Well my journey into classic car ownership started in a rather odd way. It involved the imminent arrival of a baby. While scrolling eBay for an auto to replace the girlfriend’s W reg 2 door Yaris, which we knew wouldn’t be spacious enough to accommodate the endless baby paraphernalia (you can barely fit a doll’s pram in the boot, let alone a full sized one); we stumbled across a red and minty green 1972 Wolseley 1300 and the seller was local.
The girlfriend said “I like that can we go and have a look”.
Now classics aren’t my thing, I like power steering, electric windows and speed, but I humoured the hormonal other half and arranged a viewing for that Sunday afternoon.
So we set out on the short journey to Solihull and when we got there I did the usual, check it starts and doesn’t rattle too much and smoke like a fire, check the sills (we’ll get into that later) for rot and the sub frames for welding and general bodgery.
Whilst I was doing my macho mechanic bit, she did the girlie thing and chatted to the seller. It turns out they had lots to chat about (she never has a problem on that front); they were both former teachers and she had been to his own company for mortgage advice only a few weeks previously and had high praise for him indeed! Seeing all we needed to see, we thanked the gentleman for his time and set off home.
She must have impressed him because we left and about an hour later I got received an email from him saying he had discussed it with his partner and they wanted us to have it if we were interested. They wanted to see the car back on the road instead of being broken for parts and we could have it for the bargain price of £500 and they would end the listing now; the bids were already over that mark. It was too good a deal to say no so we, well I agreed that we would have it.
A week later we picked up our newly acquired wheels and off it went straight to my work premises to be checked over and to get it into a road worthy state… oh and to be swooned over by my colleagues who are classic car enthusiasts. That was when the fun and games began…..
To be continued…
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