Dan Friel said:

Having covered less than 1800km in the past ten years, I'm now using my newly acquired Barchetta on an (almost) daily basis. A solid car, just sailed through its MOT) but needs a new hood really. Replaced the mismatched tyres with Vredesteins straightaway and that was a vast improvement. Have also solved the idle problem, so now running nicely.

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what a shame, Such good looking cars are made for driving not letting them rot away in garage..
but seriously why did you kept doing the MOT's for it and paying insurance/tax for it if you just drove it for so little?

itaa5x said:

what a shame, Such good looking cars are made for driving not letting them rot away in garage..
but seriously why did you kept doing the MOT's for it and paying insurance/tax for it if you just drove it for so little?

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I've owned the car for three months...

Hi All

Its been a while since I have been on here but always keep an eye on the Barchetta section and its nice to see people still loving their cars.

I have had mine since March 2007 via ebay, generally only used for low mileage each year and taxed for the summer months, for what that is worth in the UK

Is 1995 car originally from Germany and been in the UK since 1997.

Mechanically she has been great and just general servicing however I did need to have a new fuel tank quite a while ago due to some corrosion. I was lucky enough to have a full respray done around 2009 (I work at a car dealer and they had a quite period in the bodyshop at that point so did a great job for low £££) and this sorted a few rust spots and removed all the dings and dents. Water had got in via the chassis plate cover by the passenger seat and that was the worst part. Picture below when the work was being done.

She was off the road for a couple of years when we moved and had no garage locally but recently found a new one locally and been using the B much more since.

The biggest trip was last year when me and my Dad celebrated the cars 20th Birthday with a European road trip through France, Switzerland, Italy & Monaco taking in the Furka,Grimsel and Stevlio Pass and coming back via Route Napolean. Around 2,500 miles in total and the car was great, the only issue being I lost the Naxos spoiler I have put on during the repspray after some pretty hefty bumps
One of my favourite photos is below of my little B on the left in front of the snow by the Hotel Belvedere on one of the Swiss Passes, don't think anybody else was brave enough to park that side!

The car is like part of the family and we live a little closer to some country lanes now so try to get out as much as possible and I will try and keep this car as long as I can and keep her in as good as condition as possible.

Thanks for reading.

I love that part of the world. I have driven many times on the French side of the Alps and skied many times on the Italian, Austrian side. Although I visit Italy perhaps twice a year, I have never driven there and it's something on my bucket list! Great post and a cracking pic of the car against the snow! S

I'm back with a new laptop so will big up my B again.

1997 P reg car bought from DTR on 1/12/2012.

Since then been on 10 European trips, plus other mileage means I've done over 35,000 miles....... not KMs .

Taken it to Italy 4 times and Sweden twice, with trip in 2015 going way up

north into Finland and across the Arctic circle, total trip mileage 4945 miles

covered in 15 days.

I'd rather it was a nicer colour than silver but I covered it in stickers instead.

I did get reliability though which is THE most important thing of all.

If I can motivate myself enough, I'm off to Germany on Wednesday for trip 11......

Here's a pic of it in Sweden at a location that went internet viral years ago.



I have previous with Cosworths.

Wow!! Great trips. I've had mine 2 years and have had to let me wife slowly fall in love with it so have only just done our first 'big' trip but next week we'll go to Tuscany and then the Dolomites in September. It's a great way to travel...!!
Ciao!!

richit said:

Wow!! Great trips. I've had mine 2 years and have had to let me wife slowly fall in love with it so have only just done our first 'big' trip but next week we'll go to Tuscany and then the Dolomites in September. It's a great way to travel...!!
Ciao!!

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You lucky so n so, you have a hundreds of miles head start for a trip in Italy.

Not sure I'll be coming back again as the tolls from Lucca ovest all the way to

Calais were a small fortune.

Yes,other routes are available but the route through Germany and Austria is longer and not a "walk in the park"

@Barchetta Bloke 440 OMG that's over 500km every day, for over two weeks in a row! With barchetta! Please share how you do this, do you drive hood down every chance you get, like I do, or only lower it occasionally? I can see you have no windstop, so you're probably hood up on motorways?

Been thinking too about some long distance trip with b, but the problem is I can only make about 300km in a day with hood down before I get dizzy head and need a rest. With hood up it's no big pleasure to drive, with all this noise and squeaks and no A/C and no visibility.
300km per day means lots of time spent en route, and big cash left in hotels.

We drive to the UK once a year and the tolls are crazy. We sometimes did the German route but it's 200km longer.. Now we just pay as it's cheaper than an extra night in a hotel. We can do London to here in one day.

wapper said:

@Barchetta Bloke 440 OMG that's over 500km every day, for over two weeks in a row! With barchetta! Please share how you do this, do you drive hood down every chance you get, like I do, or only lower it occasionally? I can see you have no windstop, so you're probably hood up on motorways?

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The mileage on the near 5000 mile trip wasn't quite like that ,for instance I drove all the way back to Calais from near Gothenburg ,in one day ,so about
1000 in a day, so also some days did very little driving at all.

Hood is down nearly all the time ,for instance on my return from Italy in May
I drove the entire 940 miles from Lucca to Calais and Dover to home roof down,
in one day again.
The hood went up for 10 minutes when the car was left unattended when I had to go to the toilet in French services.

I don't have any buffeting problem at motorway speeds ,I find it ok if I wear a hat.

940 miles from Luca to Calais with the roof down - Chapeau [emoji41]

Got back from my 11th euro trip at 3.30am.

Car was faultless again, about 800 miles total to Germany n back in 3 days.

Took it round the Nordschleife too ,which was "interesting" due to passing an

Audi completely ablaze......search "Audi fire Nurburgring" on Youtube....less

than 24 hours for a Brit to post it online.

I tried and failed to stay ahead of 2 British MX5s on track....

Could be my final euro trip, the queues at Dover at 2am were enormous.

Another great thread! I'm now risking life and limb (at the hand of my missus) by reaching for my tool-kit in another attempt to fix my B, instead of tackling the weeds that have taken over the garden while we've been away in Canada. The weeds will still be there tomorrow, but the sunshine might not be!

Some loony on the Nordscleife...........last Friday

http://www.racetracker.de/event/picture/1764899-dc2e1a52675c1e66828b5db55d7eee19

I've finally remembered to use the Vin list in the factfile sticky up ^^^ there

to see when my car was made.

Vin in the 29000s = May 1997.....

I can celebrate it's 20th birthday in 9 months time.....:slayer:

Went to Festival Italia today at Brands Hatch,7 Bs there,2 yellow,2 dark blue,a red,a dark green met and my silver.
I'd post pics if I knew how to from my phone.
Cos I'm stoopid.
Great day out,big attendance,owning an Italian car is ace.

Sounds like a great day! Get those pics up!!!!

(I'd tell you how to do it, but I don't know how! :doh

Had a great day at Maxey Car Show on Saturday. Didn't win a prize this year but had some good conversation with the owners of the Fiat 500 and the JZR (fitted with Moto Guzzi 850 engine). Pic 3 shows a strange beast. Its an Austin Allegro (rare estate version) which is mounted on a Suzuki Vitara chassis/engine! One can only wonder why! I guess it takes all sorts!

Hi, since I've been lurking around reading posts for a couple of months now, I thought it best to join

I recently came across my B. Found it on the streets of Copenhagen with a for sale sign in the front window on my vacation and ended up taking it home with me (Guess its true that you should always pack light to leave room for new trinkets).

My B is a 2002 model. It had done 72000 km when I brought it home, and I've spent the 3 months doing 3000km. No problems really and it even passed its MOT two weeks ago.

Enough talking, here's the B (if file upload works as I think):