I’ve just had a very interesting weekend, amongst some of the rarest cars on UK roads. It made me realise that an open mind really is a very good thing!

I’d organised Shitefest ’14. This is the annual gathering of folk from the Autoshite forum. It is a superb forum where cars ranging from the 1960s to the early noughties are enjoyed. It doesn’t really matter what they are, there will be someone there who likes them and there’s the absolute opposite of snobbery. Sure, there is an in-joke that all Vauxhalls are rubbish, but this really is just an in-joke. Put strange people together, and strange things happen. Don’t ask about Pineapplists.

Anyway. I nervously awaited the hordes at a carefully selected site just a few minutes walk from home. This meant I could take all three cars. Lovely!

The ClassicHub fleet together at a meet

Folk turned up and it became a truly magical weekend, aided by the Hafod Hotel whose site we used, and some incredible weather. On the Friday, cars included a large selection of Scottish Volvos, a delightful Fiat Panda Mk1, a Volkswagen Scirocco, a 1993 Cadillac Eldorado, more Volvos not from Scotland, a Freight-Rover Sherpa, a Triumph Acclaim and a Lancia Beta in disreputable condition as well as a fair few more. A pub quiz was enjoyed and then there was much nattering around a fire. Perfect.

On the Saturday, I planned nothing during the day. There really is no need to play everything to the hour. Just leave folk to their own devices. Some went out for the day, but most people opted to swap cars. Getting the most out of their ‘drive any car third party’ insurance cover, folk enjoyed the local roads in different machines. Autoshiters really are trusting as most of these runs were unaccompanied. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t so trusting and sat in my cars when they were taken out. The Sirion did a few trips, a few people drove the 2CV around the car park and a few were treated to demonstration runs out on the road. A 2CV CAN be quick! But not uphill.

It was also a chance for me to try some other vehicles. This was hugely enjoyable. While I had great fun at the Heritage Motor Centre’s press day the other week, I get a buzz every time I clamber into a vehicle I’ve not driven before. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fiery sports car or a Vauxhall Cavalier Mk3 with rusty wheelarches – it’s a chance to put my perceptions to the test. You can look forward to individual road tests in the near future, but a Peugeot 504 diesel estate really won my heart – and I wasn’t alone.

On the Saturday evening, I led a scenic drive to Aberaeron for food, before we headed to the superbly quirky and enthusiastically run Internal Fire Museum of Power further down the Welsh coast.

Chips to feed the Autoshite collective

This was the biggest challenge to be honest. The drive there was a good hour, leading a convoy of seven cars on a cross-country trip on Welsh roads. We got well away from major routes and saw spectacular sights – like many Fiat Multiplas and a shabby Peugeot 205. Then I had to get everyone fed pretty quickly (the New Celtic Restaurant did a great job with their take-out counter) and moving again to get to the museum.

We arrived only half an hour later than I’d planned – I really hadn’t factored in enough time for food – but it was well worth the wait. Thanks to the Arts Council, museums are encouraged to open at night on the weekend I’d chosen for a car rally. Arriving at 7:30pm was therefore no problem at all. It was a huge bonus to my planning for the weekend. Huge engines were running, and we were treated to an up-close introduction to the Orbital Two-Stroke Ford Fiesta that the museum usually has tucked away. Sadly, it wasn’t quite running (attempts had been made) but it was great to see such a rare car. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one other in the UK, at the Haynes Motor Museum.

Apologies for the poor Woollarding attempt

Other highlights were the running of the Proteus Gas Turbine, which can apparently drink 40 litres of fuel in a minute! It made some people feel better about their ‘thirsty’ cars. We then headed back to the hotel, following a still-twisty but more straight-forward route that allowed us to get more of a crack on. Even the heavily laden 504 made good time. The reason for the rush? A Hyundai Stellar had arrived at site!

Very rare Hyundai Stellar

It’s a crap photo as I was over-excited and didn’t have a tripod. Sorry. It wasn’t just because it was a super-rare Stellar either. This one packs rather more of a punch by having a Rover V8 engine. It was a project started many, many years ago, when Stellars weren’t quite so rare. The Autoshite massive didn’t berate the owner for the non-original motor, but just applauded its magnificent noise! The car isn’t yet road legal and was actually still in Anglesey that afternoon having the exhaust custom made. It arrived being towed by a Volkswagen LT – in itself something of a rarity these days.

Sleep eventually happened, then we woke up and folk gently began to head home. Very gently. Some even had a cream tea first. I could tell you many more tales about the weekend, but that’s probably enough words for now. Suffice it to say that I’m very glad I organised it, very glad it was so well supported by local businesses, and so glad people came from miles away (385 miles in one case) just to stand around in a car park full of crap cars. It is so nice to have a meeting where cars aren’t judged, just enjoyed. Even the Kia Pride. Inspirational.

Not that long ago, there were at least eleventy twelve different e-petitions calling for a re-introduction of a rolling ‘free’ road tax for classic cars. I didn’t sign. I actually don’t mind paying a bit of road tax – or Vehicle Excise Duty to give it its proper name – because I do like the freedom to drive my car where I want. Fair enough.

The same to tax as a diesel BX. Not fair!

Only it isn’t really. Successive governments, but primarily Labour, have really ballsed up the tax system. In trying to incentivise sales of environmentally sound cars, road tax has become trifling on new cars. Some are entirely free, others a mere £35 or so. Yet my pre-2001 cars are left with comparitively huge annual tax bills – £145 for the 2CV and Sirion, £230 for the BX. I feel I’m being unfairly punished here. After all, by running older vehicles, I’m saving the manufacture of a new one. It isn’t like they’re thirsty, fossil-fuel munching monsters either. They all deliver 45mpg or more. The Sirion even has a catalytic converter. Tax rates for my older cars don’t account for size. It’s a flat rate bar the 1549cc cut-off that separates Sirion/2CV and BX. I could buy a 6.75-litre Rolls-Royce and it would cost the same to tax as the BX.

It’s surely about time for a change. Why not reduce the VED for pre-2001 vehicles? There can’t be that many in regular use as people blindly follow the fashion for buying new. I’m not asking for free tax, just something that doesn’t punish those of us who can’t afford or who really don’t want to buy new.

This is especially topical at the moment as I’m currently faced with not being able to tax the Sirion. It expires at the end of May, but it seems I don’t currently have the funds to pay for it. Getting the 2CV more solid has been the priority, and it has eaten up my meagre funds. Had I a car officially classed as low emission, I’d face a much smaller bill. Even a Sirion 1.0 registered after March 2001 has a tax bill of £110. £35 less, just because of when it was registered. It’s still the same car!

It does upset me greatly. VED has become a hugely unfair system, punishing the wrong people. Not that I’ll be setting up an e-petition about it. For all the use those things are, I might as well present my case via the medium of contemporary dance. (I won’t be though, sorry to disappoint).

Last year’s test drive of a Nissan Leaf has properly got under my skin. I was amazed at how good the car was, and how it confirmed that electric power makes so much sense, so much of the time. Sure, if you’re clocking up tens of thousands of miles per year, then electric isn’t the answer yet. But most people I know don’t often travel more than 80 miles a day by car, and then electric really makes sense.

I still like the Leaf

For instance, I do a lot of trips to the next village. It’s about five miles away. By the time I’ve got there, I bet the engine oil isn’t even up to temperature – especially as a lot of the journey there is downhill. Even trips to town are only 25 miles in total there and back. Easily within the scope of an electric car.

Now, much as I like them, I can’t afford to buy a Leaf. Not even the £10k one I spied on Ebay recently. They’re not cheap. So, what other options are there? The Volkswagen e-UP! is a car with many grammatical annoyances, but seems a good car. They’re still £20,000 new though, even with the government’s helpful £5000 plug-in grant.

Electric cars can be cheaper though. What about the wacky Renault Twizy? The problem is, the Twizy is utterly stupid. Yes, I found a one-year old one for a mere £5000 on Ebay, but it didn’t have any doors. Why on earth did Renault design a car with no doors?! Even if you do raid the options list for such fancy features, they don’t have windows, so don’t offer that much protection from the elements. In short, it’s a motorbike with none of the performance, manoeuvrability or style. And the idea of French electrics is pretty terrifying too.

Renault Twizy. Pointless. http://tinyurl.com/twizych

Ok then. So buying a new/nearly-new electric car clearly isn’t an option. The second-hand market isn’t too promising either, as mainstream manufacturers haven’t really taken the concept too seriously until very recently. Hybrids are a possibility. In theory, this are the best of both worlds. An electric motor for pottering around town, with a petrol engine for longer trips – and both units working together when you really want to get a shift on. I’ll admit, I’m intrigued about these and would dearly like to try one. Not sure I’d want to buy one just yet though, and the cheapest are still only just sub-£2000 for a 2000-build example.

Mind you, that’s still cheaper than my next option, which is to convert the 2CV. The little Citroen makes an ideal base for an electric car, as they’re so simple in the first place. There’s no cooling system, power assists or complicated drivetrain. You really can just remove the engine and bolt an electric motor in place. Job done.

Naturally, there are batteries and controllers to consider and so far I’m struggling to find a complete package of bits that comes in much less than £10,000. I have found many different electric 2CVs around the world as part of my research though, including this excitingly brisk one in Australia.

It really has got me thinking. I know it may seem like sacrilege for a petrolhead to like electric vehicles, but the truth is, most four-cylinder petrol engines are about as exciting to listen to as an electric motor. The Leaf proved that you can still have a car that’s entertaining to drive with electric power. A car is a car after all. Diesels don’t sound good, yet people are happy enough to buy them. In fact, the idea of an electric BX is rather appealing! It’d be a lot quieter than the clattering XUD diesel.

I will keep exploring this area though. Diesels are being squeezed to the point that they’re struggling to remain reliable these days – a far cry from the sheer, wondrous simplicity of the BX’s powerplant. Getting petrol engines to be cleaner is likely to take them down the same road. Burning oil is increasingly not as much fun. Perhaps electric power really can take over. Once we get around the small problem of generating electricity that is…

I hate surveys. People unlucky enough to own a television are never far away from a show all about ‘the funniest TV moments ever’ or ‘the best people we love most who wear jumpers and were once on a tv show, slightly’ or something. A great opportunity to wheel out folk you wished were a part of history to make some ‘hilarious’ comments on how good these people they’ve never met are. Ugh.

Best British car of all time my arse. It’s broken!

Sadly, the car world falls for this scam from time to time. Autocar, for instance, has just released the results of a survey to find ‘The best ever British car.’ Why? What good can such a survey achieve? Considering it found the Mini to be the best car, clearly not very much. It’s proof that democracy doesn’t work. Yes, the best car we British have ever produced was horrible to work on, ran badly and leaked when it rained, and generated pretty much no profit at all. I guess it does at least prove that the Brits really do love something that’s hopeless. Like Eddie the Eagle Edwards.

Don’t get me wrong, the Mini does actually have stuff to recommend it. They do handle well, and they don’t take up a lot of space. The constant engine oil leaks ensure that the front subframe is the one part that doesn’t actually rust too.

But these surveys are just pointless. The Top Ten is basically a list of supercars that few people have ever been near, let alone driven and a slightly-sporty Ford Escort – the rather feeble, incorrectly feted Mexico. Again, not a bad car, but it was the RS models that actually had exciting levels of power and went on to rally successes.  Why present the mild one as the best?

You really can’t go around comparing supercars with family bread-and-butter anyway. The word ‘best’ is so loose that really, it doesn’t say anything at all. It’s just a list of cars in a slightly random order.

Doesn’t handle as well as a Japanese shopping trolley

It’s for reasons like this that I absolutely hate being asked what my favourite car is. I don’t have one, because there is not one car out there that does everything I want from a car. Many cars do many things well – the 2CV for instance. But the 2CV doesn’t have a V8 engine. The Range Rover does, and also does many things well (fourth in the pointless survey by the way) but it can’t deliver 40+mpg. It’s not as much fun to point down a tight, twisty lane as a Daihatsu Sirion either. I don’t have a favourite, because I like all of them. Not having a favourite doesn’t seem to cause me problems in day to day life. It is unnecessary.

There is no point trying to see one car as better than another. Don’t see a list of 100 ‘best’ cars as anything other than a list of cars to try. Even then, don’t rank them against each other. Just enjoy what they are! Cars are not to be ranked. Just enjoy them, and leave pointless surveys to pointless TV programmes.

I’m still trying to re-adjust after a week with a 245bhp Jaguar. My three cars have only 154bhp between them. The thing is, that’s just how I like it. After all, the Jaguar was capable of reaching quite naughty speeds even when still in second gear. What’s the point of that?

Power not included

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again. Power is not essential to have fun. Any 2CVer knows this, and so do Austin 7 owners and custodians of Austin-Healey Sprites. Power has the ability to make pretty much any car exciting, but it isn’t a must-have ingredient. No matter what the presenters of a so-called motoring programme on the BBC may try to convince you.

The more I drive my 71bhp, non-turbo diesel BX, the more I’m convinced it’s the best engine you could specify. I’ve tried the turbo diesels, and they’re frustrating. Yes, the taller gearing is nice, and accelerating up a hill is a pleasant novelty, but you end up working so hard to keep them on boost. That means extra engine noise, as you must keep it between 2000 and 4000 rpm. By contrast without the turbo, I rarely trouble 3000rpm. Doesn’t sound like fun does it? But it is. I can mash the throttle pedal into the floor in all gears, and barely trouble the law. I also have to work hard to preserve momentum, which is an enjoyable challenge in itself – one alien to those accustomed to loads of power.

Speaking of which, the most exciting BX I’ve ever owned was a 160bhp 16v sports model. It was hilarious with its VTEC-like power delivery but, as with the Jaguar, you really had to blow speed limits to shreds to properly enjoy yourself. I sold it before it blew my driving licence to shreds. I imagine the 1905cc 8-valve petrol is a good engine choice, as you don’t need to rag one of those silly to get a shift on. But it won’t do 50mpg.

So, I’ll stick with the non-turbo diesel. Sure, overtaking needs a lot of planning and care, but that’s probably a good thing anyway. Lots of power means you’re tempted to have a go at gaps that aren’t really there. You can still have lots of fun though, due to the BX’s keen handling and excellent steering. Even when there’s play in the steering rack. After all, the real beauty of diesel for me is simplicity. Once you start bolting on turbos, you’ve started on the slippery slope that has led to today’s hideously complicated, problematic diesel engines. The Keep It Simple Stupid motto really is the way to go.

I’ve spent the past week absolutely ignoring my own cars. Well, to be fair, I was away for three days of that week. The BX is in Cheltenham, the Sirion has a seizing brake caliper and the 2CV is resting in the garage.

That’s because I’m still hurtling around in a Jaguar, being ever more glad that I’m not having to personally fund its horrendous 23mpg fuel habit. It’s a real shame that it drinks so much, as otherwise, I’m particularly fond of it. There’s a real danger that my love of automatics could even trump my preference for manuals. However, I’m exchanging the Jaguar for my BX again tomorrow. I’m already wondering what it’s going to be like swapping 245bhp of excitable Big Cat for 71bhp of sluggish diesel. Mind you, the novelty of 50mpg will be nice!

X300 poses with neighbour’s S-Type. Different, but very Jaguar

There’s plenty more excitement to contend with tomorrow too, but you’re going to have to wait for details of that. Hopefully you won’t have to wait too long…

Spending a week, and over 700 miles, with the Jaguar has been a real treat. Usually, to spend that much time with a car, I have to buy it. I’ve been amazed at how my thoughts regarding the car have changed in that time. It’s just long enough for the first flush of excitement to give way to thoughts of practicality. For instance – the seats cause my back to hurt. This is pretty poor. The fuel consumption is terrifying too. It’s also a car that shrinks around you out on the open road, but which grows alarmingly when it comes to parking the thing.

It has been nice to really get a feel for the Jaguar, and also to spend time with fellow Jaguar enthusiasts down in the South East. A gathering of Jaguars is really a rather fine thing. I ended up getting all philosophical about the brand.

You see, I have a real problem with the styling of the F-Type sports car and the current XJ. Neither seem to have very much at all in the way of ‘Jaguar Heritage’ about their styling. That’s in stark contrast to earlier XJs, S-Types, XFs and even the X-Type. All of these seem to scream ‘Jaguar’ in a way to which we’ve become accustomed.

But, here’s the rub. When you see an E-Type next to an XK150, you soon realise what a massive leap this was for Jaguar. Malcolm Sayer’s aerodynamic bullet shape has the merest of hip-kinks to hint at the flowing lines of an XK120/140/150. In short, it really looks nothing like a Jaguar. But I don’t hear anyone complaining about that car’s looks. I still find the XJ hard to stomach – it’s all a bit too brutal – but the F-type is winning me over. It sounds absolutely fantastic for a start, even in ‘entry level’ V6 form.

Not a traditional Jaguar?

All of which is relevant to the X300 I’ve been driving around in. It looks a lot like a Jaguar should, and behaves like one should too. I wonder how an X-Type compares? (hush with the Mondeo jokes!)

Thanks to a tie-up with Jaguar World Monthly, and its publisher Kelsey Media, I’ve got my hands on a Jaguar X300 for a week or so. I’ll be putting it through its paces over the next week, including a trip to the South East this coming weekend. I’ll be discovering what it’s like to live with a luxury motor car – one which can be bought for peanuts. Is buying one at all sensible?

One fine looking motor car

I’ve found this opportunity particularly appealing because I’ve always liked the X300. It was the Ford-sponsored reworking of the earlier XJ40. They took a good car, and made it better. Improved quality, much stronger reliability and further reworked engines. The X300 was only in production for three years – 1994 until 1997 – but relaunched Jaguar’s reputation. It looked entirely like a Jaguar, and a further evolution of the theme launched by Sir William Lyons way back in 1968 – something the current XJ has broken away from entirely. And not satisfactorily in my opinion.

Yes, a few Ford-influenced things do jar a bit. The key feels very cheap, with a similar feel to a Ford Escort. There’s also what looks suspiciously like a Fiesta electric window switch to control the folding mirrors. But, there is also a very large amount of bespoke, Jaguar switchgear – some of it a little eccentric to operate, like the headlamp switch and the cruise control. This is good.

The feel as you clamber aboard is very Jaguar too. The driving position is low, snug and cosy. There’s lots of wood and leather. There’s a handbrake lever nestling right next to your leg. It feels purposeful. Up front, a four-litre, straight-six engine provides a healthy 245bhp and sounds very similar to the Mercedes-Benz 300E I owned last year.

Very Jaguar, very lovely

But what really appeals is that this is not really a complex car. Yes, there is an on-board computer, but it concerns itself with telling you how frightening the fuel consumption and what the range is rather than operating a handbrake. Useful stuff. These cars are cheap at the moment – if this one were to find itself on the market, I doubt it’d command more than £700. But as later XJs got ever more complex, I can see that DIY enthusiasts after a bit of luxury could find the X300 the absolute pinnacle of Jaguar saloon production. Already, really nice ones are holding their value in a way big Jaguars just don’t normally. £2000-3000 is needed for a really smart one. That still seems good value to me.

Of course, the next week could prove me wrong. I’ve always wanted an X300, but will a week of motoring change my tune? Or will I be changing my mind about which car I want to buy next yet again? At the moment, battle is raging between a Citroen Ami 6, GS or XM. Could it be that Britain’s luxury saloon will seduce me instead? Stay tuned and if you’ve got any thoughts on your experiences with an X300 (or even the later X308 V8s) then do let me know.