Having lived in Zambia and seen Peugeot pick ups held together with string and sellotape loaded with upwards of twenty smiling people plus goats and luggage and worked in the motor trade on and off for 15 years where one of the earliest lessons I learned is how much a brand new car depreciates the minuet a customer has paid his cheque and jumped into it, I have always made a point of buying cars when they are worth little more than scrap and seeing how far I can go before their day of judgement.
Thus I have owned a succession of jallopies and never spent more than £1000 on any of them which includes the 2CV I raced back in 1990.
One of my early bargains was this wonderful 1972 Audi 80 LS, seen here in the VW works car park during my internship at the VW factory in 1983.
This delight was advertised as having a 4 month MOT and 4 good tyres for DM 100, when one of my mates saw it he suggested I buy it as a run around and so that I could get to a wedding back in the UK. I suggested he and another friend come with me to the UK and they agreed so we went down to the junk yard kicked the tyres and haggled, I noted a missing hub cap my friend noticed there was not any petrol in the tank and we were miles from a petrol station so we made a deal I'd buy the car for DM100 except I only had DM 25 on me, I looked at my friends and they shuffled through their pockets and came up with another DM 50 the guy said we were jokers so we turned to leave and he said we could have the car for DM 75 and that he would give us a hub cap (the shiney plastic one on the back) and that we could help our selves to some fuel from one of the many other cars in his yard with the aid of a syphon he kindly leant us.
I left the yard in my pride and joy with a nearly full tank of petrol having just spent £25 between the three of us on a car with 4 months MOT !
After much toing and froing around Wolfsburg and northern Germany time came for the three of us to head for England a wedding and the 6 Hours at Silverstone. Packed to the gunnels we headed into the night for a charge across Germany on the autobahn.
Soon after we departed the car seemed to be getting slower for no appreciable reason and after a couple of more hours the head lights seemed to be getting very dim. Eventually nature called so we stopped at a services and when we got back in the car she would not start for love nor money the battery was flat.
A friendly passer by diagnosed the problem as alternator failure and recommended our best course of action was to get a nights sleep and get a jump start in the morning. Which is what we did at the crack of dawn.
With the lights off the engine could be kept going at maximum revs without dying so we proceeded into Holland stopped at the boarder post using the hand brake in order to keep the revs up, the boarder guard took an age checking our passports as I kept my foot flat on the pedal to ensure the engine did not stall.
Some how we all kept straight faces and the guard handed our passports back and waved us on, without letting the revs drop I some how effected a smooth and orderly acceleration into Holland, which we proceeded across mostly flat out in third so that we did not break the strict 100/120 kph speed limits.
Going on through Belgium we ran out of motorway before we got to Zeebrugge this brought a new problem because we knew if we stopped the engine might die and we would then need another jump start, so every junction we came to I had one of my friends look left and the other right and on the words 'clear clear' I proceeded across each junction no matter what colour the lights, fortunately it was still very early in the morning and somehow we got to Zeebrugge without having to stop.
We decided to abandon the Audi in Zeebrugge leaving the windows open, doors unlocked and keys in the ignition and proceeded on to England, when we came back two weeks later we were only mildly surprised to see the car still outside the port, so we flagged someone down got a jump start and proceeded back to Germany, by the time we got to the German border the engine died despite me having the accelerator flat on the floor, fortunately since we were on German plates we were allowed to push the car into country and were spared the ignominy of having to push the car across no mans land back to Holland.
After a few more jump starts we came to a rest on a motorway building site and it dawned on us we might not get back to Wolfsburg. One of my mates found a farm nearby and the farmer was a bit of a dab hand with old motors but wanted a DM 100 for an old alternator however we were reluctant to pay more than the car had cost us for a part that would only be useful for the remaining six weeks of the MOT so my friend asked how much the farmer would give us for the car and to our amazement the farmer said he would give us 50 DM for every week on the MOT DM 300 and not a pfenig more ! My friend asked if that included a lift to the nearest station and the farmer shook on it.
So back to the Audi one last time somehow we flagged someone down on the motorway building site and with one final jump start we went screaming off in second all the way to the farm. The Audi sold for four times what we had paid for it and a lift to the nearest station thrown in. What care free days !
Some time ago we bought a W126 merc 280SE with 100,000kms on the clock. When it was sold about 8 years ago it had 659,000 kms on the clock. In that time it had a few oil changes,one radiator (after i cooked it out at the ranger uranium mine..) 3 sets of spark plugs and a couple of tire changes. many of those K's were added by our employees who would often drive at 200kmh plus on the roads west of the great divide (in Australia) .It was Sold for $4000 to a Chinese herbalist who still uses it as his daily driver. 
