The Final Insult

[default_user]

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... &rd=1&rd=1

It sold for a measly £155. Had about £60 worth of tax left on it as well. The guy has just been to collect it. I've lost well over £800 in a little over 4 months and spent countless hours in the wet and cold working on it. 480 mystique? What a laugh.

I don't think I'd be any more pissed off if my house burned down around me right now.

Goodbye.

[JohnTurbo]

Eep....i think you might have been too descriptively honest about the car's problems.

[default_user]

I'm always scrupulously honest in just about everything. I don't rip people off. Pity the guy I bought it from (on eBay) wasn't. I'd never have touched it with a barge pole otherwise. Never again. Never.

[1900sr]

To be honest, I think you'd have got more through here if you'd actually put a price on your ad, I was about to ask you how much you wanted when Jimmyanderson123 came back to me about the one he was selling, so I bought that. If I'd got the money spare I'd have been tempted by yours still, as most of the problems you'd got with it are standard 480 fair. I think the thing to remember about these cars is you will never find a perfect one, they all have some niggles, but I think the niggles are worth living with. Interestingly, the one I bought from Jimmy for £500 is the same one you test drove in Newbury. The dealer fitted a new clutch, but most of the other faults are still there. I still think it's one hell of a car for the money though.

[98kellrs]

I'm sorry to hear that mate. It's always sad to see one of the rare GT's being worth so little!

Hope it doesn't put you off them though!

[catgroom]

Im really sorry you lost out like this mate.

Its happened to me too...

Makes the good cars seem all that more worth appreciating.Hope youve got a cool next car lined up.

Steve

[default_user]

... Focus Diesel Sport. It's faster, handles better, costs a lot less to run and will last a lot longer and won't require me to stick my head under the bonnet every 5 minutes. It's an absolute joy to drive and I've had more fun with it in the two weeks I've had it so far than the four months I owned the 480.

I also have a highly modified Chevette which is just wasting space in my garage so maybe it's time to start on that again... after I've finished building my kit car. The 480 was just too much work for an everyday car. At least with the other stuff I can just leave it when I can't be bothered. When your daily driver is troublesome all the time you HAVE to work on it and it just gets you down.

[catgroom]

Yes.Oh yes!Lancias owned,problems similar had!

So is the Chevette being built up to near HS/HSR engine/body spec then?

Always was a fan!

Maybe a new post for this huh!?


Steve

[martinholmesuk]

'The door stay bar is loose on the drivers side inside the door and does not hold the door open and the leaking oil' would put me off your car.

anyways your £800 is nothing when I get the bills out for Vader. I'm talking £££££££££ mega and what for.... for a mint shell in the garden that I can't even get off my ass anymore to finish putting it back togeather so the crusher man and take it away and well errrrm crush it.

sometimes i wonder if killing vader was the correct thing and then some times I know it had to die.



I know how you feel but at least no more money wasted on it.

[default_user]

I sometimes wonder if cars make you stupid. I wouldn't waste that kind of money on anything else. I've been doing it for years. No doubt I'll be whinging about how much the Chevette has cost me this time next year. Another whimsical eBay purchase. Drove it a couple of miles and every rubber component promptly disintegrated because it had been unused for 20 years. I just put it in the garage meaning to sort it out 'sometime' and it's been there for a year now.

This is the wee beastie:





Yes. It is. A V8. Sounds awesome.

It's a 1975 and the body is fantastic, much better than the 480 was. It has a Rover 3500cc V8 twin carb SD1 engine and gearbox mated to a Manta Mk1 rear axle with a modded prop. The body kit I think is a mixture of Black Magic and HS. I bought it modded and it's my intention to rebuild the suspension, brakes and interior. It might get a respray one day too. The money that went on the 480 would probably have sorted this out.....

Oh well.

[Drazyl]

... Focus Diesel Sport. It's faster, handles better, costs a lot less to run and will last a lot longer and won't require me to stick my head under the bonnet every 5 minutes. It's an absolute joy to drive and I've had more fun with it in the two weeks I've had it so far than the four months I owned the 480.

Sorry to hear that. My GT is a joy to drive and has never let me down yet. It handles like an absolute dream, and the harder I push it round bends the better it gets. After a year and a bit of driving it every day it still has the ability to get me to work with a big smile on my face.

[barnsleyGT]

hey default,

we got gt's at the same time so ive always looked out for your posts to see how you were gettin on. i did notice you were having constant pain, so i can understand your frustration and everyone has a limit. i said myself initially if the car was a money pit id get rid. its a shame tho man, if you could have the chance to drive a good model theres a lot of fun to be had. mines quick and sticks round corners hard to believe a focus handles better.

£150 for your car is a f'kin joke, id have given you that for the vesas. i tracked your car in my ebay just to see what youd get, but was out at the finish, i checked later and was shocked you got so little. a reserve would have saved some pain. i would have cried handin the keys over.

anyhoo, good luck with your project v8.

[owen080808]

Thats such a shame, car didnt look bad at all, especially compared to some of the stuff that appears on ebay. i always go for sellers who are clearly honest in detail about everything too.

Chevette looks like a hoot tho!

[benmagoo]

See what you have missed there is the timing.

5 years down the line these will start fetching money again.

This is the time to be buying them up, like golf gti's, 205 gti's and cheap rs turbo's, xr3's etc.

[Big Brother]

Bad luck dude. eBay will either make you a fortune or leave you fuming. I put the 440 on eBay a few weeks ago, it sold for £310 but the buyer didn’t contact me as usual. So back on eBay it went and it sold last week for a measly £103. I wasn’t to pleased but I just want shot of it.

[default_user]

Well it's gone and I've lost out. No point harping on about it now. No-one showed any interest on here and even 1900sr only bid £100 so it clearly wasn't worth anything to the regulars here. If I'd had the room I would have kept it and sold spares from it but I just don't have anywhere to keep an extra car so it had to go.

As for the Focus, I can't believe how good it is. I've always turned my nose up at Fords but at my age I really should be more sensible so I used my head rather than my heart deciding on my next car. I do drive with a high degree of enthusiasm I'll admit and really, the Focus is a revelation. As it's the sport model it has ST suspension and the TDCi engine is excellent. I've surprised myself looking at the speedo in mid bend. I won't tell you how surprised lest I incriminate myself but it really is that good.

As for the Chevette. I'm sure it will be a monster when it's running properly but I'm worried it will cost the gross national product of a small country just to tax it by the time I get it on the road! Hooray for Labour! Labour love the motorist.

[martinholmesuk]

480 aint worth shit when you own one already.

I'm on 480 number 5 and before number 5 I had a scooby wrx jap which was fast but nothing like the fun my 480t gives me. I guess i'm a sucker for a 480 but this time I test drove my number 5 for 10 miles and went all over it before buying. I got lot's of bad luck on 480 but i found a happy one now. good luck with the V8 looks fun.

[Brasco]

480's are cheap thrills. I've never had a prob on a 480 I couldn't solve and parts are cheap and easy to find... when my turbo got written off I knew I'd need to buy a car to ace it out, to make me feel better... and to be honest, the Lotus has done that in spades, but it cost 10 times as much (yeah, 10!)... bangs for bucks don't come better than a sorted Richmod guys...

[1900sr]

and even 1900sr only bid £100

To be honest, I put that bid on more to get it started, and no-one would've been more shocked than me if I'd won it. I've got 10 cars here already (see my sig), so another one would've been pushing it. It was surprising that it sold for so little, but putting in your description that it was worth more as parts than as a complete car was probably unfair on the car and didn't do the sale any favours.

As for it not getting any interest on here, the way I see it you had two problems. Firstly, this is the Volvo 480 club website, so most people coming on here own a Volvo 480 already, so won't be looking for another. Secondly, not putting a price in an ad is a sure fire way of killing interest. Most people will assume you want more for it than they are willing to pay. A couple of years back I knew a chap in the Manta club who wanted to sell his near mint 79 2.0 coupe. He asked me what i thought it was worth, and I told him about £1000. he advertised the car for sale, but without a price. The odd time anyone did contact him about the car he'd just say "make me an offer, I'm not a greedy man". No-one made an offer, as they didn't have a clue where to start, and didn't want to offend him. He finally sold it after about a year for just £350. After he sold it several people mentioned they'd have offered more than that, but thought he'd want around the grand mark.

Anyway, good luck with your Focus, and your shuvitt project, that looks like it'll be fun, although I'm sure a lot of ball-ache along the way too.

[suddy]

personally i would have made up some poo nuggets and pulled out of the sale.

i would not have sold it for £155 for the sake of getting a positive feedback mark.


stephen