There are times when things in the automotive world do not quite work out, and earlier this month was one of them. Whilst searching for a suitable vehicle to take to Santa Pod's "Run What Ya Brung" event next month, I happened across this 1996 Suzuki Vitara 1.6 JX on Auto Trader. Owned by a local family for the last 20 or so years, it had covered just 82,000 miles and had plenty of service history, so my lady wife and I went over to see it.
I knew that it had an expired MOT, so I couldn't really drive it, but I was confident that it would pass through with perhaps a few advisories, so I did a deal with the seller, and booked it in for a test a few days later. The drive to the MOT station was intriguing, as the steering was vaguer than a John Major speech, the level of noise coming through into the cabin was much more than anything I had driven short of a 1980 Triumph Dolomite and the vibration through the drivetrain was exceptional. It was a lot of fun, however, and I was looking forward to picking it up in a couple of days as I walked away from the MOT station.
The Suzuki Vitara of today is very different from the original model, which was introduced 30 years ago, and was little changed by 1996. The JX was the base model five door version, and had barely any features. There was no central locking, no electric windows, seemingly no way of adjusting the wing mirrors, no anti-lock brakes (getting it to skid was surprisingly easy) and not even any power steering. The one concession to modernity was a radio cassette.
Once I had managed to get used to the beefy clutch and angled gearlever, though, it had been quite good fun to drive around, and so I was looking forward to a few antics before going to Santa Pod in mid-October. I was particularly looking forward to trying the selectable four wheel drive system with a proper low range gearbox, very rare on modern cars indeed!
The next day, however, I had some bad news. The car had a list of MOT advisories as long as my arm, and had failed on two counts. Discussing the cost of repairs with the garage banded around figures to get it to pass which were around the cost of the car in the first place, so she was dispatched to a friend's driveway, placed on SORN and sold on Ebay to a local motor trader. He had been looking for a spares car to keep his old Vitara on the road, and this fitted the bill.
It was a massive relief to see her go to a good home and not lose lots of money in the process, but it made me question the wisdom of buying a car with an expired MOT. There is often a reason why the owner has let this happen, it is not necessarily because they want you to have it as cheaply as possible! My replacement purchase had a full year's MOT, which was a marked improvement.
