Tales from the banger auction. 1980s style.

[Warren t claim]

I thought I'd bring this thread over from the beige as I have a few more anecdotes to add.

Back in the late 1980s I used to supplement my meager student grant/giro by working as a fiver a night driver for a banger auction. Back in those days the sort of sub £500 chod I was lucky enough to drive around the "block" was the stuff of dreams to any Wobber in the second decade of the 21st century.



Most of us have at some point in our driving careers had a punt or two on some old nail so I thought I'd tell the story from the perspective of someone who saw the good the bad and the ugly from through the windscreen.



Today banger auctions are largely extinct but 20/30 years ago they were the easiest place to pick up the car you needed at the price you could afford. You simply turned up holding the folding and drove away there and then.



The sheer variety of vehicles on offer in those days for a couple of weeks wages was much greater than today.



Most dealers in new Iron Curtain stuff were offering £1000 min part ex on your old banger so it wasn't unusual for the same old rusty Datsun Violet to be punted around the ring three or four times a month. Mind you, the local Lada dealer was also reluctant to retail any Lada over four years old so many legitimate, one owner Ladas were sold to the public via the auction, often showing less than 20,000 miles. Older Ladas were also always a total nightmare to start and drive because many of them seemed to have faulty ignition barrels meaning that you had to find the hidden switch that the owner had fitted. Another common Lada problem was the throttle pedal being about 18" off the carpet for some reason.



Plenty of FSOs made it to auction about this time as well. £800 would normally secure you a three year old example. Many were already knocking their brains out at this young age as well!



BL chod was always a joy to start as well. Many times I went to pull the choke out to start an old Mini or Toledo and have the knob and a couple of feet of choke cable come through the dash!



I vividly remember my first series Landy experience as it involved a small crash... I had already started the engine so I pushed the gear lever over to the left and forwards to engage first, unfortunately, the detent to stop you engaging reverse was missing so when I released the clutch it shot backwards about three foot and into the fence!



Rover Sd1s were notorious for locking the unwary auction driver in. I don't think I ever drove one with working electric windows either.



Vans and commercials were always a pain because you couldn't park them in front of the rostrum because the auctioneer wouldn't be able to see who, if anyone, was bidding.



A common auction dodge was to disconnect the bonnet release catch so any prospective buyer couldn't see the state of the engine. Fine in theory but bad in practice if the car had a weak battery and needed the 24v truck battery for a jump start.



Back then it was common for clued up punters to ask you if you could "find fifth" as the numbers on the gearknob quite often to a little lie. Also, people used to lean through the drivers' window and wag the tiller on things like Princesses and Datsun Laurels to see if it had power steering.



I must say I thoroughly enjoyed my little stint as an auction driver. I only quit because Xmas was coming and the allure of working behind the bar at a local nightclub was too tempting. Mind you, I probably wouldn't have caught a dose of the clap off a rusty Fiat Strada unlike that sexy South African girl called Natalie but that's another story.

[Warren t claim]

Absolutely everything automatic that went through the ring needed driver encouragement to cover the required couple oh hundred yards. The worst case scenario was the automatic car with PAS that needed the booster batteries to get going in the first place. As you can imagine, it was a matter of pride for a driver to get a car past the block without needing the auctioneer to shout for the battery lad to get you started again.

One such car that beat me was a 1978 (I think) Dodge Aspen station wagon. This shed was complete with fake wood paneling and torn to shreds PVC seats. From memory, I think it was a 4.2 six-cylinder and for some reason, it attracted more attention than it deserved. IIRC, when I went to drive it around the ring it had about four bikers crawling over it. I distinctly remember asking them "having a wank over the Yank lads?"

[Warren t claim]

Even without the benefit of hindsight, there were many old nails that I wish I could've bought due to their rarity and low value.

Even when driving the 1974 Renault 5 that was hand painted in burgundy around the ring that only got a bid off the scrap man I knew it was a rare old thing. In fact, it was the only dash change Renault 5 I ever saw in that auction.

A pre facelift Mk3 Cortina, also in burgundy, went for scrap. Not that unusual for the time but this was a rare 1.6 XL with a front bench seat and a long auto selector lever. A fucking shame as it was put in auction as part of a probate sale. IIRC the poor thing had a fucked inhibitor on the autobox meaning it couldn't be started in drive, only neutral.

[paulplom]

I got conned at an auction once in 2008. I paid £1200 for a three year old 1.0 three cylinder agila with 100k on the clock.
The management light was on but it didn't really effect the running. It would stutter and miss now and then but was driveable no bother.
What I thought was a coil pack in fact was the ecu. £900 at vauxhall please. My cheap runabout wasn't cheap any more.

I bought my mother an F reg 1.0 nova at about four years old. Base spec and it was nowt but fucking bother.
I burnt all my eyebrows off setting fire to the bastard up a country lane about six months later.

[AutoshiteBoy]

working as a fiver a night driver for a banger auction.

Back when I was a shite hawk auction trader, we referred to those men and woman as 'jockeys' and they were a valuable source of info.

[AutoshiteBoy]

The best car (banger) I was ever sent to auction was a one owner XJ6 Sovereign, of early XJ40 flavour in green. If you ignored the rust and dropping headlining, it looked magnificent, but you just knew it was trouble. We even had spare Dunlop TD tyres for it. We robbed the excellent tool kit from it.

[AutoshiteBoy]

Another time I was sent in convoy to enter a Skoda Favorite and a Lada Samara to TTMA, an old foundry or something which was a banger auction but is now a Tesco (Paul will know the place). The trusty Maestro van was in convoy as a back-up vehicle to shunt us through the Tyne Tunnel if we got stuck. I was head of the convoy and peeled off the slip road of the dual carriageway and waited at the top T-junction to cross to road. The junction is notoriously busy and this Skoda wouldn't take full throttle (I think the block had gone porous, but the plastics were sub food packaging material). Anyway, the Maestro van purposely shunted the Lada forward to start the game and together the Maestro and the Lada started pushing me into traffic, the bastards. It was do or die as the Skoda brakes couldn't hold the pair of them back. The look of terror on my face as I gunned a spluttering Skoda out in front of a bin motor would have been something. I was shaking like a shitting dog.

[paulplom]

I remember that auction but I never went.
I used to go to the one at Benton. I'm not sure if that one's still there either.

[DodgeRover]

I used to got to Chesterfield motor auctions on the site of what is now either a hotel or another Tesco or push the boat out with fuel costs and go to Warsop, I would occasionally accompany others to Manheim as at this point my insurance policy covered me for any vehicle I owned or any other vehicle I didn't!
I didn't do too bad although my 305 saloon turned out to be a PITA as some one had tightened the tappets enough to stop the cam rattling, with the reset it sounded like a diesel and the clutch started slipping after a couple of thousand miles. The low milage replacement engine sounded lovely but had lost synchro on 3rd and the clutch promptly shat itself requiring an expensive and hard to find puller to change the damn thing.

[AutoshiteBoy]

I remember that auction but I never went.
I used to go to the one at Benton. I'm not sure if that one's still there either.

The Benton one is still there, but I've not been for years.