Goodbye Dagenham's finest....(?)

A sad day. I remember borrowing one from a friend when he was off island for a couple of weeks and thrashing the poor thing around the hills.

To be fair, he only drove it on choke and for short distances, so it was coked to the gills and i did him a favour. And if he did not want people borrowing it, he would not have left the keys visible/available/unlocked.

My first car was a 1978 V reg 2 tone beige and brown Fiesta, and cost me the princley sum of £150. Was down as a 1.0L but had a 1.3 in it!! Naughty. That was in 1995. What a bag of shite. It was my bag of shite though, and it got me a round a bit.

Also had an E reg one, black 950 engine. Only car I've ever made money on. Paid £300 for and sold it for £650 about 6 months later.

I had one as my first car. must have been early 90s, a B reg bright red beauty! Loved it! Could fix it with a screwdriver and learned the old trick of whacking the sticky starter motor with a bar in a traffic jam on the M1. During a total panic that I'd stalled it and it wouldn't start again in lane 3 (as that's the only lane Fiestas with 18 yr old drivers should be in), a guy in lane 2 got out and told me to whack it, then showed me. It started first time! What a car...

the very humble Mk1 950 was nearlymy second first car

My mates had one, two brothers, they were selling it for £500, I told one of them I'd have it, he forgot to tell the other one, who sold it to someone else...

Oh, actually, also did my first MTB roadtrip in one. MartynS off of here had an XR2, and we put his Spesh Rockhopper and my Marin Hawk Hill on the back of it and went camping in Wales for a week in 1996.

First new car we had was a Y reg mk1, pine green, 1.1 Popular Plus. Can remember thinking it was really posh as a 4 year old! We loved that car.

Mate had a mk2 XR2 like above which looked great but wasn't very fast.

Real shame to see it disappear, especially as there's still obviously a market for them. Focus is going too so loads more SUV's no doubt. Yay.

I famously went to work in the Welsh Valleys in it once driving through Merthyr watching the youths on the streets watching me and hoping I didn’t have to stop…

A cycling friend used to work as some kind of lawyer in Merthyr and would drive his Golf GTi there. It was never stolen or damaged because he'd threatened to stop defending the local youth in court if anyone touched it. 😀

My first ever car! Terracotta Mk1 W reg. Absolutely loved it. 1.1 I think and it got ragged everywhere and never once let me down. Happy days.

I had a Mk2 XR2. Loved the car, however only one of the twin choke's worked when it was cold. So when you got to a junction and it was cold you had to blip the accelerator to keep the engine running.
My GF at the time decided to borrow the car, which then died on one of the busiest motorway junctions. She also didn't know about the immobiliser and how to re-set it. The car lasted longer than she did.

Also for anyone who has ever been to Ambleside...

We had a MK1 XR2 in the Eighties I think the reg was VJX 812X

Same as this. Had some great times in it

[img] ?w=900[/img}

A friend had one when we lived in Kirkcudbright. It was black with pepper-pot wheels. It was an absolute hoot of a car around the Galloway coastal and hill roads. It was it's agility and go-kart feel, not outright speed (our other workmates Sirocco 1.8 was good for that...) which was fun.
Some happy memories of that thing.

Many memories of Fiestas (car not the magazine ;))
Mate had a mk2 one we had 11 people in it one night returning from a young farmers disco.
When dating my now wife,her pride and joy was a n reg fiesta she took me out for the day only for the window to fall into the door when I wound it down.
Weve had 5 fiestas over the years last one was an ecoboost 15 plate was really sorry for it to go. Loved driving it on a twisty road not a load of power (125ps) just enough really.
Writing has been on the wall too expensive when I looked to replace it

Writing has been on the wall too expensive when I looked to replace it

That seems to be the case with all superminis now - long gone are the days when it was £99 down and £99 a month! 🙂

Very sad I know
G892 XPA 1.1 popular in red
N406SNL 1.3 white
R849PVK 1.3 Red metallic
R857PVk 1.25 Zetec Black
ND13EPC 1.0 EcoBoost Red
YC15UTU 1.0 EcoBoost Red

I had two mk4s. An R and an 02. The R rusted to death. The 02 was much nicer, power steering and a better engine. Unfortunately I crashed it after hitting a load of gravel on a bend and it was written off 🙁 but no one harmed thankfully as it was just me and quite low speed.

Pfffttt.

None of those rust buckets can hold a candle to Foxy* the Racing** Fiesta

*Image shown is not actually Foxy, Foxy has 3 badly kerbed alloys which the owner achieved in a single incident with a chicane and pedestrian refuge. The 4th was kerbed separately, along with sever other kerbings of the other 3. She also has several "go faster stripes".

**it's a sate of mind, any racing noises are actually just where the Holts GunGum has fallen out of the exhaust between MOT's

Y reg (1981?) was my first car in 1994. Can't actually remember if it was 975 cc or 1.1, all I remember is that is was a bigger engine that the 750cc Fiat Panda my parents were pushing me towards!

Things I do remember about it;
- Was a Mk 1, but had acquired a Mk 2 tailgate at some point
- Was red (faster natch)
- Was supplied with a Manic Street Preachers sticker holding the tax disc on, which I thought was a good sign of the previous owners good character.

I had one of these, in the charming "signal yellow". I rebuilt the engine, fitted some free (not very good but big) parcel shelf mounted speakers that then got stolen, patched many various bits of rust, rebuilt the twin weber carbs, had the heater matrix out which included removing the dash... I learnt a lot from that car, especially controlling understeer!

Edit - and I fitted some extra locks after I unlocked it and tried to start it with my front door key.

Didn’t realise that the Focus has already been slated to be axed too! Guess everyone really does want bigger, less efficient cars! Madness.

Red 950 popular 1981, w reg, Billy basic no boot cover, plastic upholstery, permanent engine fan no thermostat, 4 speed, but it was mine and first taste of freedom.

Replaced with a polo which was miles better.

Rip fiesta

I had one of these, in the charming “signal yellow”. I rebuilt the engine, fitted some free (not very good but big) parcel shelf mounted speakers that then got stolen, patched many various bits of rust, rebuilt the twin weber carbs, had the heater matrix out which included removing the dash… I learnt a lot from that car, especially controlling understeer!

A 1300 SuperSport! My friend had a white one which he understeered into a hedge with us in it, luckily no harm done.

any racing noises are actually just where the Holts GunGum has fallen out of the exhaust between MOT’s

Ah, you met mrs_oab's and I's first car - a dodgy (cut n shut) early Mk2 Fiesta in a fetching shade of blue. With a blown head gasket and patched exhaust.
Just like this one:
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/5297/5568705381_e405c76633_h.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/5297/5568705381_e405c76633_h.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/9u656K ]1984 Ford Fiesta 1.1 Popular Plus[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/47381765@N04/ ]Alan Gold[/url], on Flickr

First car was a mk1 bravo 2. I would have it back in a heartbeat if I had money and storage. So basic and light, easy to work on and a joy to drive being so small and simple. If anybody ever went on retro rides 10-15 years ago they may recognise it, I was a regular back then.

https://flic.kr/p/2nVmeX3

Ah, you met mrs_oab’s and I’s first car – a dodgy (cut n shut) early Mk2 Fiesta in a fetching shade of blue. With a blown head gasket.
Just like this one:

I had a 4 speed (1.0 I think) like that.

It would lose speed on the motorway on long gradual inclines, despite foot hard to the floor, I seem to remember having to change down to 3rd once or twice, haha.

It also used about the same amount of oil as it did petrol. It was a hatefull shitter of a car.

2-tone brown beige Mk1 was my first car bought for £200 and then cost me another £150 for second hand shocks and part worn tyres all round. It got ragged from Settle to Blackpool and back every week, every corner on the A682 was an adventure in understeering.

After 2 years the rear arches were 90% rust and failed the MOT so knocked them out and rebuilt them with fibreglass matting and filler, gave it a rattle can and it passed it's MOT no problem. The following week I exited the Spar shop just in time to witness an old duffer reverse into one of my newly rebuilt arches depositing it on the carpark. Insurance came and assessed and gave me £200 for it - I bought it back for a tenner.

With nearly a years MOT left I wasn't going to bother rebuilding it again so just gaffer taped it up and drove it around until the following winter. The girlfriend at the time had a Nissan Cherry Europe - the one with the 1.2 alfasud engine in it - always a lottery if it would start on cold days. One cold frosty morning it let her down and she borrowed the Fiesta to go to work in, 20 mins later she was back home sans Fiesta - a Mondeo man had slid on some black ice and put the Fiesta into a wall - front end completely twisted and unrepairable. Insurance ponied up another £200 and that was the end of it. RIP

Just checked my old Mk2 XR2 on the gov MOT checker - untaxed since 1995 and no MOT history! Someone's either got it in storage, or more likely, it's been stuffed into a wall 🙂

I've got (a fairly modern) one parked outside. Well, would have if mrs. mogrim hadn't taken it to work. Nice car to drive, although a little underpowered. Very dated and ugly inside, but practical.

Shame. Of all the Ford's I've driven through the years, I've never driven a Fiesta I hated.
It did amaze me how they had an OHV probably 50yr old engine in the early 2000s variant. 1.3l of tapping feebleness.

The 1.25 si (Zetec?) I had as a courtesy car in the late ninetes was awesome for the eighty(ish) miles until it got squashed by an Audi into a Volvo. Amazingly it still drove despite the rear suspension being broken and the headlamps buried somewhere in the engine bay. Not sure if it got written off but they wouldn't give us a courtesy car again.

A friend had a really early Fiesta, the windscreen washer pump was a foot operated thing, it kept snapping exhausts, but apparently if the engine mounts were tightened up you then couldn't get 4th.
Proper old shed with a block of wood to hold the window up.
It was a great old thing.

Only owned one. Around a j reg I think. Sold it on to my sister in law who then had it scrapped as it failed mot badly and needed too much money spending. Was very Smokey. Later saw it driving round Huddersfield looking like it had been resurrected- probably by the mechanic she sold it to for scrap.
When I was learning to drive (in a succession of 1.0L fiestas in 1987) there was an instructor locally that had an xr2 then xr2i for lessons. Sacrelige!

FFS, a victim of the desire for SUVs. Eurgh.

The inner young-a11y in me still fancies a recent Fiesta ST, despite being old enough to father your average age driver of one.

Learnt to drive in a mk2 XR2 like above. 1st test failed in Loughton as nearly stacked into a London bus. Passed 2nd test in Dad's Volvo.

My first car was a battered 950cc Fiesta. Did me proud for years including a few very dodgy police chases going where cars shouldn't go as part of the rave convoys of the late 80s/early 90s.

RIP

I fitted some extra locks after I unlocked it and tried to start it with my front door key.

Ah, this reminds me of a story about a mate who had an XR2, which another mate had left his jacket in the night before. We're all in the pub, jacket-missing mate says "have you got my jacket?", XR2 mate says "it's in the car, here's the keys", and jacket-missing mate toddles off to the pub car park.

He returns a few minutes later saying "I looked in the front and the back, and in the boot, it's not there"

XR2 mate says "it's on the front seat"

"No it's not"

"It bloody is, I'll show you". And off they both toddle to the car park.

Turns out that jacket-missig mate had been looking in the wrong car, as there were two different XR2s in the carpark that night, and the keys worked perfectly in both...

@mattyfez - that was exactly like ours. I remember being down to 40mph on the motorway going over M62 at Scammonden and carrying a bottle of oil in the boot at all times.

My mates XR2 felt like a totally different car.
As was the Polo 1.4 Estate we replaced the dodgy Fiesta with.

The most upsetting part...?

<b class="ssrcss-hmf8ql-BoldText e5tfeyi3">drivers opt for SUVs</b>

This is not a happy trend.

Sad times, I’ve come from a ford family and had escorts, mondeos a couple of focuses (foci?) a puma (old one) a C max, a Ka and I’m currently on a new shaped Kuga but almost unbelievably I don’t think I’ve ever even driven a Fiesta. The puma is as close as I’ve got.

We’re looking at getting a second car because the Mrs is going back to work soon was looking at Fiestas, but the new ones are too expend compared to the competition, so the record will probably continue.

This is not a happy trend.

Dacia has said 'Hold my beer'.

It seems many manufacturers are going 'upmarket' and SUV styleee.

Meanwhile, MG, Dacia et all are all growing sales. Heck, even oddball things like Citroen Ami are getting a lot of interest.

Will the pendulum swing back, once Ford's marketing department realise they have spent 10 years telling everyone to buy an posher looking SUV and in doing so killing the small hatchback / supermini sales for themselves?

I've had two.
Excellent cars, and very good as a packhorse.

Got given my first one by my grandma.
I don't think she used it to carry downhill bikes.

Also great for carrying Canadian canoes.

I learnt a lot from that car, especially controlling understeer!

A 1300 SuperSport! My friend had a white one which he understeered into a hedge with us in it, luckily no harm done.

I had a 1300S Loved it. Very nippy in the lanes though I discovered it was also possible to encourage it into oversteer if "making progress". That's how I spun then rolled it. I was distraught.

My first car was a mk1 Fiesta, 1.1L in Arizona Gold. #SecurityQuestions

I saw a mk2 on Sunday, a red one in good nick, driving in the opposite direction as I was coming home from Yorkshire.

My first car was pretty much this beauty...

1.3l engine and twin-choke Weber carb meant I ended up in several ditches as an enthusiastic but not-very-good 17-year-old driver.

Good for fitting bikes in the hatchback too.

R904CNT was a Fiesta, and a reg I'll never forget.

It seems many manufacturers are going ‘upmarket’ and SUV styleee.

Meanwhile, MG, Dacia et all are all growing sales

Between them they only make one non-SUV.

A 1300 SuperSport!

Oh yes, I had one of these too. I think it was my second car.

I remember taking a mate - who was a year younger than me - down an old dirt road one night, so I could give him his first driving lesson. Needless to say, he drove very much in a straight line and without braking, ignored the left hand bend, and smashed into the gates of a sewage treatment plant. I reversed out of there sharpish, returned home and called it a day on teaching him to drive.

The front grill, bumper and bonnet were all scrunched up and I was contemplating i) how to hide this from my mum, and ii) how to fix it on the cheap, ie parts from breakers yards etc. Anyway, the following morning I went off to Uni for the week, only to receive a call from my mum the next day saying the bin lorry had reversed into my car that morning and damaged the front. What a stroke of luck, I thought. Grabbed a statement from her and my ex-gf who also heard about it from her mum up the road, sent them off to the council only to be informed that they were denying it happened. Couldn't be arsed to take it further and ended up getting bits from the scrappy. That was one of the cool things about cars back in the day - you break something, you find a part and fit it yourself or with your mates.

Fun times.

Mk2 XR2 back in 1985 then a Mk7 ST both in white a few years ago. An absolute hooligan of a car although the ride was a bit harsh to say the least 😳
A mate had a 1300 Supersport back in the day that was regularly airborne at the slightest opportunity.

the windscreen washer pump was a foot operated thing

Ah, yes - that brings back memories!

Looked mine up on Gov.uk, turns out it was an '83, not an '81.

I er found mrs DoD a MK2 XR2 just like that white one back in the day when she needed a car.

Drove it home in the dark with all the dash bulbs gone so couldn't see the speedo 🙂

Really a nice little go-kart as opposed to the standard bogo shitebox basic ones which were cheap and nasty.

It seems many manufacturers are going ‘upmarket’ and SUV styleee.

TBH with the whole popularity of PCP(possibly previous), there was probably more takers for nicer stuff than going for the basic stuff and I expect that the specs/requirements(airbags/safety features) of the basic model had crept up so the boggo dirt cheap fiesta wasn't that cheap to make/buy enough to make its production worthwhile.

the windscreen washer pump was a foot operated thing

Same, it was a bulb on the floor. It was great because you could aim the jets depending how hard you pressed it.

As well as being pretty cool, the XR2 is also the subject of one of the best car-related songs of all time. Needs proper speakers, preferably with a sub-bass that fills the entire boot.

Was expecting a different thread about builders arse cleavage...

*walks off in disgust*

My mates XR2 felt like a totally different car.

Yep, I Like the XR2 and the MK3 RS version was a fun box I never got to drive , I'd er not want to drive the boggo grotboxes thou 🙂

bigdaddy
I can’t believe starter motors were still sticking in the 90s , I learnt to drive in 72 first two cars were Anglia's and both of them suffered, Sometimes whacking the body with a spanner didn’t work so I had to take the starter motor and spin the armature 🙄 always allowed 10 minutes extra to get to work 😬

This is not a happy trend.

No, it's really not.

Between them they only make one non-SUV.

Dacia Sandero
MG 3
MG 5

My memory is of my next door neighbor getting a mk1 shell and sticking a 3 litre v6 in the back of it along with rear wheel drive for autograss. I can remember him testing it in some tarmac and watching chunks of rubber fly off the tires due to the stupid amount of power it was putting out.

My first car was a mk1 Scirocco. The sensible part of my 21 year old brain then part exchanged it for a mk1 fiesta in baby blue and rust. The rear window fell out whilst hooning the mighty 950 down the a46 near RAF Swinderby. I took it back to the garage and asked them to replace the knackered starter motor as well. The salesman explained that 'the starter motors all do that' and solved it with a dose of WD40. I never tested it's fabled cornering ability as the Romans built my route to work. I got bored of its gutless nature and it got swapped for an mg midget which was ace but even less reliable and more rusty.

After a subsequent Saab 96, my boring brain won again and I paid a couple of hundred quid for a mk1 950. This time rust orange with added rust, a peeling black vinyl roof and the foot pump windscreen washer. It carried my marin palisades trail around the country along with my tiga 260 windsurfer. The board went inside with the mast tied on the vinyl roof without the need for a rack. In this configuration I drove out of GEC in Lincoln when we went on strike - two fingers to the company and I was aiming for a day's surf at Skegness!

Have had two Fiestas in my life, both were awful!

The first one was a Mk1 1.1 Popular, bought for £20 to get me to uni and back for a few weeks while my Clio was being repaired after a little bump. It was mostly rust and silicone sealant so not exactly a good car to judge the breed by!

The second was a Mk5 one pre-facelift that I 'upgraded' to from my fantastic Mk1 Ka. It was red (that looked sodding pink under the old style streetlights...) and was a 1.25. The engine was fantastic, lovely and revvy with decent fuel economy. The engine that the Ka should have had! Sadly though the rest of the Fiesta was awful. The driver's seat tilt cable snapped after 3 weeks, not covered by warranty. The part was £7 to buy but to fit it meant cutting the seat open! The door outer trims were always falling off, as did the rubber strip on the bottom of the front bumper. The grille had a habit of being in a different position after every drive too, thank really flexible mounting prongs for that. It also ate gearboxes for fun, had 3 in my 7 years and 133k I had it for. The first gearbox was replaced under warranty after 13k (after a fight with Ford UK), the second one only lasted to 46k where I put a remanufactured one in that had a much beefier input shaft. That fixed not only the gearbox but also finally got rid of a wheel vibration that would come and go randomly. That lasted until I traded the car in for my current Fabia. That Fiesta has been the only car I have ever got rid of and was glad to see the back of it, just didn't have any connection with it at all. Which is surprising as I love small cars, tight handling and small revvy engines.

Still sad to hear the model die though, especially as it signals the end of small hatchbacks from Ford as other manufacturers will surely follow. The list of cars I would consider in the future is getting very small as I really don't want a jacked up anything or an SUV.

as other manufacturers will surely follow.

I dunno, I just think the small car has shifted from the obligatory Fiesta/Corsa, to Citroen, Kia, Honda etc.

For example, heres a 92bhp brand new micra for £16k: nissan/micra

Or £14k for a Kia Rio: /kia/rio

I think I'd sooner buy that than a base model Fiesta/Corsa, I just don't think ford are that competetive compared to the cheaper Jap/Korean stuff.

Didn’t realise that the Focus has already been slated to be axed too! Guess everyone really does want bigger, less efficient cars! Madness.

No. What everyone will be buying are EV’s, by Government mandate, and unless you’re only ever going to be driving (very) locally, the cars will have to be bigger in order to accommodate big, heavy battery packs. Until smaller, lighter solid-state Lithium metal batteries become commercially available, then it might be feasible to produce smaller cars like the Fiesta with a reasonable range, and/or fast charging with a ten-fifteen minute charge time.

My car is bigger than a Fiesta, but is based on that car, with the 1.0 125bhp motor, and is almost as fuel efficient on long runs.

I do wonder what the motoring schools will do, we get transporter loads of new Fiesta and Focus on a monthly basis, to fit the dual controls and livery; we also get Pumas, so I guess they’ll have to rely on that single car from Ford. The other school that we deal with use Peugeot and Vauxhall cars, so won’t be affected.

Guess everyone really does want bigger, less efficient cars! Madness.

Not really, you'll struggle to buy a new fiesta, even the cheapest ones are about 17k, so why buy that? When you can buy a similar Kia with a 7 year/100k mile warranty for 3k less?

Ford just are not that competetive any more.

Dacia Sandero
MG 3
MG 5

In my defense, the only Sandero I've ever seen is this one:

My Brother had an MK1 in Kermit green and my sister had an mk2 in red that I use to borrow and then I bought my own MK2 in blue.

At the time I really wanted an XR2 but couldn't afford the insurance.

visited the Fiesta Dagenham factory quite a few times in the mid 90's. When we were walking round the chap told us not to touch anything because everything was so dirty and the body shells were left outside in all weathers waiting to be towed to the paint shop via the main road on trolleys.

We had a purple mk 4 for a few years was great in snow only heater valve ever failed the common theme here seems to be crap colour options beige brown gold rust green purple too much competition in the sector?

My friend Nick Bishop was given his mum's Mk 1 1.3. He took it to a rally prep garage, got the engine tuned, a Janspeed exhaust, the RS crossmember and uprated suspension. It was stupidly fast (for the time) and survived a remarkably long time until he crashed it. Before that I got "I've driven with Nick Bishop and lived" t-shirts for all our friends.

We later did sprints and hill climbs in a single seater until he tried to hold 3rd gear into the mountain at Cadwell Park and made said hello to the crash barriers. His neck hurt rather a lot on the drive back.

C156MFW

My first car, a red Mk2.  950cc and 4 gears.  Gave me my first taste of freedom and many fond memories.

Maybe not of my first trip on the M25 though

my first trip on the M25 though

Getting blown sideways when passing lorries?

The only brand new car I've ever had was a Mk1 XR2, GWT 499Y.

Got it in March '83 iirc, 3 months later, me and 2 mates went on holiday in it. The furthest south we got was Benidorm.

Memories.

Here’s a piece from The Guardian about this:

<p class="dcr-2v2zi4">Car brands have for the most part opted to launch electric vehicles under new nameplates rather than updating existing models. Ford is in the middle of a clearout: it also on Wednesday announced the end of production in Valencia of the S-MAX and Galaxy multi-purpose vehicles – what Americans call minivans – in April 2023. The Mondeo, the symbol of aspirational swing voters during Tony Blair’s premiership, was axed last year. The bigger Focus could also face the axe soon.</p>
<p class="dcr-2v2zi4">Ford is instead investing $2bn in Cologne to make electric cars on a blueprint shared from Volkswagen. Ford plans for the factory to make 1.2m electric vehicles over six years.</p>
<p class="dcr-2v2zi4">For now, however, Ford’s latest bestseller in the UK still burns petrol. Ford has sold 85,000 of its Puma model since it launched in 2020. The Puma, available as a hybrid with a small battery, has adopted bulkier crossover SUV styling that has become the dominant form in the car industry, to the chagrin of environmental campaigners because of their higher carbon emissions. Not everyone is happy with the shift.</p>

First car was a Fiesta Mk3 1.3 LX 3dr (L571 XKH) - went halfs with the girl I was with at the time. Sold it about 8 months later as we split up, only lost £100 in that time.

Then had another, same model but 5dr. Broke the engine mounts on that one by wheel spinning away from every set of lights within a 20 mile radius of Hull.

Last one was a Mk5 ST150 facelift. It had a full stainless straight through exhaust and had the cat removed. It is still the loudest car I have ever driven. Took it from Sunderland to Revs one weekend and that is the only time I ever went further than 20 miles in it as it just induced headaches. Power steering rack started leaking and a return replacement was going to be £300 plus £200 labour so it got binned off.

@countzero

Here’s a piece from The Guardian about this:

Translation:
We at Ford can no longer afford to compete with Kia, Citroen and Nissan in the cheap hatch/city car marque! 😀

Am I  the only person who read the thread title as "Goodbye Debenhams Finest"?

To add to my previous post, Mum also had a few mk3's, 1.0 J reg, then a couple of 1.8d K and M reg. Learned to drive in them, along with Dad's knackered E reg Escort. Then my second car was a T reg 1.25 Zetec mk4. Lovely car.

2003, mate Joe and I wanted to go to Creamfields, heading up from Essex. Neither of us wanted to drive. Mate so Simon told us in the pub that he also wanted to go and had just passed his test a week ago.

Onk Simon, you're driving.... The experience will do you good.

He had a crappy box shaped Fiesta. Mk2? Halfway up the M1 we saw sparks emitting from the rear of the car.

The exhaust was hanging and dragging on the road. Repaired with a few cables ties. The problem of seeing the asphalt through the footwell on the passenger side was solved by moving the footmat across a little.

The thing was a death trap, the fact that Simon had eaten about 12 pills over the course of two nights made it even more impressive that we returned to Essex in one piece (minus a few brain cells)

The problem of seeing the asphalt through the footwell on the passenger side was solved by moving the footmat across a little.

Our Courier van had the same issue at work only it was the drivers footwell. They refused to replace it though because it only had 27k on the clock, despite the fact it was driven at most a mile between starts, three times a day.

My mate Steve's much-welded beauty - the 'urbo - on our way to Chatel in 2002.  Can't remember exactly what we said to the customs team but it clearly made them a tad suspicious 🤐

https://flic.kr/p/2nVqisJ

I never really 'got' Ford's, after experiencing a couple of dire Mk3 Escorts as pool cars at work. But my mum had a relatively posh D-reg Fiesta Ghia around the early 90s which came with the job she was doing at the time. It was really rather good at handbrake turns as I recall. No, she never found out unless she's reading this now.

The problem of seeing the asphalt through the footwell on the passenger side

What you're describing there is a feature, it's a drainage hole. You'd have wet feet otherwise.

My 2nd car (not mine in the pic, but very similar) 1.3 Supersport

1.1 popular in what I would describe as an end of life subfaded hearingaide beige, with babysit brown dash.

Then a few months in a borrowed mk 1 ST standard entry mode was unlock and get in and get her started as fast as possible to minimise the amount of car alarm everyone had to endure.

One day I hope to regain my former height.