Hiya,
The A310 was a special car and quite unique in it's day.
Here's Youtube footage of one in the same colour as mine. The wheels are non-standard as far as I can tell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWEtr...eature=related
In July 1982, I went to the South of France in her ( all my cars are girls ) and on the Autoroute du Soleil, I picked up en route a blue French registered one and a white German registered one. So we motored at high speed in convoy passing everybody.
It was so much fun....
Red, White & Blue !!!
One of the weaknesses of the A310 with it's rear engine V6 was it's waywardness in cross winds. In November of that year, I had to go to Birmingham up the M1. It was wet as well as windy. The journey was a nightmare because at any speed over 60mph, the car would change lanes when a gust of wind hit the car.
Really scary stuff....
I only had her a year and sold it to Chequered Flag in Chiswick for around £8500.00 who sold it for about £10K which was almost the cost of her new with the UK taxes that I had to pay.
The guy who bought it re-registered her as ALP 310 from the 'X' reg that I had on her.
There's another tale. I collected the car in August 1981 from Paris and drove to Dover. Going on to the ferry I saw a new large Mercedes-Benz and the late James Hunt got out. In the bar upstairs, I overheard him telling some people that being an ex-F1 World Champion he would get a new Merc at a highly discounted price. We followed each other off the ferry at Dover and went through HM Customs 'Something to Declare'. The guy asked me if I had anything to declare and I said " The Car " ....
I had all my various duty cheques already sorted out with Customs, so I just had to give them these together with a copy of the appropriate Customs letter.
Then a month later I had to re-register the car with a British registration instead of the WW French plates.
Oh yes just outside Paris, I was stopped at one of the tolls by the Police and had to show them my car's export documents and prove to them that I was leaving the country that day.
1981/1982 was one of the worst winters since the war and she was impossible to drive on snow with those big fat rear tyres. Once it took me four hours to get from Maidenhead, Berkshire to East Horsley in Surrey so bad were the roads. I did a couple of 360's in her too.....
All good fun and wonderful memories.
Take care and happy motoring.
Paula
Quote:
Originally Posted by garcon
I used to love those Alpines! Seem to remember quite a few perished just the wrong side of the limit! Glad you survived the scare!
Good to hear Lucy went on the Porsche course - they're pretty good at that kind of thing, I understand.
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and being a lover of German cars and did not want another Merc, decided to get one of these.
( The car that is ... 
)
Weasel Wrangler
Linear Mode
