Hi everyone,
I recently bought a 1.9 GTi to use as a daily, 14 years after I sold my last one...... here's how it came about...
Over the last couple of years I'd thinking about selling my Jaguar XJR V8 Supercharged...... it was an awesome car and put a smile on my face every time I drove it, even after six and a half years of using it as a daily driver but the downsides of running a XJR as a daily were ruinous fuel bills, regular expensive maintenance which invariably involved at least a day at a Jaguar specialist and high insurance and road tax costs and although I loved the car, I'd got tired of constantly shelling out...... most years it cost the best part of a grand to get it through it's mot and so I started looking around for something else to buy in it's place as a daily driver.
Modern cars do nothing for me and there’s nothing out there that I fancy without getting back into the cycle of expensive running costs again so about 18 months ago I began to think about buying a classic car as a daily and my thoughts kept returning to a Peugeot 205 GTI.
I’ve had 5 of these cars before, I’ve used them all as daily drivers and love them to bits…….. a big plus is that although they are quite old, they are also quite at home in modern traffic as well as being very practical …… other big plus points for me are that they are cheap to run, great on fuel, cheap on parts and easy for me to fix myself…… as well as the styling still looking fresh and modern today, over 30 years since the cars launch.
I started looking seriously into buying one about a year ago and got a bit of a shock.
When I sold my last GTI back in 2000, although it was mint, I practically had to give it away and it took a few weeks to realise its £850 sale price. By the start of my search for one in 2014, the prices had gone through the roof and hardly any original clean cars were on the market.
A quick check on ‘How Many Left’ showed that back in 2000 when I sold my last GTI there were approx 29,500 taxed on the road and by 2014 that number had dropped to just a few thousand which helped explain the market situation.
This all meant that my thoughts of just going out and buying one were a bit naive and my search has lasted a year and consisted of checking the classifieds every week, the internet, owners forums etc and still nothing came up. With so few on the market, they are spread far and wide and I just haven’t got the time to travel hundreds of miles to look at a car.
Things changed last October. As the Jag had recently passed it’s mot and was running well for a change, I got it valeted and put it up for sale planning on using my RX7 Elford Turbo for work until I found something else, This plan unravelled after 3 days when the RX7 engine blew up on the way home and then the next day I got a call from a bloke who wanted to view the Jag and 2 hours later came back with the cash and drove it away.
I was suddenly and unexpectedly left with no transport and then some thing wondrous happened….. a 205 was put up for sale just 25 miles away and looked from the photos and sounded from talking to the seller to be just what I was looking for. I few phone calls to the seller ensued to arrange a viewing and I went to see the car.
Being a sceptical kind of bloke, I wasn’t really expecting much but I needed a car and this was the first local GTi that had seemed worth viewing for about 6 months, so I went to see it.
It’s seldom that a car looks better in reality than in the photographs but this car looked superb.
I spent a good hour crawling all over it, checking everything I could and then test driving it and then realised that at last, my search for a 205 could be over……………………if I could do a deal that suited me.
Fortunately I did and scored the car for a great price.
As I couldn't drive 2 cars back home, I dropped a deposit on it, went back home, insured it with Adrian Flux for £164.00 full comp which was pretty good I reckon and then, with the very kind assistance of a mate, I went back in the afternoon, paid the rest of the money and drove it home. It's great to be back behind the wheel of one of these again, takes me right back.
Here it is on the day I bought it back in October...
Plenty of 80’s interior goodness!....
and an owners club sticker in the window… always a good sign….
The car looks almost black in this light but it’s actually graphite grey metallic.
It’s a 1992 K plate 1.9GTI registered in Sept 1992.
It’s got a wad of receipts 2” thick going back 20 odd years detailing everything it’s had done to it.
3 years ago it had an top end engine build at Skip Browns and has done only about 3000 miles since.
I’ll be sharing the experience of owning this car in this thread and how a 24 yr old GTI stands up to being a daily driver.
cheers,
Ian
I recently bought a 1.9 GTi to use as a daily, 14 years after I sold my last one...... here's how it came about...
Over the last couple of years I'd thinking about selling my Jaguar XJR V8 Supercharged...... it was an awesome car and put a smile on my face every time I drove it, even after six and a half years of using it as a daily driver but the downsides of running a XJR as a daily were ruinous fuel bills, regular expensive maintenance which invariably involved at least a day at a Jaguar specialist and high insurance and road tax costs and although I loved the car, I'd got tired of constantly shelling out...... most years it cost the best part of a grand to get it through it's mot and so I started looking around for something else to buy in it's place as a daily driver.
Modern cars do nothing for me and there’s nothing out there that I fancy without getting back into the cycle of expensive running costs again so about 18 months ago I began to think about buying a classic car as a daily and my thoughts kept returning to a Peugeot 205 GTI.
I’ve had 5 of these cars before, I’ve used them all as daily drivers and love them to bits…….. a big plus is that although they are quite old, they are also quite at home in modern traffic as well as being very practical …… other big plus points for me are that they are cheap to run, great on fuel, cheap on parts and easy for me to fix myself…… as well as the styling still looking fresh and modern today, over 30 years since the cars launch.
I started looking seriously into buying one about a year ago and got a bit of a shock.
When I sold my last GTI back in 2000, although it was mint, I practically had to give it away and it took a few weeks to realise its £850 sale price. By the start of my search for one in 2014, the prices had gone through the roof and hardly any original clean cars were on the market.
A quick check on ‘How Many Left’ showed that back in 2000 when I sold my last GTI there were approx 29,500 taxed on the road and by 2014 that number had dropped to just a few thousand which helped explain the market situation.
This all meant that my thoughts of just going out and buying one were a bit naive and my search has lasted a year and consisted of checking the classifieds every week, the internet, owners forums etc and still nothing came up. With so few on the market, they are spread far and wide and I just haven’t got the time to travel hundreds of miles to look at a car.
Things changed last October. As the Jag had recently passed it’s mot and was running well for a change, I got it valeted and put it up for sale planning on using my RX7 Elford Turbo for work until I found something else, This plan unravelled after 3 days when the RX7 engine blew up on the way home and then the next day I got a call from a bloke who wanted to view the Jag and 2 hours later came back with the cash and drove it away.
I was suddenly and unexpectedly left with no transport and then some thing wondrous happened….. a 205 was put up for sale just 25 miles away and looked from the photos and sounded from talking to the seller to be just what I was looking for. I few phone calls to the seller ensued to arrange a viewing and I went to see the car.
Being a sceptical kind of bloke, I wasn’t really expecting much but I needed a car and this was the first local GTi that had seemed worth viewing for about 6 months, so I went to see it.
It’s seldom that a car looks better in reality than in the photographs but this car looked superb.
I spent a good hour crawling all over it, checking everything I could and then test driving it and then realised that at last, my search for a 205 could be over……………………if I could do a deal that suited me.
Fortunately I did and scored the car for a great price.
As I couldn't drive 2 cars back home, I dropped a deposit on it, went back home, insured it with Adrian Flux for £164.00 full comp which was pretty good I reckon and then, with the very kind assistance of a mate, I went back in the afternoon, paid the rest of the money and drove it home. It's great to be back behind the wheel of one of these again, takes me right back.
Here it is on the day I bought it back in October...
Plenty of 80’s interior goodness!....
and an owners club sticker in the window… always a good sign….
The car looks almost black in this light but it’s actually graphite grey metallic.
It’s a 1992 K plate 1.9GTI registered in Sept 1992.
It’s got a wad of receipts 2” thick going back 20 odd years detailing everything it’s had done to it.
3 years ago it had an top end engine build at Skip Browns and has done only about 3000 miles since.
I’ll be sharing the experience of owning this car in this thread and how a 24 yr old GTI stands up to being a daily driver.
cheers,
Ian
-ache to match.
