G77 XLU
1989 Nissan Bluebird 1.8GS
Bought: June 1998 for £1,600, 82,000 miles
Sold: March 1999 for £1,325, 100,000 miles

Bluebirds are great motors, but if you want style in a car, look elsewhere. Having said that, if you want total reliability, cheap insurance, reasonable economy and an easy drive, you can do a lot worse. Oh, and you get electric everything - this car had power assistance for the lot - steering, windows, sunroof, door locks, aerial, everything. And it was painted seductive factory black, which looked great when it was clean but bloody awful the rest of the time. No rust though, and everything worked, apart from the aerial (which retracted only when it felt like it), and the tape deck, which chewed up my Cream album - gutted. Oh, and it only came with three hubcaps - never did manage to find a fourth despite trawling everywhere from Nissan dealers to car-boot sales to hedgerows, so I ended up bodging a Vauxhall Carlton one to fit, which sort-of looked OK. It wasn't like the thing was going to win any beauty prizes anyway...

As you can see I did a fair old mileage in a short time, and the car only let me down once. It hadn't been looked after properly by the previous owner (the "full service history" was, I realised later, just the odd oil change by the local greasemonkey) so the tappets hadn't been adjusted since God knows when. As a result, two of the exhaust valves burnt out, and the car did a pretty passable 2CV impression for a bit (albeit with a bit more comfort, but about half the power). Not ideal when you're trying to climb the steepest hill on the M3 in the rush-hour on a Friday night.

One cylinder head stripdown later, it ran as sweet as the day it came out of the Sunderland factory. Well, except when it was cold, when the automatic choke on the carb would get a bit stroppy and it wouldn't idle properly, but I got round that by nailing the throttle and slowing down with the handbrake until it warmed up. Don't try this at home, kids.

In the end it was coming up to the magic 100k on the clock, and I was only 21 so thought it was time to buy something a bit sportier, so I sold it to a bloke who owned a curry house, who had the weirdest car-buying technique ever - he didn't even start it or drive it. Naturally, I grabbed the cash and hauled ass (making sure he filled in the registration document properly though).

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