SmellyCar tm, huh? Bit of a strange on this one. Mistake from the start but we all make 'em don't we :) After flogging the whale and sharing the the Metro (see later) with my mam for a while. I was desperate to get my OWN set of wheels again. Definately the wrong attitude to go looking for a car with.....

When this one came up it was mostly out of curiosity that we (dad and I) went too have a look. See Ron (dad) has had diesels for as long as I can remember. Swears by them he does, and seeing this one come up he thought it could be a good idea. The fact that it was dirt cheap and was being sold in town meant I didn't think it was too bad an idea myself.

Gave it the once over and it looked in a fair knick. The guy selling it gave us some story about how his leg was giving him jip and he could no longer drive: he was on invalidity benefit so it kinda made sense.

We took it for a bit of a test drive, both driving at some point and it didn't seem to show any problems. The breaks were a bit.... well they wouldn't lock the wheels but they did stop very quick: as if ABS was fitted. Other than that it seemed ok.

Got back and Ron did the talking. Managed to drop the guy �500, so I left happy as larry :)

Pretty soon after I went to Birmingham in it with my girlf at the time (Jayne - Hi Jayne :) and she made the trip with no problems (the escort not the girlf btw ;).

She ran smoothly most of the time, or as smoothly as diesels get, however there was one major problem with her..... the SMELL! Now obviously I noticed this the first time I got into the car, how could I not, but I just ignored it thinking the guy who's car it was must have had a BO problem. I figured a bit of a clean and an airfreshener or two would do the trick, but..... I scrubbed the inside with anything and everything I could find. I had at least ½ dozen airfresheners in the boot alone but still it refused to go away. The thing was it seemed to be getting worse, and no it wasn't me that smelt!. It was if a body was decomposing in the car, not that I would know what a decomposing body would smell like, I mean it's not as if I have any in my closet or anything like that. But what a stench. After a while people actually refused to go in it.

Thankfully, it didn't last too long. I think in total I had it for 7 weeks, then....

(Sorry about the poor image quality)

What happened? Well I was following a taxi through a set of lights when an unmarked fire-chiefs car jumped the lights on the way to an RTA. I'd been a prat and not looked before following the taxi, by the time I noticed he weren't going to stop I couldn't do much but hold on. He just clipped the rear end behind the back wheel which sent me spinning round in circles. Thankfully the taxi driver stopped and later acted as a whiteness.

Bit of a bummer really as I'd just fixed those strange brakes a few days before. However, I did make a canny profit on the car for only 7 weeks of having it :)

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