Long story short, I bought it for a song and drove it home. I told the missus on the way back that I'd bought the Lexus I mentioned, and she replied "There was never any doubt in my mind that you would." Bah, she's rumbled me.
The subsequent Saturday, I gave it a wash and brush up, and it came up pretty nice.
I drove it down to Brands Hatch on the Sunday, and it proved to be a silent, comfortable and capable car that averaged 28mpg. Bugger breaking it for its engine; it's the new daily driver.
The following weekend, everyone else was at Hot Rods & Hills but I'd jizzed all my money on a shonky Lexus so I wasn't going. The following Thursday, though, I'd managed to blag a ride for a few days. I drove down to Luton, parked the Lexus up, and drove out in this...
It's a Vauxhall VXR8, basically a Holden Commodore HSV with the supercharged LSA motor and six-speed manual. You know it's going to be good when the massive tank is brimmed full and the computer reckons you can expect 200 miles from it. I'm guessing that everyone who has taken it out before me has ragged it like a cheap whore when the fleet's in, leading to low expectations of fuel economy from the on-board computer.
While I was there I did get to have a quick gander around Vauxhall's Heritage Centre, and boy do they have some cool stuff in there. All nicely restored, from pre-war stuff to the last Monaro, a Lotus Carlton, a Bedford CA and CF, and something I could really go for, a droop-snoot Firenza. Yum.
Still, the road was calling, and I took the 570-odd bhp VXR8 out of the gates, onto the M1... and straight into rush-hour traffic. For two hours. And that clutch is heavy. As soon as I came off the motorway, I had a BMW pull up next to me at the lights giving it big licks. Right, I thought, I'll show him. Green went the lights, down went the boot, and paaaaarp went my arse. The thing took off so hard it snapped my neck back, then forwards again when it hit the rev limiter. I grabbed second and repeated the process, all the while shrieking like the prettiest boy in the cell block. I'd covered half a mile, using both lanes of the carriageway, ruined a perfectly good pair of trousers and left the BMW sitting there as if someone had stolen his throttle pedal. Which is just as well, otherwise he'd have seen me being thrown around inside the car like a big lass's tit on a bouncy castle and laughed himself into a lamppost.
That weekend saw us all at Shakey County for the Nostalgia Nats. What a terrific weekend. There was a real buzz about the place, some real enthusiasm floating around. And talking of floating around, here's a picture of two reprobates mugging a child for his bicycle.
And here's one of them riding it around the pits and trying to pull wheelies before falling flat on his mudflaps.
Honestly, you'd think driving a seven-second street car would be enough of a thrill, but no, riding a bicycle designed for someone roughly the size and weight of one of his morning bowel movements was more exciting. The Saturday was a bit of a dead loss due to rain showers, but Sunday was a great day with plenty of NPBs for NSCCers including Andy's 7.77 at 178mph, Keith Freeman well inside the 10s, and Sandra Lee taking the coal-chucking Land Rover down to a 14.4. Good fun all round.
Andy even managed to continue his efforts at infanticide by proxy. Not content with setting fire to the poor little bugger at York, this time, when the nitrous bottle he was heating up in a bucket of boiling water blew its burst disc, the same child was standing next to it. He laughed about it. Well, we all did - we'd just inhaled 10lbs of nitrous oxide. So either Andy's a psychopath or the kid's a jinx. And that's another perfectly good pair of my trousers ruined. I'd only just chipped the solids off them after the VXR8 incident. Mind you, if a 1200psi blast of nitrous and boiling water didn't shift the stains, nothing would.
And I even got a chocolate race car for father's day!
Yes, it's likely to be more structurally sound than most of my race cars, though it won't pass scrutineering now as ... well, I've eaten it. So, by tomorrow, it'll be an EXACT replica of most of my race cars...
Eugene
