Story Behind (the) Photo, not the love story, this time.
Now, I shall start with the explanation of pictured Vectra, in most bland of the colours - silver. There was a time in my life that I was self employed and my car money were quite limited due to intermittent earnings. One day I could have a job for good money and it could have carried for few weeks, then after that period there might have been nothing for another few weeks. Since Winter time (end of 2012), through to New Year and beginning of Spring, I was driving comfy but quite tired BMW 5-series (early E39). It was joyful and lovely ride. However, as I never liked diesel (and never had one to date), it had to been petrol. Not the biggest but still thirsty when pushed – 523i, 2.5litre straight six, around 170bhp. Quite small engine for the size and weight of this tank, but sounding lovely as any 6 cylinder from BMW. The bad point was that it has had around 180k on the clock and repairs were starting to be quite expensive, so I had to let it go as it wasn't very well looked after example.
I had a gap before I could buy anything else and we had a holiday planned. Time was ticking away and we were in the middle of Summer with only a couple of weeks left to go. The holiday involved driving through Europe around 1200 miles one way, it must have been driving - not flying, as in the season flights are simply too expensive for family of four. And I prefer to drive:) One day, when walking to the local shop I spotted this Vectra with sign 'for sale', on our street...and I thought – NO, oh no. But sooner and sooner to the date that we supposed to go, I had this feeling that it will have to be this if nothing else will show up. The budget was very tight and this car was advertised for just shy of £500. It was owned by an elderly gentleman and I saw him in it, many times before. He must have had it for quite good few years. 3 days to go and I went to visit him, he showed me some paperwork from services and repairs (it wasn't massive) and gave me a drive around. Car had few niggles but it was generally tight. Next day I have bought it for £450. I had it for one day and off we went for 'drive through the Europe'. Sun was blasting, aircon stopped working at around 1/3 way, we have boiled and roasted but car was going strong in temperatures touching 35 Celsius in shade. The autobahn was not in shade, but we survived. In one month (August) this great car has done over 3000 miles without a breakdown - apart from one push-start when it decided not to turn over it's starter motor. And it had developed small oil leak which was cured by my dad and his fellow mechanic. Aircon was also diagnosed as not worthy repairing (leaking gas). But this car driven me, my wife and children through whole Europe and it was still working nice. Thanks to this machine we had a wonderful holiday, we could met our families, we could experience proper Summer and we came back home safely. Silver Vectra, the last car I could thought of when I planned that holiday. And it carried on working until one day at beginning of Winter, when it just decided to die, on the way to airport. It literally died – revs and other gauges went down, I lost power steering, and brakes servo and engine has stopped suddenly. All this while driving at normal speed and thankfully just before going on the motorway – just on the slip road! I don't know until now what has caused it's sudden death. Car was seen by mechanic at the spot - my dad was there, we couldn't see or think of anything that caused it's death. Later on, when it was transported back to my house, diagnostics had shown nothing. I could only think of some bad earth connection killing most of electrics / electronics, or perhaps immobiliser fault, but still – we found out nothing. Starter motor was turning the engine over but there was no sign of life, over and over again battery was being killed by trying to start the car, then recharged and most of equipment checked, trying once again to start it. Never happened. I thought then, that we were extremely lucky to get this car all over the Europe without missing a beat.
After Christmas – when it was used as outside Christmas tree (decorated with lights), Vectra went to the graveyard – scrap man took it. And that was the end of Vauxhalls for me, I hope:)
Pictures above and below are the only pictures of this car I had, normally I take a lot of pictures of cars I own or like, but this one, despite giving me good time in Europe, has not earned the status of interesting enough.
Below is the picture of odometer showing 144444 – that was taken while still in Europe, I think that it's life has ended at around 150k or just over.