As regular readers might remember, I am now the proud owner of not one, not two, but three beautiful German classics – a 1975 BMW 2002tiiLux in Golf Yellow, a red 1982 Mercedes-Benz 280CE and most recently, the crowning glory of my garage, indeed my entire car ownership history, a Gemini Blue metallic 1972 Porsche 911T.
As such, while there are always other classics that I covet – at the “budget” end, cars such as an Opel Manta A or a Lancia Fulvia or an Audi 100S coupé or more extravagantly, a Gordon Keeble, a Facel Vega or a Pagoda SL…I could go on – suffice to say my classic car itch has been well and truly scratched, for the time being, at least! Of course, like many of us, given an unlimited budget and/or access to a vast storage space, I could easily fill it and probably still find classics that I wanted – call it Jay Leno Syndrome, or JLS, if you will – 181 cars at the last count. More on him another time.
However, back in the real world, owning the three I have now is already my limit, not least because I only have a double garage so one of them – the 280CE – lives outside as it’s my semi-daily driver, with the 2002 and 911 tucked up behind closed doors. Having more than three would require additional storage, somewhere not necessarily close to here and of course at additional cost. While my classic Teutonic Trio is insured for a combined annual mileage of 18,000, the reality is that I will probably cover less than half that across all three – the 911 has only recently been made road legal, but I expect it will get used more in the summer instead of the BMW and die Zitrone will probably be the least used of the three. So while I’ve increased the number of cars I own (and I have access to my partner’s modern BMW), the mileage I cover will be pretty much as before, which has set me thinking (always a dangerous thing).
After seven years and a lot of money spent restoring a car that had allegedly been restored only a few years before I bought it, I did toy with the idea of selling die Zitrone during the summer, had some detailing done to prepare it for sale, including some paintwork, new seatbelts and having the passenger door re-hung, and even put a For Sale sign up in the window at the Silverstone Classic. My heart wasn’t really in it though and in the end I’ve kept it – for now. In fact, if I do decide to sell it next year, there are a few more things that need attention.
Annoyingly, a small chip by the passenger door handle has appeared – no idea how it got there – and although it is small, it’s immediately visible and the eye is drawn to it, so it must go. The suspension also needs a look – last time I had four people in the car (including me) the wheel arches at the rear scraped against the tyres, not something that has happened before.
With all this, and the likelihood that it will now be third in the pecking order when it comes to use, the more I find myself revisiting the notion that maybe I should let it go and invest some of the proceeds in the Merc and Porsche to make them the best they can be and use any remaining cash – if there is any – for whatever.
After my hunt for a classic daily resulted in buying the 280CE, I’ve now run it for 16 months and in that time covered just under 4000 miles, most of them fairly local, the longest round trip being to Stoke Poges and back, about 200 miles. As the most modern of my trio, it is also the easiest and most comfortable to drive, thus lending itself nicely to use as a more-or-less daily. Earlier in the summer it developed an oil leak which resulted in a replacement head gasket being required – not a cheap job, and the heater controls were jammed. It turns out that to access them, the entire fascia had to be removed, resulting in significant labour costs, since I am not a DIY expert. In recent months there was also a vibration at the front wheels from c.60mph that two visits for wheel balancing failed to address – in the end I put new tyres on all round and the car has been transformed, particularly at motorway cruising speeds; I should have done this sooner.
It is a thirsty beast – an early ‘80’s 2.8-litre automatic was never going to be economical, but I had hoped for a little more than the 24mpg average I’ve been getting so far. By way of comparison, my other half’s BMW 520i Touring Automatic, which coincidentally produces 184bhp vs 185bhp (in theory at least) returns 38mpg – an example of the increased efficiency of modern cars.
As for the 911, after the excitement of it turning up on a trailer (accompanied by a pair of vintage tractors!) getting it registered for use on UK roads took far longer than usual – another Brexit Bonus, compounded by Covid delays – and I’ve only been able to drive it about 300 miles before the onset of the damp late Autumn weather. An initial check over at Templar Classics has confirmed it is fundamentally a very sound car, and it drives very nicely, although getting used to the floor-hinged pedals has taken me some time! I’ve had to replace the battery as the old one was losing charge after just two or three days, and before the spring I intend to get the suspension looked at – there’s quite a bit of rattle and squeak coming from the underside and there’s a possibility that the torsion bars are the problem (according to several members of the Air-cooled 911 and 912 Facebook group) – in any case, I’ll get them looked at. Once sorted, and it’s had a service, the 911 will be ready for serious duty – I intend to repeat my 2018 road trip to Germany and make a now overdue round of visits to my extended family in the summer, albeit taking a slightly different route this time, and definitely taking in a stop at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. This is of course subject to the world returning to something closer to normal – thanks to Brexit, the trip will be more complicated than it used to be anyway.
For now, I still feel a strong attachment to my little yellow ‘02, not least because of the road trip I did with it in 2018, and yet, now my dream 911 is in the garage…could it be the cuckoo that displaces die Zitrone?
