I put a few messages out but got nothing interesting (or a bargain) in reply until one email said, "What about a 200 ?" - I replied, "Go on"
It turned out the person that had contacted me was from ATM sport who were based in Essex not that far from me. They were in the process of negotiating with the owner of two cars in Asia to bring them back. They expect I could have one for about £30,000. - Needless to say I was interested.
Anyway, I started to look at how to finance the car and, seeing as interest rates were low I thought I might take out a big bank loan and go for it, even if it was for 6 months, hell, at least I would have reached my dream to own a 200 at some point in my life !
To cut a long story short, the car price was going up and when it arrived in the UK it was too race ready for me to use on public roads but by this time I was hooked and had taken two £25k loans out so had £50k sitting in my bank waiting to be spent so I went looking for one to buy.
I found #143 but but the person he was selling to mucked him around so I missed that one but found an old coversation on the RSOC website about a 200 near Scotland for sale - I found the person who had been talking about it and he found me the garage details and I made contact.
The seller was not interested in talking to me, I think he thought I was another time waster but undeterred I drove to see the car and the garage manager took me out in her - I was sold, and so was the car, to me for £48k and I arranged to collect her the following week.
I drove up there (again) this time with my wife as company and a trailer on the back of the car. It was just as well there were two of us as the car was 2 inches too wide for the trailer so there I was, hundreds of miles from home, 30th Dec and with a car that had only ever travelled 5382 miles in it's life - Nothing we could do except for me to drive her home ! - I was really tense, listening for every noise, convinced she would burst into flames at any moment but she made it without missing a beat.
In the weeks after Geoff Page came over and gave her his seal of approval and had a drive, he thought she was a good buy and so did I !
After a few months sadly my grandmother died but I did get some money in the will and as a result my wife suggested rather than loose it into the mortgage pot I should pay off my HUGE bank loans and keep the car as a reminder of her so that's what I did and as I sit here typing some 6 years later I have no plans to sell her - I have met some great people, learnt some interesting facts and had a chance to make a website that many people seem to find useful - You can't ask for more than that.
In that time there has only ever been 1 person cause problems and that started in January 2008 after I refused to delete an entry from the website that referred to car #076. As a result that person placed my car for sale all over the web claiming it was rebuilt after a fire. If you look at their website (which they copied in bulk from mine) they have changed the entry for two cars, mine 193 and one they claim to have no involvement in, 076. - Never mind - 1 bad incident so far is not bad going in my book.
As I put her to hibernation in the winter of 2009 she had now covered 14,000 miles and had has an engine overhaul with some new parts (for safety sake) and is now running on an MBE management system at about 350 BHP. She had to have a new rad due to a leak and at that time I upgraded to twin SPAL fans, other than that she is pretty standard.
Other info is that my car had 86KOL as a plate at one point and that she has 5 previous keepers but more interesting is that the car was destined to have (or maybe it did) the first numberplate of KFC3 as Tim Allen was the first owner of my car (from the UK arm of KFC).
In some the images you can see my friends 200 co-habitating while it had it's engine worked on (using my parts to get it going !)
If you find out anything else about this car please drop me an email and i'll update the cars entry !
justin.smith@rs200.org
Images