Right, here we go. My end of year ‘hopeless cars’ accounts.
Carried Forward
Elly the 2CV, not quite MOTd as 2017 began. ZX carried forward, but soon sold.
Honda S-MX. Purchased September 2016.
Perodua Nippa. Purchased March 2015.
In, then out
Omega turbo diesel. A fun collection caper, but it didn’t win me over. Sold.
Daimler Sovereign also joined the fleet. It was mostly broken. Elly tried to help. Sold.
Daimler replaced by a Nissan Bluebird with failed head gasket. Got it fixed. Then sold it.
Proton arrived while the Bluebird project was ongoing. It was fun, but short-lived. Sold.
The final bill
Lexus LS400 replaced the Bluebird. And how! Hasn’t been cheap, has been fun.
Honda has been working hard, now has orange wheels and is still on the fleet! 15 months now.
Nippa fast heading for its three-year anniversary on the fleet!
Elly went to France in 2017 to meet the relatives.
The Invacar! This one is really coming together.
The spares project. This one likely to depart in 2018.
So, there you go. A quick visual recap of 2017 in cars. By my standards, a fairly sensible one. Until the Invacars arrived perhaps. Who knows what 2018 will hold!
A very Happy New year to all my followers. There will be a brand new video at http://www.youtube.com/HubNut on 1st January 2018 to welcome in the New Year, and it’s quite silly.
HubNut - celebrating the average! 
I saw your video on the Daimler Sovereign and enjoyed it very much. However as a lover of Jaguar cars all my life and having owned a Daimler Sovereign series 1 in the seventies, the one thing I learned is to buy a good one not a cheap one. They are fantastic cars if you pay the extra and get a good one. They are the next best thing to a Rolls or Bentley and much cheaper to run. The XJ40’s were not what I considered a great car but the X300 are superb, if you buy a good one. They are much more dependable and probably a lot less likely to rust out. The newer ones that use aluminium bodies are better when it comes to rust but they don’t have the tradition Jaguar luxury that the older one have. I have a 1996 XJ6 X300 and it had only 88,000 kilm on the clock when I purchased it a few years ago. It had full log books and I probably paid twice the price of the cheaper ones available on the market, but mine has saved me a lot of money by buying a good one. It’s been a very cheap luxury car for me and I won’t be parting with it until I can’t drive any more. I also have a 1963 Hillman super Minx convertible that I have had for 40 years and it was in poor condition when I bought it, so I know what it costs in time and money to restore a car.
Richard from Brisbane Australia.
X300s are lovely, like a refined XJ40 with a much nicer interior. Sadly, here in the UK, they really do rot out. Even X308s are heading for scrap due to horrific rot. Values are fast rising for good ones, because they are seen as something of a pinnacle. The ally-bodied ones added a lot more complication and as you say, they don’t offer the comfort of the X300.
That’s very sad about the rust rot in England. I lived in Yorkshire in the sixties and rot was popular there because of the harsher winters up north. Here in Australia the conditions are much better and we don’t suffer rust as much. In the sixties even cars here in Australia rusted but by the 90’s most of the cars seemed to avoid rust. During the seventies in Australia I would treat my cars with Fisholene. It stunk but it kept the rust away. I could never understand why most British cars were not treated with something similar from new. I remember drilling holes on the inner side of my sills on my Jaguars and poking a special hose in that sprayed a mixture of Fisholene and Kerosene into them. It would run every where, even upwards. It had the ability to creep into everywhere. I would often apply or spray rust converter in first and let it dry before applying or spraying the Fisholene. I did this to my Hillman and no rust has re surfaced in 40 years. Don’t give up on Jags Just find a good one.
Speak soon Richard.