domcoleman

an automotive photographic archive

Dom's Cars

I got my first car a 1970 Vauxhall Viva for £125 a week before my 17th birthday, in fact, my bicycle cost more! Six months later it made way for cash to pay for proper driving lessons and driving test. It wasn’t until another 4 months that I’d saved enough money for my second car the 1976 Triumph 1500TC that looked tidy for £750, but it hid poor British Leyland workmanship as I was later to discover during 2.5 years.

What followed was my introduction to the Ford Capri, my first being a 1975 MkII 1600XL. It was to replace the Triumph and I wasn’t impressed, however, for £200 with a long MOT it was a good deal. A couple of years later whilst the XL was resting a 1979 MkII Ford Escort was in my temporary ownership; it was soon discarded.

Three years later, my first Capri was written off in a crash but I got another, this time a 1979 MkIII Capri 2.0GL. It was my first car that propelled me to over 100mph, somewhere on the A303 in Wiltshire. Another 3 years and 64,000 miles later the 2.0GL made way for a 1985 MkIII Capri 2.8 Injection Special. It was treated to a respray and subtle body mods but unfortunately was stolen form a garage in 1998, but luckily found in Weymouth a few weeks later in a sorry state. It was never the same, the insurance covered the repairs but the chosen workshop couldn’t recreate the previous respray quality. I sold it in March 2017.

In the meantime, my fourth Capri was acquired, a 1978 MkII Capri 1.6L. Quite rusty, all over, but it was a good work horse and did not take too much work to get through the MOTs. In 2000 it had to make way for the ‘River Cottage’ car, a 1966 Ford Corsair 1700 deluxe Convertible. This was the car that belonged to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and appeared in the Escape to River Cottage and Return to River Cottage TV series, see the 'blog' here for the latest news.

It wasn’t until 5 years later that I had another car in my name, a 1994 Peugeot 405 GLX estate, donated by my brother in-law. A year later it made way for the 2003 VW Passat TDi Sport estate, and what a terrific car it was, very similar to my 2.8i Capri for driving pleasure. The 2003 Passat (B5.5) Sport served me well despite the fuel economy dropping during it's last 50,000 miles but it had reached just over 300,000 miles before being sent away for scrap. It had been 15 years since I had bought a car for myself when I acquired a VW Passat 2.0 TDi GT and quite an update and something of a learning curve for me what with all the new electronics that had appeared on new cars over the years.

That was just an overview of all my cars so far; however, below are links for more details about each of them.