At what age do you consider it an old car?

[Prufrock]

Motor Vehicle Imports (MVI) was an Inchcape company, I worked for Inchcape back in the day; visited Bridlington many times.

Some of those old brands - Pneumant, Barum, Sava etc, are now owned by the big tyre brands, so for the intelligent buyer they're great value - I have Savas on my Volvo 740s.

Jon.

[john.wigley]

Had a couple of 'Eastern Bloc' cars in the 70s - a 73L Moskvich 427 (Estate) bought at two years and 8K miles, and a 75P Wartburg (Saloon) at 8 months and 4K miles. Had the Mosky for a year and 6K - horrible Russian cross-plies but a heater that worked (and looked) like a furnace! As I recall, the Wartburg - kept for a year and 10K miles - was fitted with Pneumant tyres, but I would not describe the handling as anything more than average, even by the standards of the day. What they both offered, however, was a lot of car for relatively little money - a bit like Dacia does today.

Regards, John.

[Trabant Dave]

I first encountered Trabis and Wartis on a visit to the DDR in the 1980's when they were everyday fare over there; along with Dacia, Polski-Fiat etc etc; never at that point did I think I'd ever OWN one!

A different world it was then in every sense of the phrase; I often wondered if I should see if the Stasi had a little 'interest' in me during my visit as you can access the old records if they weren't destroyed....

I had a couple of Eastern Bloc cars myself; an orange Lada Riva 1300 (with a brown vinyl roof!) and then a sky blue one, bought at 11 months old at auction for under a grand with 8000 miles on - it was like new and gave sterling service for a couple of years.

Less common was a Yugo Sana which was actually pretty damn good, being a Fiat Tipo under the skin. Dirt-cheap used prices, as usual for cars made in 'the Soviet sphere of influence'.

I'm seriously considering also having a Polo-engined Trabi Kombi as a work vehicle for a business venture I am considering - the alternative being a Barkas B1000/1 van which in its final incarnation was blessed with a 1.3 Golf engine

[Prufrock]

East Berlin before the wall came down - that was an experience, especially in the shops.

I went with a friend and we were followed, we think it was because both our Father's were army officers (albeit retired). My Dad was in the British Zone immediately after the war: however we were only followed - all the time we were there.

I had an old timer friend who lived in Scotland, he said the rear engine'd Skodas were unbeatable in snow. I've driven them in Czechoslovakia and the later FWD Skodas in the Czech Republic.

Interesting times.

Jon.

[Trabant Dave]

It certainly made a change from the Costa Brava for me; East Berlin was not a common destination for Brits - I still have the Praktica camera that I bought in the Intershop for considerably less than I would have paid in the UK; it's one of my prized possessions and still takes superb pictures.

I also travelled to West Berlin on a number of occasions in the late 80's and bought cheap cigs and booze from the Intershop that was located in one of the U-Bahn stations - I think it was Friedrichstrasse; you got off the train there, bought your bits and bobs with West Marks or Pounds or US Dollars, and then hopped on the train back without going through the border. A carton of Marlboro or Ernte 23 for a fraction of the cost in the regular shops in the west.

A lot of the shops open to DDR citizens were pretty poorly stocked, run-down etc, but the big Centrum on Alexanderplatz was impressive and reasonably well supplied - especially if you were into man-made fibres!

Our perception of the shops (and the DDR generally) was that it was pretty tired and so on, but my wife (who is from Poland) was pretty impressed when she first visited East Berlin - Poland was in a far worse state in some respects during the 1980's than East Germany! Food shortages, rationing and so on.

Having said that, on many occasions when visiting Poland and seeing graffiti, street drunkenness and general poor behaviour, she shakes her head and says 'This would never have happened in Communist times!' And when General Wojciech Jaruzelski died a year or so ago, she was in floods of tears on Skype, as were both her parents; end of an era for the three of them I guess, all three were PZPR party members.

[kieran40]

Originally Posted by T5R92011

10 years for me.

However I do think owners let themselves down by not cleaning a car.

For example you can get the below 5 series on an 03 plate, so 12 years old...... but if it's clean and shiney it still looks like a new car to me... but if it's dirty it looks old and I would consider it an old car.

Nice Beemer it seems like yesterday when that was a current model Time flys BMW's don't age I find. That's a credit to you that one