it was the best of times, it was the worst of times...

The best:

E36 Sport Touring manual box in Fern Green. Powerful, looked the business with the factory sport kit in/out, relatively rare even at the time.

E46 325 Sport in utterly original condition. Manual box with alcantara and not the bloody awful leather and auto box almost all of them had.

Honorable mention:

Peugeot 205GRD. Nippy, comfy as it had the original seats not the late model ones, handled well, did 55mpg all day long no matter how you drove it. Spotless condition and cost me £250.

The worst?

Mk3 Escort 1600L. The rust. Argh, it still makes my left eye twitch just at the thought of it.

Fiat Uno. Not an awful car but a 4spd 998cc so noisy that conversation above 30mph was impossible, fag packets had more inherent structural rigidity and seats that bent backward if you leant on them too hard.

The Best? Alfasud for all the Alfa stupid enjoyment, Austin Maestro for 19 year old student stupidity, W211 E320CDI for freight train diesel power, Smart Roadster brabus for making commuting fun.

The Worst? Mercedes A160 for promising more than delivered, Dodge Stratus and Renault Laguna for being being the most hateful rental vehicles I ever had the misfortune to rent.

My best and worst car rolled-into-one was my last daily driver, a 2008 Abarth Grande Punto Esseesse that a previous owner had fitted a TD04 turbo onto, and was re-mapped to around 260bhp. It went like stink, yet surprisingly good fuel economy of 40mpg or so when driven normally. I loved the thing, how it went and looked, and its rarity. Then, coming home one Sunday evening in May, this happened:

www.kentonline.co.uk/herne-bay/news/high-street-shut-after-car-bursts-into-flames-306270/

I was pretty upset about it to say the least, but at least the insurance company paid out a decent enough sum. Great shame to lose a rare car like that though.

On the bright side, I reverted back to my 1970 Minor Traveller for daily use, which has surprised me with how capable it is still, even with 165,000+ miles.

Best - A Rover 216 Gti, 3 door, that I bought as a stop gap but kept for a couple of years. That car was surprisingly quick for what it was and never let me down.

Worst- A Rover 820 SLi auto. To be fair, it was cheap, like £300 cheap and had ridiculously cold A/C but the rest of it was terrible. The abs sensors liked to fail almost weekly, the head gasket went and then the new one leaked about a month later and it struggled to go up steep hills.
It was replaced by an 827, which apart from the fuel economy,I really enjoyed.

Strangely my best & worst simply cover the same make and model but different engines....

The Best - Mk3 Granada 2.9(but 12v not 24v) Ghia with manual box. Equipped with everything bar leather interior. Bought for £600 did over 50k miles and with upgraded bilsteins throughout handled remarkably well and was the mileage muncher of choice.

The Worst - Mk3 Granada face-lift with the 2.5td VM diesel engine. Great ride quality as you might expect but utterly gutless, had various coolant leaks I was never able to trace(used over 2 litres per week) and simply grew to loathe the thing after struggling over the A66 being passed by pretty much everything.

Honorary "best" mention for the E34 525i Estate, bought from this very forum unseen from Birmingham got 2 years of virtually trouble free motoring and then dismantled it and sold it for spares and got more than I paid back!

Honarary "worst", Citroën BX14RE... suspension failures, head gasket failure and the wind caught the plastic bonnet when I was lifting it and snapped both that and the windscreen😩

Whilst there's an array of really cool cars that have passed through my hands the above are the ones which stand out as best & worst.

I don't count my current daily as that was built in 2019!

However, The last 4 dailies have been great:

My 06 SLK200 - LOVELY thing to cruise in - would just eat miles. Yes the subframe rusted away, but Merc replaced it for free instead of a £4k bill.

The 52-plate SLK230 I picked up cheap through the work intranet. Surprisingly comfortable and was fairly quick too. Plus it was my first convertible and my first Auto. An excellent 15 months' driving. Shame that the front wings were more rotten than the average 3 week old pear.

My 54-plate VW Bora was practically bulletproof. Supremely comfortable compared to the Minis, I put nearly 70k on this, abused it, carried huge loads in it and yet it never failed me. The only thing it needed other than servicing and a couple of wheel bearings was a brake light switch. Plus it did 50 mpg without fail, even if I drove it like I stole it. The clutch was at 127K and had never been replaced (nor did it show any signs of needing it), so I left that to someone else to pick up the bill.

My '96 Golf GTi 8v was a delight. Yes, it was "the slow one" but it was one of the most pleasant cars I've ever driven. It never broke down mechanically, just needing a pair of springs and an exhaust back box. Someone's still got it on SORN - L9LDG is still out there somewhere!

As for the worst, it HAS to be my old Mini 25. There seemed to be a fault with this every other week, and I had it for 2 1/2 years. The driver's seat wouldn't recline, the boot seal leaked, it blew head gaskets regularly for no apparent reason, the speedo was well out (it turned out that the previous owner had fitted a Metro engine, which made the speedo drive wrong for the instruments), the rear brake cylinders wet themselves (once at 70 mph, pedal went to the floor which was scary...), the engine mounts went, the front subframe mounts died, the manifold cracked, it rusted badly and by the time I ended up selling it, there was a problem with the nearside rear suspension where the rear wheel rubbed on the bodywork. Apparently it ended up doing Ministox - and hopefully got destroyed. Bleeping thing.

Pic of it vexing me after the (toughened) windscreen went on a cold February evening...

Hmmmm hard to classify many of mine as I still have lots of them!

Best: Volvo 850 T5 estate auto - lowered on 18" Lensos, dark blue with tow bar it was a paltry few hundred pounds from this very forum. Loved the capaciousness, waft ability, speed, luxury and almost everything except the near bankrupting 15mpg. Would have it again in a heartbeat.

Nearest I have to it is my Mondeo 2.5t estate. Also great.

Ax Gti - £400 blind buy off eBay and was in superb condition, still is (I think...) rare and great fun, need to get it back on the road 🙄

Honorary mention to the Peugeot 406 2.0 I picked up for £100 off eBay (again) lasted 5 years, passed its first mot with just two headlight bulbs and gave 25k miles towing caravans, trailers and beng a daily as well. Written off outside my house and paid out then scrapped so massively quids in.


Worst:

Ford Escort 1.4 Flight mk6 - admittedly blind bought on eBay for £250 but was horrid. Clutch was toast but was gutless and woeful. £200 106 I replaced it with and still have was infinitely better