Retro hatchback ideas?

So I've been offered a gto for £700. It needs work such as: rear steering leaking, front right suspension leaking, climate control out of refrigerant, ECS disabled and unplugged as capacitors have blown AND the car stutters on acceleration between 3 and 3.5k (new MAF sensor?)

PLEASE confirm with me that this would be a very bad idea!!
 
That sounds like it'll be a money pit as for a little bit more you can get a working one. Depends if you want to end up sinking loads of cash into a GTO, I know I'd not want to as you'll never get the money back (one of the reasons why I cut my losses with the E30).
 
Surprised that the R5 Turbo hasn't been mentioned. I haven't seen one on the road in ages.

Edit: Just looked on autotrader and there isn't a single one for sale nationally. Where did all the R5's go? 372 of them still on the road according to howmanyleft
 
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Vince said:
Surprised that the R5 Turbo hasn't been mentioned. I haven't seen one on the road in ages.

Edit: Just looked on autotrader and there isn't a single one for sale nationally. Where did all the R5's go? 372 of them still on the road according to howmanyleft
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Few on PH, cheapest being £2800...they are fairly rare though yeah, I only see them at retro events really these days.
 
InvaderGIR said:
Few on PH, cheapest being £2800...they are fairly rare though yeah, I only see them at retro events really these days.
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It's a shame, I remember them as a proper pocket rocket, most of the ones I knew of went pop at least once as well. They don't make hot hatches like that any more!
 
mk1 xr2
mk1 astra gte

for a grand though you aint picking up something people are mentioning :p unless the broken :p
 
For 1200 quid (or less) you can get a fairly decent condition 2.2 Prelude. Not a hatch but I'd have one over an old civic any day. 3rd and 4th gens are getting pretty retro now!
 
Aside from Retro Rides, try Pistonheads (here) and local ads like Gumtree, Ebay etc.

If you want cheap thrust try Saab (9-3, 900, 9000 if you like barges). They are not as reliable as reputation suggests, mind. At the first sign of an oil light stop the car before it spits it's guts out (I speak from experience).

Plus sides are turbocharged, loads of toys/leather, potential to tune. As a Practical Performance Car 1000 quid challenge me and two mates bought a Saab 9000, bolted on an Aero turbo, butchered the ECU to talk to a Windows 98 machine with spaghetti wires trailing all over the place and remapped it ourselves with a stock Aero map. Went well. For a short while. Then we found out that the oil pressure relief valve on those engines sticks and starves your engine of cool oil, melts your crank etc.

I think once we'd finished splitting/selling the bits, we got about 2k from it, after spending 800 all in. That said, we went to the PPC challenge as spectators rather than competitors that year :(

Not a ringing endorsements of Saabs (mate had Saab 9-5 Aero for about half an hour before it ate itself on the way home from sellers, but he got his cash back) but they are cheap and reasonably plentiful. Pays your money, takes your chances...
 
Yeah you are probably right. Any 99 turbo for 1k will be a basket case/project. Will revise it then - GM era Saab cars (like this for £750 now. 225hp.) you'll get for shed/banger money.

Tempted for about 5 seconds... then I recall past experiences, wince, and move on.
 
adam cool dude said:
Saab 99 turbo for 1k please tell:confused:?
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Still possible occasionally but not as often as you used to. Hence the 900 as well. The one in the ebay ad is a 2 door so not a hatch :p

Despite the above comments, Saab engines are pretty much bullet proof - although quite a lot of the later ones have sludging issues which can cause an engine failure but those ones aren't really retro.
 
bradUK said:
A bolt on charger that will produce 450bhp? For how long?!

You need to spend some serious pennies to get a reliable 450 brake out of that lump.
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The pistons and rods are forged, You have a bigger fuel pump and injectors.
Compression ratio is lowered to 8.5:1 and you use arp bolts.

There's are guy that's done 40k like that and before he did that it was 400hp and then 250hp before that.

There's no shortage of people who have done the conversions to check this.
 
nutcase_1uk said:
Despite the above comments, Saab engines are pretty much bullet proof - although quite a lot of the later ones have sludging issues which can cause an engine failure but those ones aren't really retro.
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Yeah we did research for the PPC thing that said the earlier (92 and before isn't it?) Saab derived lump is pretty strong, good for power boost and reliable. Problem is most everyone else (at that time) knew it too so the GM stuff was cheap and we found out why :( Bought a knacker, did the research, bolted on aero stuff, remapped it myself and all was well till one of the guys pootled down to the shops in it (swears it wasn't being ragged anyway) and it melted itself.

There are a couple of tuned 9000s on retro rides that have called to me - 250hp for less than a grand will do that... but once bitten twice shy as they say...
 
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