The website of Adam Sloman, freelance motoring journalist and author.
My Salute to…
Motoring Memories
Jul 30th
Just the other night I was typing away on MSN Messenger, discussing with one of my editors some of the cars I’ve owned in the (just over) ten years I’ve been driving. I was shocked at how many I’ve had.
Me and Mini no.1
My salute to…
May 25th
My first 214, circa 2001
The Rover 200.
Yup, the humble Rover 200.
Rover’s Escort rival of the early 1990′s was a cracking car, and leagues ahead of the opposition. I bought my first Wedge (the 200 came in three marks, box, wedge, or bubble) for the princely sum of £375, complete with faded and chipped lacquer on the bonnet.
Still, soon enough I’d sorted that, a trip to the scrappy saw me come home with a new bonnet and a full set of 200 GTi leather. I then added a grille from a facelifted car and a set of later rear lights. It all looked rather smart, even if it still handled like it was crossing the Atlantic. This Rover was built for comfort, not for speed. It was the first truly modern car I owned, and it was fantastic. It never missed a beat, and when it’s clutch went, I stumped up the cash (that I really couldn’t afford) to get it back on the road. Pity then, that someone decided to key the entire passenger side, doing every panel significant damage.
I never looked at the car the same after that, and a few months later I traded it in for a rotten 1986 Mini with a whole heap of problems. Eventually, when the Mini went, I went back to Rover, and bought another H-reg, this time it was a 1.1, but also in red. It was the first car Sarah and I got while we were together, in fact. A head-gasket eventually did for the car, but it went onto a new home, and if I remember rightly, it kept running for a long while after I’d sold it.
A Honda-powered 216 followed, and that was some car, it felt stupidly quick in comparison to the 1100, but for reasons I can’t recall, I sold it. The roughest 200 I ever owned followed it, a 3-door 214. I always wanted a 3-door, but this time I bought a pup.
Sarah and I travelled all the way to Leominster to buy it, after I won it (unseen) from an eBay auction. It lasted six months, it was a shoddy starter, leaked oil and water, and had had a very hard life before it came to me.
With no love left for the 3-door, I went back to Minis, with my K-plate Cooper, but I’ll always remember just what a brilliant car the Rover 200 was. Compare it to the equivalent Ford Escort, or Vauxhall Astra, and it’s clear just what a good car Rover were building, add in variants like the Tomcat Coupe, the Tourer and the 220GTi and the Rover speaks for itself.
Of the 200s I owned, I never owned a real, proper stonker. One day I’ll add that 220GTi to the Sloman garage. I mean look at it:
1992 Rover 200 GTi (pic from AROnline.co.uk)
My salute to:
May 20th
The Kettler Pedal Go-cart!
I’d been speaking to my editor at Diesel Car, who had offered me the chance to add my mugshot to the editorial team in the magazine.
The finest Pedal powered motor 1986 had to offer! It's funny how the mind works, how something cast into the depths of your memory can remain there, for years, until something random sparks you to remember.
‘Give me a pic and a few words about who you are and how you got here’ he said.
Simple enough I thought, and then, as I sat hunched over the keyboard, preparing my mini-autobiography, boom, from nowhere, I was suddenly reminded of my faithful old Kettler ‘Kettcar’ pedal Go-cart.
Back when I was 4 I was given a ‘cart very similar to the one pictured, I remember the bright red paint work like it was yesterday. Keen to try my new wheels I drove, quite calmly, up and down the garden path. Then, a few months later, fate took a hand and my brother introduced me to the concept of the hand-brake turn. ‘Pedal as fast as you can down-hill, turn hard and yank the hand-brake.’
Next thing you know I’m flying down the drive, sliding this go-cart round like I’m Paddy bloody Hopkirk. Awesome stuff. Of course the Kettler’s solid plastic wheels could only cope with so much punishment, and it wasn’t long before the original cart’s chain started slipping (cased in a plastic ‘transmission tunnel’, it made servicing awkward!) and I had soon worn the hard plastic ‘tyres’ through.
A few years later a yellow framed cart replaced the original and I carried on much as before, loving my cart and loving my handbrake turns, even if they were bloody dangerous (I recall more than one occasion where I came too close to traffic on the road at the bottom of our house!).
I think the Kettler had more of an impact on me than I realise, I’ve never had any interest in motorbikes, cars have always held my fascination, and I reckon that’s down to the go-cart. It probably goes a long way to explaining my adoration of the Mini, too.
There’s only one thing for it, I’m going to have to buy another one.
Not for me, you understand. Oh no.
But for Lily, obviously…
My Salute to…
Jan 14th
Recently I’ve been thinking an awful lot about my first love. No, not the young lady (who shall remain nameless) that I spent five years of secondary school fawning over with little result, but rather the first car I ever owned.
My Mini. My Mighty Mini.
My first Mini-gone but never forgotten
I fell for the Mini at an early age, I must’ve been around 6 or 7 and I remember my Brother in law taking me around the back lanes of East Devon in his white hill-climb Mini. The car was insanely quick, and it seemed to handle like my wheels at the time, a red pedal go-kart! I was hooked, and when the time car and I wanted a my first car, I wanted a Mini like Charlie’s. Through contacts at a local Mini specialist, he helped me find that car and soon enough it was mine.
My first Mini was a cracking car. Winnie, as I soon named her, set me back £850 back in 1999 (I paid an extra fifty quid for the white Cooper style roof) was, to me, the perfect car. At 17 fuel was cheap, and earning £300 a month doing cleaning meant I had cash in my pocket, and petrol in my car.
Over the next year and a bit I tinkered and tweaked the little Mini City until it gained a set of Cooper stripes, wide minilite style wheels, ‘Austin Cooper’ badges and a dummy filler neck. An old blue Mayfair gave up its seats to replace the brown vinyl she came with (although they were soon replaced by a set of bargain Cobra bucket seats!), and a custom made MDF dash must have given an extra 20-30 BHP, minimum.
I went everywhere I could with Winnie, London to Brighton, The Riviera Run, Mini In The Park, all over country. People said I’d never make it, but not once did the car ever let me down. The same couldn’t be said when my brother dared borrow her, she’d cough, splutter, and sometimes just stop-she knew it wasn’t me driving her, and she wasn’t happy about it!
As with many things in life, fate intervened.
One evening, on a journey I need not have made, a fox leapt out in front of the car, I swerved, stupidly, to avoid it. A Fiesta coming towards me made me turn back hard, putting Winnie and me, into the hedge. With wheels buckled, and the subframe bent, the insurance company was quick to write off the then 13 year old Mini.
I was car-less once again.
Still, Winnie may have been my first Mini, but she certainly wasn’t my last! 17 others followed, but I’ll bore you with those another time.
Sheds of the past…
Sep 2nd
Almost ten years ago,in February 2000, I passed my driving test. Within nine months I’d had my first accident, and the Mini was no more.
So I ended up with this:
Not a System Porsche Ibiza, this is the closest I could get on Google Images
A SEAT Ibiza.
A System Porshce, no less. For the princely sum of £70 I bought myself a chunk of the finest motoring 1980′s Spain had to offer.
Silver paintwork with ‘PORCSCHE’ slapped down the sides and on top of the engine, 1500cc, 62BHP, alloys, foglights, electric windows, all the toys. But my god it was a mess.
The bootlid latch was broken and so it came fitted with a rather sporty red and yellow striped bungie strap that stopped the hatch opening at will (although it did make an effective air-brake, at least eight years ahead of the Bugatti Veyron).
The washer jets didn’t work, despite me cleaning the whole lot and replacing the jets, the clock display only worked when the headlights were on and the entire top end of the passenger wing had rotted away, which flicked water onto the windscreen when it rained. No need for those washer jets after all.
So much brake dust had burned into the wheels they’d gone black.
Permanently. Of course modern Ibiza’s boast smart black alloys…
The car was nasty, floating around Devon’s B-roads on a cushion of blancmange is not an experience I wish to repeat, with the wiring from the cigarette lighter sparking together when I went round a left hand bend, electric windows permanently lowered six inches, the gap being made up by half a roll of insulation tape.
Everything about the SEAT was hateful, but it had a charm that only hopeless cars can offer, it was like a dopey old dog, you knew it was a pain in the arse, but you couldn’t help but love the knackered old thing.
The funny rocker and slider switches it had as opposed to the stalk controls that every other car used, this was SEAT at its worst and clearly VW have changed the fortunes of the company in every way imaginable.
The Mini, for all it’s 1950s design flaws was the much better car, no question.
The Ibiza wasn’t with me for long, a £500 gold 1988 Mini Mayfair soon succeeded it. So what became of the Ibiza? I sold it, for £70, through freeads. Stupidly I didn’t do the paperwork properly, and three months later I had a visit from the police, regarding the Spaniard.
Believe it or not it had been used as the getaway vehicle in a raid on a building society in Cheltenham.
And guess who’s name was still on the logbook….
Thing is, I can’t recall seeing another one on the roads since I had mine. The car did live on in China, built by Nanjing Automotive (yup, the same NAC that bought MG) who (according to wikipedia) worked with a mobile phone company, called Ningbo Bird,(yes really, here’s the link if you doubt me) redeveloped and relaunched the aged SEAT as the Nanjing Yuejin Soyat where it continues to be popular. Despite several facelifts, it has proved that even the Chinese, with their rapidly growing Automotive industry, can’t polish a turd.
The funny thing is though, they seem to have totally vanished from our roads, I know ’80′s SEATs were probably not huge sellers, but you would expect some to survive. One day, when I have made my millions, I’ll add that 1988 SEAT Ibiza System Porsche to the Sloman Garage. One day…
