Furthest you've travelled for a car?

Any of my trips to bring a car back home usually involve a flight from Belfast to an airport in the London or south England areas. A taxi or train and bus ride before a 500 plus drive up to Cairnryan and then a ferry home.
Not all my purchases have made it back under their own power as a few have been on the back of a RAC transporter.

Bought a bodykit for an old nissan 200sx years ago from a guy in Glasgow, he wouldn't courier the kit because it was super rare & very expensive. I found a nissan stagea estate near by & agreed to meet both parties at Glasgow Airport. Bought the car put the kit in & drove home to Bristol.
Great day out & sold the car within a week & made a bit of profit.

Fixed that for you...I just read an article about cone snails...why can't you just do seashells like a normal country?!?

I once smoked around for a couple of weeks on these tyres...an advisory on the MOT but no more



They're still holding air in the great tyre-fire-waiting-to-happen-tower behind my house

The furthest I've travelled is Hull, which the maps app says is 109 miles away. I took my 10yo son on the train. We collected the eBay purchase Saab NG900 FPT, detoured back over the Humber Bridge (I love bridges), and used lots of boost.

A few decent length collections:

Longest - BMW e30 325i from London to Poznan. It was winter, first time I drove a LHD car, snow across Germany and Poland, ancient set of Nankang summers on the car and the alternator packed up just over the Polish border.

That was quite the exciting trip.





Porsche 911 SC from near Heathrow to Dublin. This should have been easy but the ferries kept getting cancelled so instead of leaving from Fishguard, I aimed for Holyhead, which then got cancelled so I had to go to Stranraer. My other half was with me on this one and we had to get back for work so it was against the clock all round.

Sweden, 2006, i flew to Stockholm, got the train 3 hours north to Huddiksval to buy a 56 Cadillac. I'd sent the money ahead but it hadnt arrrived, the guy trusted me as we had friends in common and let me take the car anyway. I left his place at 9pm and drove all night and most of the next day 900 miles south to get the ferry in Denmark stopping only for fuel and a couple of 20 minute naps. No fuel guage or wipers made the journey interesting as did the old crossplies, i didnt have any tools, borrowed a spanner at a petrol station to tighten a belt but otherwise car never missed a beat. Got off the ferry on Harwich and drove another 120 miles home with the top down.

When i look back on it i think of all the things that could have gone wrong, i wouldnt do it now, i trusted the sellers description as he was known to us and i'd been to Sweden and Denmark plenty and wasnt overly worried about driving there.

I did get pulled over by the cops in Denmark, i was dog tired and rubbing my eyes and slapping my face to stay awake and someone reported me as a drunk driver. I noticed a load of cop and cars on a bridge pointing at me and thought thats odd, 5 minutes later they surrounded me and pulled me over, dragged me out of the car. The were surprised i was English assuming i was Swede as the car had Swedish plates. I blagged my way out of it saying the crossply tyres didnt like the lorry ruts on the road and made me swerve. Was wide awake the rest of the trip.

The other odd thing was the car never missed a beat the entire trip but was a right pain the next 2 years almost breaking down everytime i used it. I picked my kids up from school in it the day i got it home and it broke down right outside the school, i had the gear box rebuilt twice, endless ignition problems, i sold it back to Sweden in 2008, i think its in Finland now

In the past, some years ago I've done.

Stockport to Inverness, approx 400 miles each way, to look at a VW T25 Carat, then flew to Aberdeen to pick it up 4 weeks later ( long story )

Stockport to Bournemouth, approx 250 miles each way, for a VW 411 which turned out to be a wasted journey !

Llandudno to Norwich, approx 250 miles each way, to look at a Suzuki 650 custom, didn't buy it but I did come back with this after my mate spotted it under a couple of dust sheets. It wasn't finished but we managed to do a deal




Llandudno to Kings Lynn, approx 250 miles each way, twice ! but it was well worth it as I eventually came home with this

The trip that still feels like the longest, even though it's quite possibly not even close to the longest, is when I caught a flight from Belfast to Inverness, then transferred to a buzzy little plane to the Isle of Lewis, to pick up a 1998 BMW 535i manual I'd won on eBay for about £400 (because 1. location and 2. rotten). I stayed the night as the daily flight in to Stornoway lands 2 hours after the daily ferry to Ullapool leaves. The next day I drove across Scotland, stayed with friends on the east coastfor a couple of nights, and then drove home.


Recently did this to pick up a 406 from Potter's Bar and bring it home to NI:

That's fairly standard for collecting cars in England and bringing them back here.

Come to think of it, a month ago I did a 680 mile round trip to bring back my mum's old Subaru from the highlands, which was leaking coolant and was, apparently, about to have a major subframe collapse. It was fine.

I've never been stranded on a roadtrip home, and it's always an adventure! I drove my Cadillac home from Portsmouth during a November storm with no wipers or headlights, and did 175 miles in my newly-acquired Ducato recovery truck with a ratchet strap holding the engine in (not an exaggeration).