Monza GSE B580 UPR
1987 5 - Speed manual with ABS
Brief history and a few photos
The day I collected it – yep I drove nearly 400 mile round trip to collect a free dead Monza – one point to note is that at this point I had already jet washed the car down on the trailer removing several years of green mould…….
Current Mileage - In excess of 200,000 miles - Original Engine, Gearbox and Diff (on it's second clutch)
Okay just a bit of history about the car
I am the second owner - "purchased" the car November 2000 (more about that later). The Previous Owner - David Saunders - bought it in Germany while serving in the forces. This is why the windows are etched with BPU 57B (this is the forces plate allocated to the car) - he brought the car back to the UK when he left the force and had it registered here. He used it for a couple of years comuting 120 miles a day but then he got a job in the far east so put her into storage. The bill for putting her back on the road when he retuned 4 years later was £2714.65. The storage conditions apparently hadn't been ideal! He then used her again every day for a year putting about 30K on her clock making a total of 180K before he was allocated a company car. His intention was to use her as a weekend car but due to lack of time as a result of work commitments and a rapidly expanding family she lay dormant outside his garage generally getting in the way and growing copius quantites of mould inside and out. David contacted me to ask if I knew anyone interested in the car - it had to go and go soon as he knew if it wasn't worked on it would never be recoverable and after some long conversations about condition and I was hooked - I borrowed an EX AA Transporter and made the long journey from Norfolk to Southampton to collect the car - no cash exchanged hands the purchase price of the car was the cost of Diesel to collect £87.67 to be precise.
So what was it like when I got it home - All four brakes seized as well as the handbrake - winching the car onto the transporter left long black lines from the driveway to the cab. The engine hadn't been run for over a year. It was covered in green mould due to the shaded nature of its parked position. The interior didn't look much better and absolutely nothing electrical worked even with a brand new battery. There were other faults found during the course of getting her back on the road but bottom line was it took me a whole month to get the engine running and over a year before she passed an MOT. The intention was to use her as an additional summer car and maybe finish of a few of the odd jobs that needed doing like the mechanical odometer on the digital instrumentation pack didn't work. (well it racked up a mile or so in a months worth of use and thats it)
So she was finally on the road and expenditure amounted to just over £1000 - battery, radiator, water pump, tyres, brake pads, discs, handbrake shoes, header tank, hoses, headlights, indicators, body parts, serviced items and a not unreasonable ammount of welding.
The same week she passed the MOT a mate locally had a major problem with the engine on his Carlton GSi and due to a financial commitment elsewhere he could not afford to repair the engine so I loaned him the GSE - FOR 6 MONTHS - I saw it everyday tho..... He commuted 60 miles a day 5 days a week which would have put 7000 miles on the odometer if it worked!!!! I got it back and continued to put miles on the car for 2 years without more than 50 being recorded on the dash (i'd bought another intrumentation unit but that had the same fault!!! Then amazingly enough the odometer started working and seems to be happily racking up the miles now.
I use her for everyday commuting - track days - car shows and occasionally because the hatch back arrangement is so handy when the seats are folded flat carrying awkward or large items.
Below are the last shots I have of it before I had the stainless exhaust fitted this year – the alloys are gone so it’s back to std till I get the replacement ones finished
And lastly the Monza doing what it does best Trax2004 (albeit briefly)
Damm I love this car :-D
This is my Desktop when in Monza GSE Mode
I think it's a cracking shot
Why are they such great cars
- cheap as chips - a good one can be had for as little as £750
- built with nice quality metal (yes they do have rust problems but once it's cut out the existing metal welds really well)
- unbustable engines capable of huge mileages
- great gearboxes (apart from the early 3 speed autos)
- Seating for 4 in comfort
- versatile load area - rear seats fold down flat so if you need to move a freezer to the local tip it's an easy job (my non colapsable engine crane fits in perfectly and it's bloody huge :roll:
- excellent handling, neutral and without understeer (oversteer on the ragged edge when you plant the loud pedal)
As far as colours go the following is IMHO - I hope no-one takes offence
Barrat brown and any of the golds suck
Anthracite, white, black and silver are all great
Carnelian red - looks good if the paint is fresh (hastily added to stop AW going mental) other wise looks a bit naff
They did a light green and a few other colours that are very rare so I haven't seen enough of them to make my mind up
Whatever colour external the inside has got be charcoal as the brown version fitted to some GSE's looks pretty poor in most colours
Other reasons to buy one are......
- Insurance at £150 per year fully comp and agreed miles
- Monaro style (two door coupe for peanuts)
- Opel Badge (exclusive) It attracts more comments than the LC (might be the noise tho)
- Electric Windows
- Electric Sunroof (tilt and slide)
- Central locking
- Opening rear windows
- 6 dial intruments (Oil pressure and voltmeter)
- Trip computer
- ABS (if you hunt for one with it)
- LSD (again hunt as it was an option)
Bit of an update.......
Well I've had these wheels for years - they used to be on my Senator A and after that on my first GSE (anthracite - Auto) and were silver with polished highlights...... Just never struck on the colour or the polished rims
Had a set of compomotive 5 spokes on the car for a while - colour coded to the car - but hated the rounded spokes - didn't look right against the sharp lines of the Monza shape so flogged them on and went back to std..... (pics above of those rims)
Finally got round to getting them refurbed last week and got the tyres swapped today :lol:
And I thought I'd do summut different with em - going for the stealth bomber effect :lol:
Before
After
And a piccy of just a wheel cos I'm no David Baily and it wasn't the best light for a photo shoot
The stealth bomber has landed.....
1987 5 - Speed manual with ABS
Brief history and a few photos
The day I collected it – yep I drove nearly 400 mile round trip to collect a free dead Monza – one point to note is that at this point I had already jet washed the car down on the trailer removing several years of green mould…….
Current Mileage - In excess of 200,000 miles - Original Engine, Gearbox and Diff (on it's second clutch)
Okay just a bit of history about the car
I am the second owner - "purchased" the car November 2000 (more about that later). The Previous Owner - David Saunders - bought it in Germany while serving in the forces. This is why the windows are etched with BPU 57B (this is the forces plate allocated to the car) - he brought the car back to the UK when he left the force and had it registered here. He used it for a couple of years comuting 120 miles a day but then he got a job in the far east so put her into storage. The bill for putting her back on the road when he retuned 4 years later was £2714.65. The storage conditions apparently hadn't been ideal! He then used her again every day for a year putting about 30K on her clock making a total of 180K before he was allocated a company car. His intention was to use her as a weekend car but due to lack of time as a result of work commitments and a rapidly expanding family she lay dormant outside his garage generally getting in the way and growing copius quantites of mould inside and out. David contacted me to ask if I knew anyone interested in the car - it had to go and go soon as he knew if it wasn't worked on it would never be recoverable and after some long conversations about condition and I was hooked - I borrowed an EX AA Transporter and made the long journey from Norfolk to Southampton to collect the car - no cash exchanged hands the purchase price of the car was the cost of Diesel to collect £87.67 to be precise.
So what was it like when I got it home - All four brakes seized as well as the handbrake - winching the car onto the transporter left long black lines from the driveway to the cab. The engine hadn't been run for over a year. It was covered in green mould due to the shaded nature of its parked position. The interior didn't look much better and absolutely nothing electrical worked even with a brand new battery. There were other faults found during the course of getting her back on the road but bottom line was it took me a whole month to get the engine running and over a year before she passed an MOT. The intention was to use her as an additional summer car and maybe finish of a few of the odd jobs that needed doing like the mechanical odometer on the digital instrumentation pack didn't work. (well it racked up a mile or so in a months worth of use and thats it)
So she was finally on the road and expenditure amounted to just over £1000 - battery, radiator, water pump, tyres, brake pads, discs, handbrake shoes, header tank, hoses, headlights, indicators, body parts, serviced items and a not unreasonable ammount of welding.
The same week she passed the MOT a mate locally had a major problem with the engine on his Carlton GSi and due to a financial commitment elsewhere he could not afford to repair the engine so I loaned him the GSE - FOR 6 MONTHS - I saw it everyday tho..... He commuted 60 miles a day 5 days a week which would have put 7000 miles on the odometer if it worked!!!! I got it back and continued to put miles on the car for 2 years without more than 50 being recorded on the dash (i'd bought another intrumentation unit but that had the same fault!!! Then amazingly enough the odometer started working and seems to be happily racking up the miles now.
I use her for everyday commuting - track days - car shows and occasionally because the hatch back arrangement is so handy when the seats are folded flat carrying awkward or large items.
Below are the last shots I have of it before I had the stainless exhaust fitted this year – the alloys are gone so it’s back to std till I get the replacement ones finished
And lastly the Monza doing what it does best Trax2004 (albeit briefly)
Damm I love this car :-D
This is my Desktop when in Monza GSE Mode
I think it's a cracking shot
Why are they such great cars
- cheap as chips - a good one can be had for as little as £750
- built with nice quality metal (yes they do have rust problems but once it's cut out the existing metal welds really well)
- unbustable engines capable of huge mileages
- great gearboxes (apart from the early 3 speed autos)
- Seating for 4 in comfort
- versatile load area - rear seats fold down flat so if you need to move a freezer to the local tip it's an easy job (my non colapsable engine crane fits in perfectly and it's bloody huge :roll:
- excellent handling, neutral and without understeer (oversteer on the ragged edge when you plant the loud pedal)
As far as colours go the following is IMHO - I hope no-one takes offence
Barrat brown and any of the golds suck
Anthracite, white, black and silver are all great
Carnelian red - looks good if the paint is fresh (hastily added to stop AW going mental) other wise looks a bit naff
They did a light green and a few other colours that are very rare so I haven't seen enough of them to make my mind up
Whatever colour external the inside has got be charcoal as the brown version fitted to some GSE's looks pretty poor in most colours
Other reasons to buy one are......
- Insurance at £150 per year fully comp and agreed miles
- Monaro style (two door coupe for peanuts)
- Opel Badge (exclusive) It attracts more comments than the LC (might be the noise tho)
- Electric Windows
- Electric Sunroof (tilt and slide)
- Central locking
- Opening rear windows
- 6 dial intruments (Oil pressure and voltmeter)
- Trip computer
- ABS (if you hunt for one with it)
- LSD (again hunt as it was an option)
Bit of an update.......
Well I've had these wheels for years - they used to be on my Senator A and after that on my first GSE (anthracite - Auto) and were silver with polished highlights...... Just never struck on the colour or the polished rims
Had a set of compomotive 5 spokes on the car for a while - colour coded to the car - but hated the rounded spokes - didn't look right against the sharp lines of the Monza shape so flogged them on and went back to std..... (pics above of those rims)
Finally got round to getting them refurbed last week and got the tyres swapped today :lol:
And I thought I'd do summut different with em - going for the stealth bomber effect :lol:
Before
After
And a piccy of just a wheel cos I'm no David Baily and it wasn't the best light for a photo shoot
The stealth bomber has landed.....
