D343 CPC
1987 Vauxhall Belmont 1.8 GLSi
Bought: November 2005 for £51, 57,000 miles
Sold: April 2006 for £180, 59,000 miles
eBay is a dangerous thing (sound familiar?). After I promised Jo I wouldn't get another 'fun' car until after Christmas once the blue Rekord was sold, I lasted all of three weeks. In fairness, I did manage a lot of tidying of the garage in those three weeks, so the time wasn't wasted.
So, the Belmont. Basically, I put in a snipe bid and forgot about it, but then managed to outbid a load of banger racers and won it for £51. Why so cheap? Well, a month's MOT and two weeks' tax for a start, plus the seller had started it at £10 with no reserve.
So the purchase price is a bit misleading as it needed patch welding on the sills and a new exhaust for the MOT, but if I could weld we'd be looking at a total cost of just over a ton. I got the cambelt changed too, so the bill was £244, but I still make that cheap motoring. And it doesn't look bad, does it? It had the usual rusty rear wheelarches though, so I opted to have new panels welded in by Malcolm down the road. The skim of filler and paint job wasn't perfect, but made the car look better.
So in total the car stood me in about £400 (with a new front bumper to replace the cracked original), but only sold for £180 on eBay. Still, that's life - brown Belmonts aren't desirable no matter how tidy. At least it freed up driveway space for something more interesting...