Cars!

Aye, I would give a kidney for one of those - and a lung.

 

Not surprised by those BMW parts prices at all - a lot of modern parts seem to be horrendously expensive.

The oil, well it not cheap, but maybe we need to reset our understanding of what stuff costs to make these sort of things. Mrs C works for Boots and wouldn't bat an eyelid at a 250ml pot of some miracle cream or other costing fifty or sixty quid, yet we moan about the cost of four times as much synthetic oil that has to endure all sorts of pressures and temperatures and still do their job to the same level regardless

PS - I don't like BMW's either

 

In 1965 I ordered, brand new (savings from when I was in the merchant navy), an Anglia 105E with a 1200cc engine (most were 997cc). It took a while for it to get to me because the main dealers said it had to be ordered as a factory extra car.

They delivered it to me and it drove beautifully. I really loved the car. Three weeks later the manager of the dealership phoned me and asked whether they could have the car back as they had delivered the wrong one as there had been a mix up at the factory!!!

Apparently it was a special build (don't know who for) and was supposed to be a souped up version of the 123E with the 105E badge. It had been built with the Cortina 1200 GT engine with the 'special tuning' and a racing gearbox (Didn't understand any of it but I knew it went like the clappers - for those days).

I asked the manager whether the dealership had been charged extra for it and he said 'no' (he was one of my customers). So I asked him what Ford would say if I said I didn't want to give it back and he said they would be likely to just build another one for their customer (it wasn't a customer of the dealership). He was correct and I ended up being allowed to keep it. Some months later he phoned me and said he found out it had been built for one of the foremen at the factory but he couldn't work out whether it was an official build or not!

By 1968 the car was still running beautifully and the main dealer manager offered me almost as much for the car as I'd paid for the '105E'. So I started looking around. I went to the Motor Show and liked the new Escort GT (replaced the Anglia) and asked how much they were. They told me the price but said that the price was the 'Motor Show price' and would only last for three weeks.

So I asked when they could deliver one to me and their reply was 'we don't know as there is a dock strike and they come from abroad'. I said that's not a problem and would order it right away and just wait. Their reply was 'we can't guarantee the price if the strike lasts more than three weeks'! So I negotiated with them for the car on the stand and got 25% discount for delivery 'as seen'. Which was almost the same as the money offered for my old car.

 

Could have been worse - you might have bought yourself a Belmont......

 

They were hideous things - them and Nova saloons. They seemed to be popular with the yoofs not that long after I moved into my twenties; I never did get why they were the popular models.