In 2003 the fun began!

I’d managed to get rid of my third car, an unreliable and costly Peugeot 306. I’d been out of Uni a couple of years and had managed to save some cash up. I started looking for a ‘sports car’…

After much research and playing with spreadsheets and checking insurance costs, I purchased a 1990 Jap Import Eunos Roadster (i.e. a Mazda MX-5) 1.6 V-Special in British Racing Green (H872ATV), imported into the UK in 1999. What a brilliant little car! I kept it for 3 years; and did my first work ever on a car including taking the door apart and fixing the electric window. I replaced the worn black soft-top with a new tan hood to match the interior and fitted white alloys. I started browsing Halfords, eBay and MX5Parts daily looking for new shiny accessories, and fitted a wood effect interior (in hindsight – yuk).

I kept her for 3 years and drove everywhere in her. It was the first car I truly named: Maggy.

I almost cried the day I sold her. And I still regret to this day selling her… although she was starting to get a bit tatty (rust on the window surround, paint peeling) she was mechanically perfect and I think the only thing I had to fix in those three years of ownership was the electric window.

But she wasn’t to be my last MX-5… a few years would pass, but I would go on to own 4 more. But more about that in future posts.

I only sold her because it had been 3 years and I fancied a change and something flashier and newer – and I had cash burning a hole in my pocket. I’d moved house and I had some money free which I intended to put back into the mortgage later, but decided to purchase a fancy car for 3 months, just to experience it, then sell it and put the money back into the house and get something cheaper.

So, in the spring of 2006, I bought a 2004 Lotus Elise S2, a S111R which had the high revving VTEC Toyota engine with a huge kick. The engine produced 190bhp which isn’t much compared to some of the other options out there (250-300bhp Suburas etc) but the car weighed less than 900kg so it leaped from 0 to 60mph in 4.9 seconds – amazing. And the handling was astonishing; she was glued to the road around corners. I used to go for a blast on country roads and the adrenaline surge was fantastic.

Amazing machine… but a terrible car!

The single windscreen wiper was practically useless, the aircon was like an asthmatic coughing at you through a straw (to borrow a quote from Jeremy Clarkson). The seats were very uncomfortable; I could last a max of 35 mins before screaming in agony. Shame I had a 40 minute drive to work. I’d be writhing around the cabin for the last 5 minutes of the journey and practically fall out of the car – if I could, you couldn’t get out of the car if you couldn’t open the door fully – which I couldn’t in the tight parking spaces at work – due to the wide sill and low door.

Which started falling off… fortunately, I managed to sell it back to another dealer for £1000 less than I’d bought it for. £333 a month to have had the experience of that car seemed worth it – you’d pay more a month for a new Ford Mondeo and be tied in for 2 years.

Around that time I also bought my girlfriend at the time a £150 (I think it was only that much) purple Vauxhall Cavalier 1.6 (’92/’93 plate I recall) to learn to drive in. Great fun, it was pretty pokey! It used to slide all over the road even more than the old Astra though. We managed to get a year out of it before the fuel lines rotted and we decided to scrap it, replacing it around 2005 with a ’98 (was it an S reg?) red Audi A4 1.6 for around 2K. Somewhat more luxurious, it was heavier than the Cavalier and a bit disappointing and dull to drive, but it served its purpose for a couple of years.

Around 2004, my 2 year bike CBT had expired. Since I’d bought the MX-5 I’d hardly used the bike, and living in Cotgrave as opposed to the original idea of Beeston (bad traffic) meant that I didn’t really gain any rush hour advantages. Seeing as it would be expensive and time consuming to do the full test (would have to take a week off work), I decided to sell the bike.

It would be 9 years before I hopped back on that (mechanical) horse…

Next part of the story: Financial crisis strikes