Arcoarena

Autophilia - or how I learned to stop worrying…..

July 30, 2008 on 8:28 pm | In Spitfire | 2 Comments

……and buy a Triumph Spitfire

A few more photos

I can’t quite pin down when classic cars started appealing to me but it was sometime near the end of University. I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a classic for a few years but always got scared for various reasons; not having a garage, not having any experience of fixing engines etc.

So to cut a long drawn out story….I decided just to buy one or I never would. What’s the worst that could happen? (don’t answer that!). So with a bit of research and a few viewings I bought a 1979 Triumph Spitfire 1500 (with overdrive).

So far so good, we went camping last weekend (hence the tents in the photos) and it made the 80 odd mile journey with very few hitches. I’m still getting used to having a manual choke and there was a bit of a rumbling on the near side front corner which turned out to be some loose wheel nuts (which was both scary and a relief at the same time).

As for why a Spitfire. Good question, I guess if you’re going to have second car it might as well be a soft top, being British was obviously nice too. I quite like MG B (GT)s but there are quite a few of those around. Spitfires are slightly rarer and arguably more stylish.

I’ve now got an ever growing list of things to fix on it. The first is very probably going to be fixing the heaters, they’re currently stuck on hot!