Old cars that keep on going

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

[TW]Fox

Man of Honour
Joined
17 Oct 2002
Posts
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After seeing yet another Mk3 Fiesta today it got me wondering.

Has there been a 'better' cheap, old car than the Mk3 Fiesta? I'm not talking in terms of performance, handling, build quality, or anything like that, simply sheer ability to get you from A, to B, in the dry, without eventually falling to bits.

You hardly ever see loads and loads of stock Nova's around these days. 205's are getting very rare, cannot remember the last time I saw a Renault 5, etc etc.

Yet Mk3 Fiestas - of all ages - are still absolutely everywhere. I guess someone did something right when designing those.

Can anyone think of any other cars like this? Pointless thread, but I though it's about time we had some non-vitriolic discussion in Motors, so here is a nice thread about the innocent Fiesta :p
 
and here I see novas everywhere, welcome to the ghetto of fife. :p

You do have to hand it to ford though they do make motors that just go on and on... oo old volvos rock, I had onr for summer only downside was heated seats wouldnt go off, led to some hot cheeks lol
 
My mum still has a late Mk3 Fiesta with the 1.6 16v Zetec engine and it's really not a bad car. It'll sit quite happily at 90mph all day long, it puts up with her diabolical driving and it's not even rusted away yet....

The king of bangers however has to be the cavalier. Inredibly reliable, comfortable, fast in the grand scheme of things and you can pick a good one up for £250.
 
Only Nova's I see are more filler and barrybodykit than car.

Volvo's though - 700's and 900's are still very common!

I wonder how todays cars will stack up?
 
On fiesta's, actually saw a Y-plate mark 1 on saturday! Couldnt believe it, recognised the sound before i saw it. Little 950 one!
 
That is a good question a lot more electronics to go wrong and more complex engine that need more than just a few spark plugs and some oil when you have spare change.

I just cant see a focus or a vauxhall vectra at 20 years old :p
 
fiestas are a good one, i'd also put a vote in for the Vauxhall Cavalier though, especially the diesel one..

it's not so much that they're totally reliable, more that they made eleventy billion of the ugly things so when something oily does drop off, you're never more than a couple of miles away from a scrapyard with 10 of them in it :)
 
[TW]Fox said:
I wonder how todays cars will stack up?
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See, Mk3 Fiestas are in that perfect age bracket - modern enough that rust is unlikely to kill them unless they've had accident damage or have lived by the sea all their life, old-fashioned enough that there ain't a whole lot to go wrong and cripple them.

I do wonder just how screwed some modern cars would be if the computer hardware died and a replacement wasn't an option.
 
My grandas just bought a fiesta, hes picking it up on wednesday. He currently has an Escort, which he has had for 6 years, and hasnt had anything major go wrong, and before that an Orion, which had 160k on the clock when he got rid of it, adn that was still going strong structurally adn mechanically, just getting old and rusty so had to go.

I wonder whether old Fords in general were just built very well?
 
dsb said:
in Germany you get to see loads of old Golfs.
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for some reason whenever i go down south on holiday (Bournemouth etc) i always notice how many well looked after older cars there are like golfs and escorts.
 
Had an old diesel Escort for a few years, V reliable. The only thing that killed it off was rust.

Got a Rover 75 now, dont expect it to last as long as that escort did, tbh...
 
I regularly see Transit vans that are at least 75% rust and still going.

You never see that many vans of that age that aren't transits - I know they sold a lot more of them than anything else vanwise, but they really do seem to trek on forever. I think it helps they were almost identical shapes for aaaaages.
 
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