool, and so good looking, it doens't need anything to make it look better, it's nailed it just as it is. Admittedly adding a set of wheels and lowering it does change it's looks somewhat, and it has improved them for the better, although, as i've said before, i don't care for the Borbets, but they have grown on me! But it doesn't need any kind of fancy graphic or anything to take the emphasis away from the clean and uncluttered styling, i reckon that the stylists at GM nailed it with the styling of these things, definately less is more! Of course not everyone agrees... This is clearly how they'd look if they were sold in Americaland. It's not to my tastes, but it's good to see poundland faux wood vinyl being used to cover something other than school books!

Anyway, while i was out i realised that i had neglected to put up any pretty pictures of my Carlton, i'll admit, these are not great, but i try to make an effort with my car photographs so that i have some sort of rekord of it for my own uses! Unfortuanately because of the rain, and it being dark i had to take my photos in a car park. So i went to a Jet wash, blasted off all the New Forest mud that i had collected en route, found a car park, and wiped it down with a chamois before taking a few pictures.



This one's for all you Borbet loving wheel whores!







I think this one is my favourite!



Again, another one for all you Borbet fans!

Thanks, I'll try to be quicker... must try harder three words that have always described me since school lol.

Am I the only person that loves the wheels?

I once painted a B4 Passat brown in that very car park. In the dark and rain too

Painting cars in carparks... And I was getting funny looks from people while I was cleaning mine lol. You know what SmokeEm, we should paint your Mercedes in a car park, just for old times sake

SmokeEm, I think turquoise will be too bright a colour on a barge as big as yours, it's got be deep purple I reckon... Though don't do it Vampire Violet, ive got that earmarked for the Talbots New colour.

garthalgar, consider yourself added to the list of potential new owners of the Carlton!

Finally i have the V5c for the Carlton in hand! So, as from now it is up for grabs! I guess the best thing i can do is say if you are interested in being the next owner of my fantastic Carlton, please PM me so i know you're interested, and the first one who does so, will be the first one who gets the chance to buy it

This is the end after the Carlton goes Ian , as if you include the second rav4, and the mk1 Vauxhall Carlton this means that i have done it, i have bought Twelve Cars In A Year!! Hooraaah!!!

Anyway, lets not dwell on that for a moment, lets talk about car #10, the Mk2 Vauxhall Carlton estate... And there it goes off into the night!!



Well that was relatively painless! I even got all of my money back, well, nearly, i got £800 for it, and it cost me just £817 if you are including train ticket and taxi to collect it! So lets talk about my month of driving it, well when i collected it there was 124687 miles showing on the odometer, and i took the odometer to 125298 miles which means i covered 611 miles, and it was good! This took care of 126.92 litres or if you're old like me, 27.91 UK Gallons of BP's finest petrol... No really, look:-



I tried it on regular 95 Octane go-go juice and it pinked a lot, so i stuck BPs good stuff into it and it was far happier. So i kept with it. I've often wondered if indeed i would get better mileage by using the good stuff, and would it actually make it worth paying the few pence more per litre that it costs... Maybe this is a test for another time! So anyway, with the Carlton sucking up 27.91 UK Gallons of BP's finest petrol over 611 miles this of course means that it was returning 21.89 miles per gallon!! Strewth... Thats not much better than the 5.0 litre Mercededs SEC which was giving me 19.47 miles per gallon! I thought this would be far better, and just sip at the go-go juice! Anyway, moving on, these 28(ish) gallons of petrol cost me £145, thats £1 every 4 miles incase you're wondering! Still, never mind, it was a lovely car to drive!



Under the bonnet the chromed and polished 2.0 litre GM C20NE engine whirred away happily and lugged the Carlton and it's occupants along quite nicely, although with only 116 horsey power when it was new it was never going to set the world on fire while it was trying to push 1.14 tonnes of Carlton estate through the air! Having said all that, it was nice enough for everyday driving, and unless you were trying your luck at the traffic light grand prix you never noticed it's lack of power that didn't live up to it's looks!



Speaking of it's looks, in my opinion this is a great looking car. I never did fall in love with the Borbets, the eyebrows, or the mirrors, and i think that if i had decided to keep it i would have changed all of those items. But apart from that, i like the colour, i thought it suited it very well, and i found the shape of the thing to be quite pleasing, although it has to be said that i prefer the shape of the earlier mk1 Carlton, as i've said before, the mk2 looks very nice, but for me it's just a bit too slippery, a bit too aerodynamic, but, still pretty damn cool!



Inside the Carlton was a very nice place to be, i think that at the time this would have been the model that was leaving Vauxhall's line up to be replaced by the Omega, and therefore, for the Carltons final hooraah it was given all the toys, and this in my opinion made it feel very special, and as i said before, i think it's probably better than the Mercedes in there... Just! But it's not quite as nice as the Omega was, which as i'm sure you remember i thought was a very nice car indeed!



All the seats were finely covered in dead cow, and wery extremely comfortable. In the front the seats were powered and heated, now, i've not had many cars with leather interiors before, and a lot of people always talk about their leather interior. I must admit, i've always quite fancied a leather interior in my cars, and i've had a few with leather interiors. However, i've always owned the cars with leather interiors in the summer months. Getting into the Carlton on a cold morning i found those seats to be very chilly, however, the heaters in the seats warmed them up very quickly, and for this, i was very thankful!



In the back, more cow skin! The Pistonpoppets said they were very comfy, even on long rides, and they had plenty of room to strech out in. But they didn't have the luxury of the electrically heated seats, and would moan in the mornings on the school run that they were freezing! Having said that, they wern't so cold that they didn't keep the windows wound up on the way to school. I think that this was in a bid to make my bald head as cold as their bums were on the cold leather seats!



I can describe the back in one word... MASSIVE! This is how the boot on a load lugger should look! However i did find the dog gaurd a bit restrictive, but it did help to restrain the Pistonpoppets! I like the idea of having a dog gaurd between the occupants and the load area, but having an estate car means that there will be times when you want the seating to be configured more like a van, for example if you're collecting a wardrobe, or a bike or something, so if i was to keep the car, then the dog gaurd would get removed! The other little niggle i had about the boot was this:-



Yep, thats the tailgate wide open! This was great if you happened to be sitting under it while it rained, but wasn't that good when you were loading it! I can't believe that this is how it came from the factory, and i beleive that this was another modification carried out by the previous owner, but why you might ask? well...



Remember the back had these sticky marks left by a pair of large rectangular stickers? I pondered what on earth you would want stickers like this on the back of your car for? What was on them? Well, i reckon that this was owned by someone with a disability. I reckon that the stickers probably read something like "Please leave room to get my wheelchair out", and this is probably why the tailgate doesn't open very high, so that it can be easily reached from a wheelchair to close it. It's the only theory i can think of as to why it's like it!



All in all this was a very nice car, it was in superb condition, and had clearly been looked after, and loved. So, would i have another one? No, no, not really. Don't get me wrong it is a lovely car, but it just didn't do 'it' for me, i don't know what it is thats missing from the experience, i can't quite put my finger on it, but something is missing for me. I think it's a lovely looking car, and it's lovely to drive, and it even feels a bit special, but i have to say that as much as i like my Carlton, i preferred my Omega, it was just better. Oddly, i also prefer my mk1 Carlton, as it's worse(!?) Very strange! I almost feel bad for not liking it, as i have wanted a Carlton estate for ages, but as i've got the mk1 estate now i was happy to let this one go!

So then, thats it, twelve cars in one year. I have made it!

THE END.
















Yeah right!! I'm not going to leave it like that. The automatic Rav4 and the mk1 Carlton were 'duplicates' ok, maybe the Rav4 had an automatic transmission, so it was a little bit different to the one in my thread, and maybe the mk1 Carlton is a little bit different to the mk2 that was featured in my thread. But i reckon i'd be letting you all down, and letting myself down to include them when they're basically the same, it would be a bit of a cop out right?

Ok then, whos ready for car number ELEVEN?