Lockdown Rundown

I NEARLY BOUGHT…A PORSCHE BOXSTER

Having made the decision to move on my Alfa Spider, my shortlist of replacements was surprisingly… well, short. Driving a hybrid Toyota estate as an everyday car meant I wanted something with performance enough to be exciting, but I’ve very much been there and done that with BMWs, while the late Alfa 916 GTV itch was scratched as a project car at the company’s expense. I’d love to relive my youth with another air-cooled Beetle, but they’re signally lacking in the performance stakes, although naturally growing up with VWs I’d always wanted a Porsche 911. The air-cooled cars may be as far out of reach as they were when I was an 18-year old Beetle driver, but the 996 generation is temptingly affordable and I started looking at the classifieds.

At which point I realised just what cracking value the first-generation ‘986’ Boxster is, which is technically a better car in many ways. Values are all over the place though, and it’s likely that with a bit of luck you could pick up a miley car ripe for simple DIY tidying for just £4000, while a budget of £7000 buys you a really nice example – and if you’re lucky the infamous (and to be honest much exaggerated) IMS seal will have been sorted.

In short, I was all set to get the rear-engined six-cylinder Porsche of teenage dreams, but in the end I got rather sidetracked by something which even makes the Porsche seem mundane…

I WISH I’D BOUGHT…AN ASTON MARTIN DB7

I’ve mentioned before in CCB