The History of my Daily Drivers - Good Car Posting

I realised whilst writing this that my chosen daily driver seems to be a good reflection on how my life is going, or where my priorities are at that given time.. There's been quite a few daily drivers, from sports mode to grandad’s slipper, but I've managed to keep my current car for 5 years… Or has it kept me? This is the story of my daily drivers.

Note: some of the pictures in this are pretty bad quality. I didn't expect someone to be writing a dissertation with them 10 years down the line but here we are.

In 2013 I started my first 'proper' job. I'd owned the DC2 for almost a year which was by far the longest I'd ever owned a car until that point. I knew I wanted to keep it, but I was also tiring of driving it every day.

It was time for my first daily driver, and I knew what I wanted. I can't remember where I saw the car advertised, but the price was something like £2200. Cheaper cars of this model were available, but this car had a great spec and was finished in my favourite colour.

I had to borrow a little bit of money to afford buying the car and insuring it. I'd just about paid off the money I borrowed to buy the Integra a year prior, so my lender knew I was good for it. Getting this car ended up being a family affair, my gran loaned me the cash and my uncle drove me to Edinburgh to collect it. My family are predominantly Scottish, so the idea of buying a car from the homeland was received with plenty of support backed by a hint of patriotism. 

I would have been 20 at the time, and as we arrived to a townhouse near the city centre, I knew I'd made the right choice. The car was a 1999 BMW 328i Sport finished in Techno Violet. A car being 14 years old back then seemed like an old car, these days not so much. I remember being impressed with the condition despite the age, it wasn't my first BMW, but it was going to be my first RWD car with LSD. This car had an E36 M3 LSD fitted, as well as some other common M3 parts such as the cluster with functioning oil temp, and front top mounts to give more front camber.

My uncle was driving a brand new F30 3 series at the time. Getting out of his car after a few hours of travelling, then getting into the E36, a car only 14 years older but somehow 3 generations older. It was like being on a different planet, I loved it.

That car was my daily driver for the next 11 months, completing a 50 mile daily round trip, and doing it in style. I loved it, this was back in the day where I really appreciated having a good looking, sporty car. I felt good driving it, I thought I looked good driving it. I probably did!

Unfortunately after some relative success in my new role, some management changes brought quite a lot of disruption with them, and it was decided that I was no longer required. I was to be made redundant. 

Losing a job like that is tough. Being unemployed sucks, it makes you feel worthless. I'd been fortunate in my early 20s to secure something half decent without the perils of university fees, and then had it snatched away from me. With no income, and no immediate hope of employment, the E36 was looking to be a luxury I couldn't afford.

I ended up finding another job, but this one was even further away, paid less money, and involved working shifts. I'd also recently started doing trackdays in my Integra and was quickly becoming aware of the costs of this legal fun. The practicality of the E36 was also weak in the role as a support car for the Integra's developing habit. If I had to drive anywhere to collect parts, chances were that I'd need to take the Integra, and that wasn't fun. 

I began my search for a new daily driver. Initially I was focusing on finding something economical. My commute was now around 70 miles, and the E36 was perfectly happy with that, but I knew something diesel would probably cost half as much to run. I went to view 2x E46s, a 330d and an M3. Yes, for some reason I thought that this might have been the time to buy an E46 M3. I think I was giddy having recently turned 21 and suddenly being able to insure such a beast. The M3 was lovely but I wouldn't have been able to afford it without borrowing a significant amount, I seem to recall the 330d being somewhat of a nail, and also similarly I couldn't really afford it.

Also in scope were some vehicles from the other side of Germany, the TDI region. A lot of my friends back then had Boras, Golfs, Passats, all sharing the legendary 1.9 TDi Pumpe Duse (PD) diesel engine. The original Fabia VRS also shared this engine and was the hot favourite. A local lad had one of the special edition blue ones that were released in around 2007, but that sort of luxury was out of scope. The Fabia would have been a nippy runabout, with plenty of scope for more power, but also great economy. 

Why didn't I buy one? The seats. What were they thinking? If you don't know, the Fabia VRS has a 2-tone black and white interior. It's awful. The special edition one I just mentioned had full black leathers, but they were sought after and beyond what I could afford. I didn't want to spend more than £2k, from which there were many options, but the special Fabias were up around £4k. 

I was pretty sure I wanted to buy a car with the PD130 engine now, and there were many options for that, but which was the best? The VWs were the obvious answer. I loved a Bora as much as any other 21 year old back then, but I knew I'd face the same problems as the E36 when it came to collecting parts due to the lack of a hatchback. A Passat was never on the radar, I realise in hindsight that's silly. The Skoda was a no go, I could not live with that interior. 

Then one day whilst browsing the classifieds I thought I'd found the best car that came with that legendary engine - a 2003 Audi A4 Avant in 'Sport' trim. 

The car was located in Weymouth at the bottom of England, had higher than high miles (around 170k), but ticked many boxes. The owner was a mechanic (this was back when I thought buying a car from a mechanic was a good idea), and had done the cambelt, fitted some coilovers, and some lovely BBS reps. The car had a few options such as Bose, cruise control, and had some hands free connectivity which was rare at the time. It even had iPod connectivity!

High mileage cars had never concerned me before, but this was much higher than anything I’d previously been close to. I had read online about how reliable these engines were but it was the rest of the car I was concerned about. The mileage had made it affordable though, and I was keen with the idea that I’d found the ultimate PD130 housing. I’ve just checked my Facebook Messenger history and I’m still friends with the guy I bought it from. It seems it took me a week to go from enquiring about the car, agreeing a price, then selling my E36 before making the 280 mile journey with £2100 in my pocket. Effectively swapping the E36 for the A4, something that if you did today you’d be mental. The E36 is worth 10x as much. Anyway… 

I managed to convince one of my oldest friends who was similarly between jobs to drive me the 5+ hours down. I remember we left after lunch, which seemed normal at the time. He had a red Nissan Primera, I can't recall if it was a GT. We'd both owned GTs in our youth. I bought my GT from his dad, and he then bought it from me, but that's another story. 

Driving the Audi back was an experience I remember well. The owner had accidentally left one of his CDs in the CD changer integrated into the head unit. Great, a chance to test the Bose. The CD started with the recognisable sound of subway trains and distant chatter. It was an album I was very familiar with at the time, Nas's Illmatic. 

If you're not as familiar, the first song on the album is NY State of Mind, one of the finest beats ever created. I'm not an audiophile, I know those sorts would turn their nose up at my next sentence, but I'd truly not heard music sound this good before. The Bose started an obsession with CDs, a media that was dying out at the time. I used to go to those shops where people traded in their aging collection, and see what I could pick up, knowing I was in for a treat on the drive home once the Bose got going. I had my iPod in there too, but I eventually modified the iPod interface to accept Bluetooth connections. 

The Audi would be a car that I owned and daily drove on 3 separate occasions during the middle of that decade. It just kept coming back into my life one way or another, until I eventually scrapped it in 2018 with the mileage being around 245k. If I was the man I am today I probably could have fixed it, but I wasn't. Nevermind. 

November 2015, approximately 3 months into my first stint of ownership, I'd recovered from the redundancy and was settled into my new role. Shift work was something I couldn't decide if I loved or loathed. I've since seen reports that shift workers live shorter, more stressful lives, due to the body not being designed to work days, then nights, then days etc. The commute was also marmite. On days my drive to work would be great, arriving for around 6am, but then I'd have to fight rush hour traffic 12 hours later returning home. Night shift was the opposite of that, but the Audi proved to be a brilliant car in either setting. The economy was crazy, I stretched it to 850 miles on one tank. Even if I used every drop of the supposed 70 litre capacity (I’m sure it was less), that would equate to a minimum of 55mpg average. Most tanks were more like 700 miles, which is still at least 45mpg. It was also surprisingly dynamic. I wasn’t the best driver back then, but there was no shortage of confidence. I liked the way it drove, but felt a lot of that was due to some changes I’d made that changed the car from having stance, to having presence. 

The car came with BBS CH replica wheels, which were the style at the time. They were staggered, with the wider wheels being fitted to the rear, because that’s what people did. I was going through a period of enlightenment at this time and that led me to switching that around. I put the wider wheels on the front of the Audi and fitted a wider front tyre. If I remember correctly, I’d managed to get a good deal on some part worn Goodyear F1 tyres that were 235mm wide. Previously it had the classic 225/40/18 tyre size all round. The extra meat at the front was something I was playing with on the Integra at the time, and it helped the Audi feel a bit more dynamic too. 

Things were going well, so naturally it was time to sell the car and buy something else. One of my old friends (and current Patreon supporters!), was interested in the Audi, and I’d seen something local that caught my eye, a DC5 Type R. 

The earliest photo of the DC5 I can find is outside my grandparents house, so it’s quite possible the bank of gran was asked for a loan once again. Another memory from buying the car was the previous owner, who had owned the car for a very long time and didn’t really want to sell it, but was being forced to due to some adulting requirements. I remember him saying something to the effect of “having made a friend for life” when I came to pick the car up, which I thought was a bit odd. Haven’t heard from him since.

One of my old friends from Wakefield (Simmy) was well into his photography back then and had a rig to get rolling shots of the cars. We used the DC5 for practice one night.

The DC5 would be the first and only time I've run out of fuel whilst driving, in a road car at least. Travelling to work one morning not too far away from a fuel station it cut out. I was about half a mile away maybe.

There was also a time where I had a trackday booked in the DC2 but for whatever reason the car wasn't playing ball so I had to take the DC5. I was very new to track driving then and it was at a track I hadn't visited before, Donington Park. The car had Toyo Proxes T1R tyres which I remember being way better than I expected. Not sure I'd feel the same today! Overall it was good fun, I span out once at old hairpin which isn't too bad for your first time there.

It was another 3 months until it was time to switch cars again, around February 2015. The DC5 was a good car, and had I owned it through the summer rather than winter perhaps I’d have owned it longer, but I was growing tired of it. I didn’t like driving around in an expensive car that ultimately I didn’t own, regularly being close to the limit. The limit of the road, not alcohol! Also, in a similar vein to the DC2, the novelty wears off quite quickly when you drive these special cars every day. I know some people can do it, and love to do it, but I personally wanted to go back to a comfy German wagon. I advertised the DC5 online and was contacted by the original UK owner, not the person I bought it from, but the chap before that. He’d missed the car since selling it and wanted it back, and had a DC2 to part exchange if I was interested.

I didn’t want another DC2, but I knew someone who did. The cash on top was almost enough to pay off the bank of gran and get the heavies off my back. Then the sale of the DC2 should allow me to get something nice to drive every day. This was a time where I was enjoying trackdays and Nurburgring trips in the DC2, and I wanted my focus to be there. Selling the Audi made me realise the value of owning keys to a team player like that, but there was also something else missing. Owning a fast FWD car in winter is a bit dull. With AWD you can feel smug about traction, but the real fun comes with RWD losing traction, hopefully from the rear tyres and not the front. Perhaps a RWD wagon could be the ultimate daily driver…

First I’d need to get this DC2 sold. I had a local friend with an EP3 Civic Type R who was interested in a swap. His car was probably worth a bit more at the time, but he was willing to straight swap me to save the hassle on his end. Ok sure, why not. The EP3 was a car I’d looked to buy before buying my Integra a few years earlier. I spent a few days with this one and really enjoyed the way it drove. It reminded me a lot of my Saxo VTS, in that it would scurry down a B road whilst writing a smile on your face. The Integra could do that too, but there’s something alien about the EP3 driving position, steering feel, and the position of the gear stick that somehow made it more fun. Bear in mind this was an initial impression based on a few short drives, it was probably more how different it was that was intriguing me. I’d grown fond of the K20 engine too after spending a few months with the DC5. The B series has more character, but the K series is a really special motor. 

The EP3 had quite a few mods, I remember selling some of them and returning the car back to mostly standard spec before selling. These days I couldn’t imagine doing that, the thought of selling anything gives me the shivers, but back then it was second nature. Growing up I’d always been involved in a bit of wheeling and dealing, back then it was mobile phones, PSPs, etc. These days I’d be my friend, the guy who doesn’t want the hassle of selling anything. 

The date is still February, 2015, and it was time to buy my 4th car of the month. This car was special to me. I have the reputation of being a Honda enthusiast based on my Integra ownership and enjoyment, and there is some truth in that. I’m not one of these people who thinks you can only like 1x genre of music, 1x brand of car, or anything like that. Variety is the spice of life, but there was always one manufacturer who made cars that appealed more than others. 

My uncle was roped into taking down south to collect the car. He’s taken me to collect 2x cars so far in my life, both special BMWs. I think this one was in the Bedford area. Owned by a mechanic, yes I still thought that was a positive, actually I think he was a ‘master tech’, or something like that. The car was a late 2003 BMW E46 330i Touring, 6spd manual. This was before realising automatic cars were superior daily drivers, but that story is to come later. Back then the thought of having less than 3 pedals at my feet would disgust me. 

The car was a rare beast. Not only did it have the 6spd manual, but it also had heated black leather, a TV tuner which had been upgraded to receive digital signals, automatic xenon lights, and the Harman Kardon sound system & subwoofer. Also fitted was a Parrot, remember those? It was in great condition, the mileage was somewhere around 100k miles, but with fantastic history. The engine did feel a little bit flat to me, and after reading online about common problems I decided to invest in some diagnostic software, and to replace the DISA valve. The diagnostics revealed a failed camshaft position sensor. After replacing that the car felt alive again. The 3.0 straight 6 M54B30 engine is one of BMWs best. I remember having a lot of fun in this car driving to work, especially the night I decided to figure out if it had a speed limiter. It did…

After a short while I started to feel quite similar to how I felt towards the end of DC5 ownership. I felt I was having too much fun in a nice car, and perhaps I shouldn’t be doing that. I would grow to look at the car not as a lovely piece of engineering that I was lucky enough to find in my possession, but as £4000. Why was I driving around in £4000? That money could be used to have a lot of fun with the DC2, and also in this particular situation where I was exploring the world of wheel slip, do I really want to put £4000 backwards up a roundabout?

One of my friends who I’d met from the E36 days, who interestingly was the first man to show me what a BMW can do to a roundabout, was selling a BMW E34. I’d always loved the look of E34s, and the asking price was something around £1000. I figured the running costs would be similar to that of the E46, and it might be less practical, but I didn’t often use the TV tuner anyway. Plus it was Spring time now, so the heated seats didn’t mean much, and I’m sure I can live without automatic xenon lights. Also, as good as the Harman Kardon sound system was, I didn’t think it was as good as the Bose system in my old Audi.  

I’d only owned the E46 for 2 months when I sold it. To own a car for that long and then sell it seems crazy to me now, and I’d be highly suspicious of anyone who did the same. I sold it to a guy from Pistonheads who was a BMW enthusiast emphasised by the car he arrived in, a Z3m Coupe. I'll never forget this, his wife took me for a run down the bypass in the Z3m whilst he looked over the touring. Great memory.

The E34 turned out to be a great purchase. I had a lot of fun driving it, including one post night shift drive home from work which earned me my first ‘viral video’, when the local police wanted to speak to me after seeing the car travelling diagonally towards them…

I considered selling the car after that. I liked it a lot, especially the way it looked. I was quite image conscious back then and actually cared what I looked like, and what people thought of me. I thought the E34 was the first car to send out the right message since my E36, but was it worth losing my license for? Could I really stop myself from enjoying the quiet morning roads whilst commuting? Well, that problem would soon resolve itself. I was about to find myself being made redundant again. The 2nd time in consecutive years. Great.

 

What happened next could be described as fate, if you’re into that sort of thing. Callum, the chap who’d bought my Audi off me the year before, was selling it again. I don’t know if you’ve ever bought a car back after previously owning it, but it’s a strange feeling. I’d imagine it’s quite similar to getting back with an ex partner after they’ve been away doing god knows what. Depending on your mood, the rose tinted spectacles might come out and you might end up back in their bed. It’s only then that the reality of your surroundings hit, you realise where you are, and you might not like it. 

Thankfully getting back together with the Audi was nothing like that. The comfort, the economy, and the Bose. Nothing I’d owned since first owning that car had been able to compare with those 3 pillars that make a great daily driver. It’s September 2015, 9 months and 5 cars since I sold the Audi, but this time it was here to stay.

My next job saw me working in Leeds City Centre, in an office that was not really accessible by car, so I started taking the train. The Audi was still a nice car, but given its odometer now read over 200k miles, and the bodywork was far from perfect, it was the ideal car to leave in train station car parks. I was the victim of scuffs a couple of times while parking there, but I quite enjoyed commuting by train otherwise. There was a guy who I shared the commute with, but his train station car was a Techno Violet E46 M3. We became friends after he saw me dribbling whilst gazing at it one day. I actually nearly bought that car, but ultimately I once again couldn’t afford it. I should write a blog about all the times I nearly bought an E46 M3… 

The PD130 was still getting regular runs on the motorway, as this was around the time where my DC2 started living at Stretton MOT Centre. It initially went there to fix a non-start issue caused by an aging aftermarket alarm, but as you might remember from the VLOGs the boys were gracious enough to let me keep the car there whilst taking on some jobs that I didn’t want to attempt on my drive at home. 

2016 came and went, as did some other cars, but the Audi was always there. I had the BBS reps powder coated silver to give it a cleaner look, and even went as far as having the cambelt replaced to ensure its reliability into 2017. Ironically, it would be that which led to the death of the car, right at the start of the new year. Like most cars, replacing the cambelt on the PD engine is a good time to replace the belt tensioner too. You’d be mad not to, right? I’m not sure that ‘If it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ can stretch to critical engine components. Then again, if a tensioner failed, would the engine survive?

In my case, the answer was no. The cambelt and tensioner were replaced on my car, but what failed was the stud that holds the tensioner to the engine block. It turns out this is a common problem, so much so that cambelt kits come with the studs, but not all mechanics will change them. The cambelt was replaced by a friend, who was an experienced VAG mechanic. He chose to not replace the stud. It’s a shame what happened. I was driving to work, now living and working in Harrogate, and had the engine come to a sudden halt whilst setting off from some traffic lights. The mileage was something around 235k, which is just shy of the average distance from the earth to the moon (238k), a target I’d been looking forward to meeting.

The man with the nice watch came to save me again.

I owned 3 cars at the time, the Audi, the DC2, and another BMW E36 328i that I’d bought to start doing legal skids in. I lived close enough to work that I could take my bike, but if not the E36 was usable. The DC2 was living at HCR during this time, some 90 minutes away on the other side of Hull. That’s pretty far away from Harrogate, and my licence wasn’t going to last long regularly driving the E36 on the road, so it was time for a new daily driver.

The car that next filled this role was once again a car I had owned previously, albeit for less than a week. The black DC2 that I took in part exchange for my DC5, then immediately swapped for an EP3, was now in the possession of one of the big bosses at my new job. I’d put him on to the car after seeing it for sale. He was a petrol head and appreciated the good things in life, that was part of the reason why I got that job. He was also partial to owning a car for a few months, getting bored, and getting something else. Paul didn’t always drive the DC2 to work, but when he did it didn’t half have a strong presence in the work car park. There comes a time in life where an experienced enthusiast can become affectionate to the sound of a car's starter motor. The Honda B series starter motor sound… there’s something about it. The combination of the high compression engine, being forced to turn over whilst spinning the rotor beneath its distributor cap. I’m not sure what makes them sound so unique, but hearing it made me nostalgic. Remember, my own DC2 has the K20 engine by this time. But nostalgia can be a dangerous thing, especially if it leads you back to the reason why you first bought a daily driver, because you were sick of driving your Integra…

I collected the black DC2 only a day after the Audi died. I had no intentions of owning it before then, but life has this way of making things like this happen. Other than going to work on my white DC2, there was no reason for me to leave the town I lived in, and I thought now was the perfect time to own a fun everyday car again. The black DC2 was mostly original, featuring only some Meister R coilovers and polybushes. This was the car which made me realise the damage that polybushes can do to something you want to enjoy on the road. I was never happy with the ride. I lived in North Yorkshire, which is also home to some lovely driving roads. Roads that I’d enjoyed driving in the E36 and in the Audi, but for some reason the DC2 felt very nervous over them. I initially blamed the coilovers, and swapped them out for a set of shocks & springs made by Spoon, which I believed would give me OEM levels of compliance. My white car was original when I bought it, so I had a good idea of how a DC2 should feel on a back road, but this car still felt nervous, even on the Spoon setup. It was the polybushes.

After not much more than a month, I sold the DC2. The reality was that it was nowhere near as comfortable as the Audi, the basic pillars of a good car were not being fulfilled. It was only marginally more practical than the E36, and as great as it was hooning around in a B18 again, the novelty soon wore off. 

The next daily driver was going to be the pinnacle, I wanted to take onboard everything I’d learned from the various cars owned to this point, and purchase something that would truly succeed the Audi. 

Something that seems to influence my car buying, based on my research and reflection that I’ve had to do whilst writing this, seems to be location. We all prefer the path of least resistance, right? Although I’ve had to travel for a lot of these cars, just as many have turned up on my doorstep like an abandoned child. I hadn’t decided what my next car would be, but I did find a car for sale around the corner to where I was living, which seemed like it was worth a look. 

That car was a 2005 BMW 330d Touring, 6 speed manual, E91 shape. The owner, William (also current Patreon!), was selling the car as his brother had offered him a slightly newer model at an unmissable cost. He had looked after the car well, the only thing that let it down was the budget tyre fitted to one of the four corners. This tyre would not last long though, as it exploded in my first week of ownership whilst showing my friend the true power of a mapped 330d. 

The E9x shape 330d is in some way the evolution of the PD engine. Not in any actual, physical way. More in the mind of its owners. A reliable, powerful diesel engine that defined an era of working class heroes. The PD had its day with the Golfs and Boras of before, but those lads were now driving E90s and E60s, and so was I… 

The car was original other than the ECU tune, taking the power up to around 270hp, and enough torque to keep the earth spinning now that the PDs were dying out. I loved the E91, the car felt so modern, and the engine was like no diesel I’d driven before. They are sharp where others are dull. The throttle pedal feels like it’s actually connected to something, rather than just suggesting more fuel like in most diesels. It was also very economical, not quite as good as the A4 was but certainly better than a car with this sort of performance deserved to have. It was easily the quickest daily driver I’d ever owned, I wasn’t even sure if the Integra would be able to keep up despite its K20a power. 

(I actually saw that be tested one day. Not my Integra or my 330d, but a similar recipe. The cars were quite even up to around licence losing speeds, after that the 330d walked away!)

As was traditional after finding the perfect car, the 3 month marker approached and life suggested I should move on. May 2017, an E46 M3 had popped up that was my dream spec, and I couldn’t resist going to view it. This would be the 4th M3 I’d viewed, all with the intention to buy, but I wasn’t going to bottle this one. The problem is I couldn’t afford it, not without selling the 330d. It was tough. I had what I thought was the perfect daily driver, but it wasn’t my dream car, the M3 was. Estoril blue, manual, black interior. That’s a hard to achieve combination. I had to do it. 

A colleague was interested in the 330d, so the sale was simple, but it was still difficult to say goodbye to it. Especially when now I’d be back in the same position where I own 3 cars, and none of them would be that suitable for driving every day. 

Fortunately life once again had a solution to that. It was time for the Audi to rise again. We’re now around 6 months after the cambelt had failed, and after refusing to sell the car for peanuts to a breaker, I ended up giving it to my friend Joe. He had owned a Passat B5.5 around that time, which shares a lot of DNA with the Audi. He ended up swapping the cylinder head, and after a bit of effort got the engine running again. Once the repairs were complete, he didn’t really know what to do with it. If I remember rightly this was around the time he was selling cars at a posh dealership, and the Audi didn’t quite fit in there. Plus he had a company car, and his Passat was still floating around somewhere.

This is where the Audi once again comes into my life, now for the 3rd time. I drove it up to and beyond the moon mileage marker of 238,000, but unfortunately it didn’t have too many miles left. Skip forward to December 2017, and we’d had around 7 wonderful months together until it once again started to die. I persevered for another 2 months throwing everything I could at it, but I couldn’t fix it. I had a few people help me look at it, but nobody was too sure what was going on. It got to the point where I didn’t want to spend any more money trying to fix it, so I ended up taking the wheels off it, removing the grille for my wall, and sending it to the scrapyard. The car had covered more than 245,000 miles, but it was now time to rest. RIP to the O.G Good Car. 

RN03FVU being stripped for a few parts before heading to the scrapyard

When the Audi was on life support, which included me carrying around cans of brake cleaner, or anything flammable that I could spray into the engine to start it, I started to browse for a replacement. I had a very limited budget this time though, not wanting to spend more than ‘shed money’. This is a reference to the Pistonheads weekly article ‘shed of the week’, where they would post a car from their classifieds, with the maximum value being £1000. This was increased to £1500 I think around 5 years ago, it’s probably £2000 now. Some people track inflation based on the cost of Freddos, but the value of shed should also be considered.

I’d recently just swapped my E36 and most of the cash I had to my name for a K20 swapped Toyota MR2, and 6 months before that I bought the M3, so the budget for an Audi replacement didn’t really exist. I’d have to use what scraps I had left, which was nothing more than shed budget. 

I found a car advertised on Pistonheads. Located in Glasgow, the owner listed the car for a very reasonable £750. It was another E36, this time a 1999 323i Sport Manual Touring. This would be my 4th E36, but was unfortunately by far the worst condition of the lot. The seller was more than honest, suggesting this car needed serious TLC to restore to its former glory. I was doughy eyed and love struck, I even convinced myself that I could fix her. Have you seen that meme with the lego character? That was me. The car had heated black leather and was in a rare colour, that was all I needed to know. 

It wasn’t until I got it home and gave it a wash that I realised the extent of the corrosion. Never buy a car from Scotland again, that’s what I told myself. My original E36, the purple car which started this story, suffered a similar fate later in life too, after spending the bulk of its life up there. My black E46 M3 that I currently own, spent some time in Scotland, and the undercarriage of that is noticeably worse than my blue car. 

Is there any substance to that theory? Perhaps it's a bit colder up there and they get more salt on the roads if anything. In reality corrosion is a problem for all of us, and some of my favourite cars suffer the most. There’s lots of nice things about living in the UK, but metal corrosion definitely isn’t one.

2x things happened with the E36 in the first few days of ownership that tipped me over the edge. I wasn’t very strong mentally back then, in fact I was very weak. Closing the boot one day and the metalwork that supports the handle completely deteriorated due to rust. The boot would latch, but I could never open it again. Great. The second thing was a puncture, but the locking wheel nut key was missing. Side note, smashing off locking wheel nuts is actually great fun, but at the time I wasn’t impressed with the car at all. It had MOT for a while, so presumably the safety side would be fine, but the bodywork was falling apart. 

One of my Twitter followers saw the plight of the E36 and messaged me to say they had a better car for sale they think I’d enjoy. This car ended up changing my perspective on a few things. I often tell the story about buying this car with a slight tweak of the facts, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story. 

The Twitter car was a 1998 Volvo V70 T5. A car from the same era as the E36, I was concerned about suffering the same 20 year old car problems that had stained my week thus far. The owner assured me not, and believed this car was the answer to my quest for the next good car.

The Volvo was located in Essex, which would be another slog down the country to the tune of about 4 hours, and it wasn’t until arriving that I learned some things about the car. I drove me and my friend down there in the E36, the future of it being uncertain at this time. We arrived to an incredible sight. The turbo brick was not like anything else I’d owned before for many reasons. Obviously it was my first Volvo, a brand that I was not too familiar with, but it wasn’t until I climbed inside for the first time that I realised it would also be my first car with 2 pedals…

Yes, it was an automatic. No, I didn’t know. You know the slightly dated Little Britain sketch, sorry i’ll narrow it down, it’s the one where the old lady character learns that something she enjoyed was actually made by someone brown or disabled, and her reaction was to vomit excessively. That’s how I felt about automatic transmissions at the time, and I know a lot of you still feel like that today.

I couldn’t fault the rest of the car, the interior was in great shape for a 20 year old car and the seats were some of the comfiest I’d sat in, and were also heated and electric which seemed posh. There was no Bose, and there was definitely no economy, but the DC2 was living closer to home now at Autobarn V1, and my annual mileage had plummeted. A diesel was no longer suitable for my needs, but a 5-cylinder turbocharged petrol glass box could be. 

I’d already decided I was buying the car before departing, it was a long way away from home, but it had to be better than the E36 was. The gearbox realisation was terribly disappointing, but everything else on the car made up for it. I sold the E36 to a friend for I think around £500, given that it was worth that in parts. That car actually later fell into the hands of someone who did show it some love, as it was spotted for sale a few years later having undergone a restoration. Nice!

The Volvo and I started getting along really well. I ended up owning it all the way until June 2019, some 16 months which I think was a new record at the time. I grew to love the 4 speed auto very quickly into ownership, wondering how I’d lived this long without owning an automatic car. I enjoy driving as much as, maybe even more, than most of you. It’s a real passion for me, it’s something that I feel defines my character, it’s who I am. What I don’t share with most of you however is the disdain for automatic gearboxes. I hated them, until I had to live with one for a few days and realised why they exist. 

Harrogate is a nice place, one of the nicest places in the north. This makes it a pain in the arse to live in, the road network sucks, there is no bypass, so all routes in and out have to pass the same ways and traffic is a nightmare. It would take me at least 10 minutes to complete the 2 mile commute to work, and yes I agree on reflection that driving a very thirsty old Volvo that distance every day is criminal, but the automatic gearbox almost made it pleasant. Not only in stationary traffic, but dipping and diving through side streets, rolling the dice on what would be the best route to take that day, all whilst squeezing one of two pedals. 

I was also able to learn a new skill thanks to the Volvo - left foot braking. It was something I instinctively started to do after picking up the car, thinking it was how you drove automatics. Traditionally it’s not, the left foot doesn’t really move at all for most people, but I didn’t know that. Learning to control the brake pressure in my left foot was a great skill, and I can only do that because of the Volvo. 

Visiting home one day I was able too dig out a model V70 I had as a kid. Why I had a model V70 I'm not sure, but some may ask the same question about why I had the full sized version too.

Another thing worth pointing out before we move on is how clean the car was underneath. Coming from the E36 which was fairly corroded, the Volvo’s undercarriage was incredibly clean. I don’t know if that’s testament to it having a good life with caring owners, or perhaps it just never lived in Scotland, but I remember reading online that this era of Volvo was simply built differently.

I did have some corrosion to fix around the windscreen although this seemed to have been the fault of whoever fitted the screen. Other than that just some minor repairs, such as replacing the headlight wiper that disappeared one day, and replacing the CV joint boot which turned out to be quite an annoying task. Overall though the ownership was fun, and I have many fond memories of the car.

It did let me down once, collecting some parts from rural North Yorkshire in quite heavy rain, I somehow overheated the cat. I’m still not quite sure what happened here, but after getting a lift home and returning for the car the next day with a trailer, everything seemed normal. I remember driving too quickly through a large puddle, after which the car started to misfire slightly, and then ground to a halt with the cat glowing underneath. I only noticed this as it was quite late into the evening, and you could see the exhaust glowing orange in the reflection of puddles under the car. It was quite nice in some ways.

The Volvo chapter of this story came to an end in May 2019. I’d recently bought my first car trailer, and needed something to pull it. You might instinctively think the Volvo would be a good tow car, but unfortunately they are not rated to pull more than 1600kg. My car and trailer weighed about that, meaning I wouldn’t have any wiggle room to carry any spares or fuel. I’d borrowed my friend’s ML270 to tow my MR2 to the Nürburgring the month before, and that was a mighty beast, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to live every day with a 4x4 just for the rare times that I did need to tow. This was before I was interested in motorsport, before I entered any races, I’d acquired the trailer because the MR2 broke down driving home from Cadwell Park one day, and although I was able to fix it at the roadside, I was not happy about it. That paired with needing the Volvo recovering recently, and the DC2 needing to be transported, it was time.

Facebook Marketplace was now well into its prime, and I found myself visiting it daily to see what vehicles were for sale in the local area. I wasn’t too sure what I wanted, but it must be something that could tow, but also be frugal day today. The Volvo wasn’t cheap to run if you focus on the fuel bill, but the costs of something like an X5, Touareg, or even an ML everyday would wear me down. A lot of people drive those cars because they like the increased ride height, the perceived extra safety, traction capability, and probably because it makes them feel a little bit better than the guy not driving one. I saw the benefits in owning such a car for towing, made clear by the European jaunt in the ML, but I also lived with the car for a few weeks after returning, and didn’t especially enjoy driving it every day. 

The car I settled on was a nod to the past. Located not too far away in Kippax, near Leeds, was a 2003 Audi A6 Avant, in silver, with a towbar. It was a special edition, one of the last C5 models, and featured some rare BBS wheels and a nice leather interior. It was powered by a similar engine to my A4, the PD130, although a slightly different variant and featured a 5 speed gearbox instead of 6 speed. It didn’t have lovely Bose, but it had 2 very rusty front wings, which at the time were being held together by duct tape. It was cheap, £750 if I remember rightly. The seller had owned it for quite some time and looked after it well, but had received a company car or something like that.

I believed the new car to be rated to 1800kg, 200kg more than the Volvo, meaning I had capacity to tow my MR2 and DC2 with some headroom. Still almost 2 ton short of the 3.5T rating you’ll find on the 4x4s, but enough for me. Unfortunately that was not the case, for some reason my car being a special edition, didn’t carry the same tow rating as the regular A6. One of my followers alerted me to this after seeing me towing with it, and after checking the plate under the bonnet I was annoyed to find out he was right.

The car still towed just fine so I kept that information to myself and plodded on. It had a tuning box fitted which made the PD engine feel quite a lot more alive than it did in the original good car. This also meant that setting off from stationary whilst towing was sometimes challenging. As the car was FWD, and being weighed down at the rear, the front tyres had less mechanical grip than they were used to. What was initially comical became tiresome after a while, but the car completed many towing trips as far as Anglesey without any issues, and it was a nice car to live with day to day. 

I replaced the front wings and fitted some wheels from a B6 S4. I’d always liked the look of the RS6 of this model, mostly due to watching Daniel Craig drive one in Layer Cake. The S6 was a slightly watered down version of that, and my car was basically just water in comparison, but I loved the way it turned out. 

It was now late 2019, and after visiting Croft Circuit one afternoon to see them play, I’d decided that next year I’d join the Toyota MR2 Championship, my first entry into the world of competitive motorsports. I sold my K20 MR2 to some friends from Barcelona, and bought another MR2 that my friend Josh had been driving daily until the clutch went out. The Audi helped me collect this car, as well as driving down to Rogue Motorsport to collect all the parts I’d need to start building it into a race car. I also collected another MR2 to use for parts, another trip for the Audi. It was becoming quite the motorsports companion as I was learning the ropes. 

To race in the UK you need to have a race licence, to have a race licence you need to complete an ARDS test. This is basically an assessment of you as a driver, to show you’re not a numpty, and won’t be any immediate threat to anyone’s safety whilst entering the world of competitive motorsports. I chose to do my ARDS test at Cadwell Park, and after completing the theory test, it was time for the practical assessment. Most circuits provide a vehicle for you to do this, Joe and Josh did their tests at Brands Hatch and got to drive BMW M4s. Mallory Park have a Renault Sport Clio, and Silverstone have Meganes. Cadwell Park asks the pupil to bring their own car, with the only requirement being that it must have a H pattern gearbox. 

Fortunately I had just the car. Not the M3 or the DC2, those were both in various states of ‘repair’. I’d recently fitted the B5 S4 wheels to the A6 with some Michelin Pilot Sport 4 tyres, she would therefore be more than capable. I remember being slightly disappointed with the examiners lack of concern as we walked towards the Audi in the car park. I imagine they’ve probably seen worse over the years, but he seemed to agree that I’d brought a suitable vehicle and saw no reason to suggest otherwise. The assessment is not about seeing how quick you can drive, but how safely you can drive. A road car therefore does equate to being a good vessel for this task. You are probably going to be the slowest thing out there, so you need to be aware of your surroundings, and prove to the instructor that you pose no danger to the people you are sharing a track with. 

Naturally things went smoothly, and after a couple of laps he told me I could pull in if I wanted as he was happy enough with my driving. Being out on track in the A6 felt like I was breaking the law. Somewhat similar to if you take your track car up the road to be confident a problem had been solved, the Audi should not have been on that tarmac. The previous owner had fitted some Bilstein suspension, which helped the Pilot Sports keep most of their traction, but there was no way of hiding the mass. Obviously I wasn’t driving flat out, but it’s a track adventure I’ll always remember. I wasn’t sure how I felt about making videos back then so there’s unfortunately no footage, I didn’t feel particularly confident about telling the world I was going to start racing. Luckily my brief time on track did line up with the trackside photographers, so I was able to at least purchase a few pics to help savour the memory.

Then in February of 2020, whilst driving the Audi to work one morning I began to hear a terrible sound from the transmission. The dual mass flywheel had failed. Oh dear… 

I’m told the failure of these parts is usually something gradual. You’ll start to hear a faint noise if your ears are tuned in, which will gradually get worse and worse as you continue driving. There are stories of people driving cars with failing DMFs for thousands and thousands of miles, but the noise of the Audi was so loud and sudden. I was able to complete the mile or so to work that I had remaining on my commute, but I didn’t dare drive it any further. It probably would have been fine, but this was the first time I’d experienced such failure and changing clutches on complicated German cars wasn’t something I had any experience of. I was concerned to say the least. 

The strangest part of this particular story is that just a few days before the Audi’s DMF failed, I had gone to view a car for sale in the local area. It was a 2005 BMW 525d, E61 shape, for sale locally on Facebook Marketplace. I was still making at least daily visits to the freeads, and the E60 shape 5 series was a car I’d been curious about for a while, but never brave enough to own after hearing stories about their reliability. 

An old friend in the world of cars shared a similar automotive history to me. He’d owned a Passat B5.5 for many years, then moved into an E61 530d. I would send him messages periodically asking for updates on the BMW, to see if it was behaving or how much it had cost him this time. This was me casting my net to see if, based on this one guy’s experience, I would have a bad time owning an E61. I’d always loved the look of the 5 series, but I always thought of them as too much of a risk given their value.

Despite the Volvo and Audi being brilliant cars, I’d not stopped thinking about BMWs. E39s were now getting a bit too old, especially if I want something to reliably transport my car to the race track. The E60 shape was at that time however getting to be around 15 years old, and values were much more affordable than they ever had been. 

The car I had noticed for sale didn’t have the engine I wanted, nor was it really the spec I wanted, but it did have a tow bar. It was also well priced, being around £2500. The A6 was a good car, but as mentioned it showed its weakness towing, especially when setting off from stationary. The BMW had 2, maybe 3 things that would make it a better tow vehicle. Air springs, RWD, and an automatic gearbox.

If you didn’t know, all BMW 5 Series Tourings (Estate) models have self levelling rear suspension fitted as standard. I’m not sure if that is true for all markets, but a quick Google suggests it was an option fitted by default to higher end E34s, but became standard on E39 onwards. The cars don’t have conventional coil springs on the rear suspension, they have what is often called an air spring, or an airbag. A sealed rubber tube about the size of a spring, but capable of sealing high pressure air within it. There’s sensors on the rear suspension arm that measure the ride height of the vehicle, paired to an air compressor that can inflate or deflate the air springs depending on the load. What this means for towing is that the rear ride height will always be where it should be, prolonging the life of the suspension, tyres, and even the transmission will be happier. It prevents that ‘dog scratching its bum’ physique that once you own a 5 series, you begin to judge towards any other car you see towing. 

RWD is also superior to FWD when it comes to towing, I’d hope that reason is obvious. Is 4wd going to be better still? Perhaps, certainly for setting off it could be. The chap who was selling the 525d was doing so as he’d got stuck with it in a muddy caravan field and convinced himself he needed an X5. I figured I wouldn’t experience that problem. 

An automatic gearbox you may think this sounds like a bad idea for towing. Originally I wasn’t sure either, but modern day automatics are nothing like what came before. Even the gearbox from the E39 looks like a dinosaur compared to the E60’s ZF 6 speed that arrived just a few years later. Towing with an automatic has the ability to make the load feel lighter. It’s a strange phenomenon that I can’t really explain, but I can tell you that if you’re buying a car to tow with, make sure it’s an auto. 

Anyway, I went to have a look at the 5 series simply because it was local, I had no intention of buying it, but I was curious. The car looked ok, it was in quite reasonable condition back then. I guess it would have been 15 years old and had covered just under 130k miles. It was SE spec, in black with some nice options such as the ‘big’ iDrive screen, the sporty steering wheel, and automatic ‘follow the road’ xenon headlights. No modifications other than some questionable badges, where someone thought that black looked better than blue on the BMW roundel (wrong).

It wasn’t long before the car made it deserved its reputation for being less than reliable. After firing up and attempting to crawl off the owner's drive, the suspension made a loud thud, surprising us with a problem that would immediately immobilise the car. It had been parked up for a couple of months prior, and one of the front coil springs had decided that it was tired supporting the weight of the vehicle, snapping in 2. This seems to be a very common thing on BMWs, is it a thing for all cars?

So I didn’t get to drive it, but I had a look around it, chatted to the owner. He seemed like a nice guy at the car was in good condition. No faults on the dashboard, recent new tyres, nothing horrendous. It seemed honest and I didn’t feel like he was trying to pull a fast one, the E61 was just doing a thing that I was well aware they were capable of - breaking.

I told the guy thanks, but no thanks, and drove home in the Audi safely in the knowledge that despite it not being perfect at towing, it was perfect enough to satisfy everything else I needed from a daily driver. It was quick enough, looked cool enough, and most importantly it was reliable enough to support me and my new hobby, where the last thing I’d want is to not make a race meeting due to a broken down tow car. 

Perhaps it is once again ironic then, that just a few days later the DMF would fail on the Audi. This was a time where I was not very confident in my mechanical ability. Even if it were to happen today I would think twice about tackling the job myself. We were well settled in Autobarn V1, I had access to a ramp and most of the tools I would need to do the job, but I didn’t have the faith in my skills to complete the repair in a timely manner. I was also balls deep in building my MR2 race car, needing reliable transport to and from the barn. I could cycle to work, by that time I often did, but the barn was quite a bit further than that. It’s not the sort of journey you’d want to make on 2 wheels at that time of year even if you had petroleum propulsion. The E46 M3 and DC2 were also both out of action at this point, both of them having their innards removed and scattered across the barn. Despite owning 4 vehicles, with the Audi gone I would be immobile. 

I got back in touch with the chap selling the 5 series. I enquired if he’d fixed the car yet, but it sounded like he wasn’t up for doing the repair himself and was going to get a mobile mechanic out. This is where I saw opportunity, I hadn’t replaced gearboxes on Audis before, but I’d done a fair amount of lowering springs. How hard could it be?

We agreed on a price on the car that included me fixing it, pending a test drive. He was more than happy, on reflection this does seem quite strange. Why would you buy a broken car, to replace a broken car, especially when the car you’re buying isn’t even the spec you wanted. If I was to choose the ideal E61, it would have the same engine as my 330d had the years prior, not the 2.5 litre fitted to this car. This engine was old by this time, being first used in the previous generation 5 series, and was replaced by a 3.0 variant not long after my car was built. The 2.5 litre M57b25 gives you the performance of a 4 cylinder diesel but the economy of a 6 cylinder. It is literally the worst of both worlds, but it was also local, and relatively cheap, the latter points being key factors as I mentioned earlier.

I wanted to buy the car to be a stop gap whilst I fixed the Audi. I saw it as an opportunity to own a 5 series with very little risk, there weren’t many of them for sale in this condition at this price. Plus, despite having a less desirable engine, it would still be plenty for my needs. The 5 series tourings also have an impressive tow rating of 2000kg, where most 2WD estate cars at the time were at around 1600kg. 

I fixed the car then drove it home after a positive test drive. After a few months I’d fixed the Audi, but decided to keep the 5 series. The first few months of ownership weren’t completely plain sailing, there were a few niggles that needed addressing such as a new battery, some wiring faults that I had to figure out, and the suspension needed a refresh. But this was an E60, I didn’t expect anything less. 

 

Giving a lift to a familiar E91, my old 330d.

It’s now January 2025, almost 5 years since I bought the E61. The car with the wrong engine, the stop gap, has outlived any other daily driver by quite some margin. The mileage is now beyond 206k, meaning I’ve travelled almost 80,000 miles in the car. More than 3 times around the world, and I stopped commuting since the covid days. That means most of those miles were spent either towing to race tracks, travelling to and from the barn, or any number of endeavours related to the content I’ve created within the past 5 years.

I’ve had to make some repairs, but the car has never let me down like the other cars did. Not once have I been unable to get where I wanted to go, nor has it left me stranded in a foreign land. You could argue I’ve been occupied elsewhere by motorsports, or perhaps now that my age starts with a 3, that my affection to the status quo is greater than my curiosity for greener grass? But those views don’t give the credit where it's deserved, to the car itself. It is truly a good car.

As I drifted from being a car enthusiast into being a driving enthusiast, reading forum posts for “common faults” became a thing of the past. If the car breaks, I’ll try to fix it, but preventively? No thanks. There are quite a lot of things the pesky owners club will tell you need to be fixed otherwise the car will almost certainly implode on your next visit to Morrisons. Ok, they often are quite correct, but that is not the way of bangernomics. Unless I notice faults, I wait for my MOT tester to find them for me. 

He noticed the air springs had perished early on, so I replaced them with Dunlops. I noticed the front suspension was rattling, so I replaced the arms. The key stopped working remotely, so I repaired the wiring in the tailgate. Then the MOT man found some issues, then I did, etc etc. It’s now coming up to my 5th visit with the car which seems mental. I’ve owned the DC2 for 12 years, and the M3 for 8 years, but neither of them have had 5 MOTs with me. Weird but accurate stat. 

With 2025 looking like there will be some serious towing to be done, and with regular commutes into Europe, I’m now starting to consider whether it’s time to replace the E61. I’ve looked around, I’m certainly not going to get another car for £2k that’s for sure. Modern day equivalents are 3-4x that, and nice ones double that again. It’s hard to find the courage to spend £10k on a car knowing it won’t be 5x the car of the 5 series, despite costing 5x as much. That car has skewed my perception on what a car can be, statistically one of the most unreliable BMWs ever made, yet somehow I’ve kept it for 5 years without too much bother. Or has it kept me?

That or I could do the unthinkable - perform some preventive maintenance. The transmission oil, to my knowledge, has never been changed. The revs have started to fluctuate on the motorway sometimes, which is not too surprising considering the age of the oil and the life it’s had. The engine also feels like it’s struggling to breathe, most likely the EGR or DPF are causing some issues. It also makes some very strange noises whilst idling, almost robotic sounds that appear to come from the exhaust side of the engine. The air condition is also not functional anymore, the system will not hold pressure. I know we can live without it in the UK, but it’s nice to have. 

I have a bit of time to decide what to do, for now I’ll just continue driving the car as normal. Perhaps fate will once again force something to cross my path, or send me a signal of where to go next. So far however, the only signal I’m seeing is fear at the thought of replacing it with an inferior product. The question is, do I really want to own another 15 year old 5 series? My initial reaction is no, because the 20 year old one is doing just fine. Sort of. 

How can I benefit from a new car? Is there really another car out there that is going to be comfier, more economical, more practical? I don’t think so. There are newer cars that can match the 5 series, but can they beat it on anything but age?

I always thought 2005 was the time when cars peaked. It will feel strange owning anything newer than that.