The entente cordiale gets a little diluted

With the Citroen BX on the way to the scrapyard a replacement was needed.
The chosen vehicle, also French, was less of a gem however. I wanted an estate, and I wanted a diesel, for reasons of economy.
I found, on Cardiff’s Broadway which was then the site of a dozen dodgy back street car dealers, a Peugeot 305 diesel estate.

Hardly earth shatteringly good-looking. Worthy, perhaps, but not as solid as it looks

It looked sound and ran well, if a bit noisily. I paid £1,000 for it, and on investigating the MoT certificate I discovered that the Peugeot had miraculously done almost 50,000 miles backwards since it was issued. The mileometer said it had done 107,000. The MoT said 153,000.

I did consider taking it up with the dealership, but I figured that if you buy a car for £1,000 from a back street dealer, you deserve all you get.

It went well enough, but had a number of niggling little faults.
None of the trim fitted properly. The plastic was nasty and brittle. The heater burst on holiday, and I bypassed it by fitting a length of hose between the two intakes, but after that it ran very hot indeed. And it was icy cold in the winter.

Eventually the head gasket between the two centre cylinders blew and although no water got past the break I found that in order to start it, it took a good five minutes, or so it seemed, of winding the starter before the thing would burst into smoky life.

Less than a year after buying it I got fed up with it, parked it in a lock up garage and left it there to fester. Eventually, while legging it from a busted relationship and a valley that had lost all of its once Brigadoon -like charm I handed the keys to the garage back to the council and left them to deal with it.

By the way I did buy a towbar for the Peugeot but the car broke before I got the chance to fit it. So if anyone needs a tow bar for a Peugeot 305….



no, you get to be the worlds second oldest car manfacturer thanks to mahoosive French government susidies...