Introducing... the Peugeot 306

A SWISS Army knife might have dozens of different gizmos attached to it, but none of them are ever quite as good as a individual tool dedicated to doing that one job alone. For much the same reason, I've always believed in having a couple of different cars than entrusting it to a single set of wheels.

How many motors you have to hand depends on a couple of things - largely the size of your wallet and where you keep them when they're not racking up the miles - but for me, three has always been the right balance. The Life On Cars petrolhead mix has always involved having a classic to take to shows, a hairpin hooligan to enjoy on mountain passes on sunny afternoons, and a workhorse for all the less glamorous - but hugely important - mundane tasks.

For years, I've entrusted the first of those two tasks to the trusty MGB and the fun stuff to two Mazda MX-5s, but I haven't been as lucky at finding something that does the unremarkable remarkably. Four years ago, I bought a Renault 5 for just £100, which for eleven months went everywhere from Dumfries to Stonehenge without so much a whimper of complaint, but ended up getting scrapped when the MoT tester discovered the terminal rot around its D-pillars. Its hastily drafted-in replacement, a Rover 214SEi, spent three years conveying Simister junk to tips across Merseyside, but its increasingly sickly-sounding gearbox eventually drove me to sell it last year for half the £300 I paid for it.

I thought it'd be third time with its replacement - a grand's worth of top-spec Ford Mondeo, which behaved impeccably despite helping me develop an unhealthy obsession with its fuel economy. It was the perfect workhorse to compliment the MGB's nostalgia and the MX-5's love of al fresco adventures - or rather, it would have been had a chap decided not to drive his BMW into the back of it. As a result, I've spent almost all of 2014 relying entirely on two-seater sports cars for just about everything.

That's where this S-reg Peugeot 306 comes in. It is - as eagle-eyed readers might have already spotted - exactly the same 1.9 Diesel which I helped my partner's family buy earlier this year, but having just helped them buy a much newer Ford Fiesta they've been more happy to give me the venerable old Pug for a fraction of the price.

It's done 161,000 miles in 15 years, which might sound like a lot but it's got plenty of history to prove it's been cared for throughout its life. It's also got an absolute gem of an engine counting in its favour - PSA's legendary XUD diesel engine, known for their ability to go on forever providing they've been looked after. Naturally, it's not going to win any concours events any time soon and - being a diesel of the old school - it's a bit agricultural on cold mornings, but it's a small price to pay for a 50mpg family hatchback which costs less than some of my pals spend on a night out.

Is it £150 well spent or an expensive repair waiting to happen? I'd like to think it's the former, but that's one of the fun things with buying and running cars for next to nothing. Either way, it means I can go back to the Classic Car Weekly offices in it and have the option of bringing my mountain bike back in it next time.

Try doing that in an MGB GT!

The class of 1994 was brilliant for car classifieds

SO THE Champion's 18 this week. Your favourite local paper can, among other things, legally get the drinks in without worrying about being asked for its ID by the bloke behind the bar.

I've been celebrating the anniversary by working away on the special birthday supplement you'll find delivered with this week's edition - a task which meant trawling through the thousands of papers we've put out over the years, to uncover all those juicy front page splashes hidden away in our secretive and extensive archives.

It's a pity then I ended up hooked on a rather different bit of Champion history - the car classifieds. If, like me, you're one of those weirdos who still finds the Auto Trader strangely absorbing (and I don't mean the coarse, inky paper it's printed on either), then you'd love looking through the secondhand bargains Champ readers were prepared to flog you all those years ago.

Yes, it's true that when the first ever Champion was published the number one single was Mariah Carey's tragically bad cover of Without You, but I would have put up with that to buy a clean Capri Ghia for £550. The same car today, now considered a bit of classic, is four or five times that. You could take your pick from a host of very tidy original Minis for between £500 and £600, and - if you weren't that desperate to get anywhere in a hurry - a slightly ropey Citroen 2CV with eight months' MOT was yours for £250. If only there was a way of somehow transporting these then-unwanted motors from 1994 to 2012, because all these old stagers are very sought after these days.

Even more annoyingly cheap were 1994's brand new arrivals. Would sir be tempted, for instance, by a lovely Alfa 155, which in The Champion's first week was yours for just £13,577? The same money these days would struggle to get you into a mid-range (and much smaller) MiTo. I know the class of 1994 were only just being introduced to electric windows and airbags, but they still got a lot more for their money then you do now. You could also experience the thrills of driving a Fiat Coupe or a Volkswagen Corrado without having to peel the boiled sweets out of the ashtrays. Then again, if you'd ventured into a Ford showroom at the time there's a very good chance you'd have ended up lumbered with an Escort.

So to celebrate The Champion's big anniversary I've decided things were better in the good old days. Maybe I'll think differently in 18 years' time...

And the new arrival is...

RELAX. It's a Rover.

The long-gone Longbridge concern's old ad slogan couldn't have rung more true the first time I gave the latest arrival on the Life On Cars fleet its first proper run, heading for home up the M57. Sporty this £300, 1995 Rover 214 isn't, despite it coming in a rather fetching shade of British Racing Green. If there's one word to sum up this icon of Hyacinth Bucket motoring it's... comfortable.

Thanks to it being winter I've only actually driven it in the dark so far, hence the car you see above not being the exact one sat outside, but already it's impressing me with its plush trimmings and soothing suspension. I like the tasteful - if restrained - styling, both inside and out, and the way the revvy Rover K-Series engine seems to mate perfectly with the Honda heritage in the engineering. I like the half-leather seats and the (plastic) wood trimming, and the way it comes loaded with things like electric windows and an immobiliser that works. And my mates love the fact that - for the first time ever - I'm driving something with five doors!

Where the Renault, with its flyweight engineering and suspiciously powerful engine, was a hot hatch in disguise, the regal old Rover's much more grown up, but there's lots to like about it. On wet, nasty November nights, it's nice to step into something that soothes your brow as you head home.

I'm so relaxed, in fact, that I haven't even bothered to ask the obvious questions yet. Is the notoriously fickle K-Series engine going to blow a head gasket? Are the strangely solid-looking sills hiding a lifetime of rot? And - most worryingly - is my choice of a Rover as my latest purchase meaning I'm about to prematurely celebrate my fiftieth birthday?

All, I'm sure, will be revealed in the coming weeks.

UPDATE: No more reading the manual for me, thanks to a Top Gear tuition video in all things Rover 200! Cue a very 1989 looking Chris Goffey...

Au revoir, Renault 5!

A MOMENT'S reflection for the most reliable car I've ever owned, which finally reached the end of the road today.

Regular readers might remember how excited I got when I paid just £100 - the price of a first class rail ticket - for a Renault 5 earlier this year. Since then it's been as far north as Dumfries, as far south as London and along some of the country's most challenging roads in between, and in 11 months and just two oil changes it has never broken down.

Unfortunately, even two weekends' worth of welding wasn't enough to stop it failing its MOT earlier this week, and the news was far worse than I'd feared. To repair the rot beneath the front wings would take weeks and cost far more than the old girl's worth, so after 16 years and 123,000 miles it's finally reached the end of its working life. As sad it seems, she's off to the scrapyard.

I won't miss the clattery old engine or spartan interior but I already miss lots of things about it, including its ridiculously spacious interior and its surprisingly sporty handling. But most of all I'll miss it as a bargain buy; £100 for almost a year's worth of malady-free motoring is going to be hard to beat.

Not that it won't stop me trying, of course, and today I've been down to Liverpool to draft in its replacement.

I won't reveal exactly what the newest Life On Cars bargain basement car is but I will reveal some tantalising clues; it's a hatchback with a bigger boot than the tiny Renault's, it's got five doors rather than three, it's packed with Japanese technology but it's been proudly made in a British factory.

Oh, and it cost just £300, meaning I can now climb up the ladder into the opulent world of immobilisers, electric windows and half leather seats. All will be revealed tomorrow...

Mud, madness and the birthday of a British icon

HERE'S a date you probably haven't got scrawled into your diary - this week, believe it or not, is Jaguar's 75th birthday.

So far, the Coventry company's survived The Blitz, the ravages of several recessions and even the worst British Leyland can throw at it, which a couple of Life On Cars-reading mates and I thought was worth celebrating. Until we saw the mud.

The idea was brilliant; take a rotten Jag with a touch too many miles on the clock to a dirt track in Prestatyn, put up against a field of more mundane motors in a six-hour endurance race, and watch it win with style. Admittedly, the 19-year-old XJ40 we'd picked wasn't one of the Big Cat's proudest moments, but it's still a car from a company with seven Le Mans wins, a string of rally victories and a slightly successful F1 team to its name. We couldn't lose.

Unfortunately, the race took place on the same drenched day Southport's Air Show got cancelled, meaning the track was a quagmire of squelch and mud even Range Rover owners would think twice about tackling. The race commentator, sat snugly in his caravan, put in perfectly as the field of Micras, Polos and Escorts raced past; we were driving 3.2 litres of pure wheelspin.

I never thought I'd say this, but the Jag was just too big and too powerful, and with no grip we spent most of the time powersliding pointlessly as cars your mum used for the school run ten years ago tore ahead. We were losing, but because we were in a Jag, we were losing with style.

Our muddy outing is about as far from Jaguar's string of Le Mans as you can possibly imagine, but I loved every minute of each chaotic lap, made more terrifying still because the steering wheel seemed to have little to no influence over where the big Jag was heading. It was a rubbish and yet utterly brilliant addition to Jaguar's proud motorsport pedigree.

And here's the best bit; unlike the cocky whippersnappers who laughed every time their machines lapped ours, the Jag actually crossed the finish line, even if it was sliding sideways at walking pace. We might have been a long way off winning but we did the entire event, to quote an old Jag ad slogan, with grace, space and pace. A fitting tribute to the Big Cat, then.

The maker of Britain's most beautiful cars is 75 years old, and we found a smashing way to mark the occasion. Literally.

Yes, you can still buy classic sports cars for £200

ANYONE who remembers what happened when I spent £100 on a set of wheels might want to look away now, because I've just doubled the stakes.

Regular readers might recall the Renault 5 I managed to blag for the price of a train ticket earlier this year, and I got lucky because - aside from a broken heater which makes West Lancashire permenantly feel like the West Indies - the ancient hatchback's become one of the most reliable things I've ever owned.

But even I couldn't believe myself when I spent twice what it cost on an old sports car that's spent the last ten years of its life stuck inside a garage in Cumbria. Yep, I've just bought an MGB that doesn't work.

Like the original Mini that's always at the top of this column, it's from an era when strikes at British Leyland dotted the TV news bulletins every day and as a result anything that came out of MG's Abingdon factory around that time is going to be crushingly unreliable.

In normal circumstances I wouldn't even bother with the MGB because I've never particularly liked it, but this one's different.

Eagle-eyed readers are going to spot that it's the far more stylish MGB GT, and swaps the soft top for a swoopy bit of steel roofline, the gorgeous Rostyle steel wheels and something called a Webasto sunroof, which is basically a clever bit of folding canvas which looks like it cost about 30p as an optional extra. Other features unique to this particular version are doors way overdue a replacement, decade-old engine oil and brakes which are seized solid. Not quite the £200 bargain buy I was expecting, then?

Of course it is - it's a classic sports car for the price of a long weekend on the continent, and it's got a solid shell and stashes of paperwork thrown in. As a commuter car it's failed already because it's broken, but as something I can imagine swanning around Southport in next year it's packed with potential.

The MGB roadster, the open-top one you always see at classic car shows, has been hogged by CAMRA members desperate to drive them to quaint village pubs you only ever see on Heartbeat, but the B GT is better because its somehow more subtle in its style.

It's The Shadows rather than Cliff Richard.

£50 for a car stereo? Not if the car costs £100, I'm afraid

MUSICAL maestro Thomas Beecham reckoned you should try everything once except incest and folk dancing, but I'd like to add a motoring mishap to his list.

I reckon I'm fairly open to pretty much anything on four wheels, no matter how suspect the pink alloys on the Citroen C2 always parked at the end of my street seem. The classical composer's mantra, brought kicking and screaming into 2010, really ought to read: try everything once except incest, folk dancing, and buying any car stereo that's worth more than the car itself.

As a principle it means I'm loudly singing out of tune to the Max Power generation, but I'm from a world where I'd rather have Pininfarina than Pioneer painted proudly on my car, and reckon the rule applies neatly to any set of wheels, no matter how cheap, cheerful, chintzy or full of subwoofers it is. A Bang and Olufsen system is fine for an Aston Vantage because it costs a fraction of the car's price, but sticking one into a secondhand Saxo is seriously sad.

The only problem is that - like all rules - I'm running the risk of breaking it, because The £100 Car has a truly shocking stereo, being one of those tape/radio jobs from twenty years ago which only seems to pick up stations I hate listening to. It's fine to fit an MP3 system to the Mini because the car's worth enough, but even the cheapest CD player I can find for the ancient Renault 5 costs more than half the car itself.

I could do absolutely nothing and carry on listening to the radio, but it only picks up that frequency you normally find in minicabs at 2am and it's not driving music, but music to drive you mad. All I wanted was to listen to Texas on the way into work!

In the end I strayed into Currys and bought a batch of cassette tapes to end my misery, but even there the staff gave me a bemused look, as if I'd wandered in from the 1990s via an MC Hammer video in an embarrassed attempt to track down some ye olde technology. Just to rub it in the car depicted on the side of the tapes is a Jaguar XJ220, which would have been on your bedroom wall, circa 1992.

I'm getting desperate, but I can't break the car stereo taboo. If I do, I'd be forced to consider incest and folk dancing as well.

Yes, you can still buy cars for £100

AN expensive shirt, a half-decent hi-fi system, an iPod Nano, a bottle of single malt or a really good night out in any big city.

If you had the princely sum of £100 you could blow it on any of these and still be smiling about it this time next week, but I've got a much better idea. Why not spend it on a set of wheels instead?

That's how a Renault 5 for the price of a first class rail ticket has ended up outside my house, and despite costing almost nothing in car terms it's still smoking its way around Southport more than fifteen years after rolling out of a car showroom in Birkdale. Commuting really doesn't come much cheaper.

What did I get for my fistful of dollars? A 15-year-old hatchback with a slightly wonky driver's door, 116,000 alleged miles on the clock, an interior lined with cheap seat covers and suspicious amounts of hay and loose screws, and door mirrors tinted green with a thin layer of moss. It has literally some service history. I was also pleased to discover that it's red, although I only found this out recently because I bought it without even going to look at it first.

But its ancient engine still pulls you out of junctions not only quickly, and very quietly too for such a cheap car, while absolutely everything still works on it. I can also boast - and I didn't spend hours looking this up, I promise - that my £100 steed was designed by the same chap who did the Lamborghini Diablo. How many M-registered Ford Fiestas can you say that about?

It's amazing how many cars are out there for next to nothing, as long as you're not being choosy and know where to look. My girlfriend, the car's co-owner, is also impressed, as you can find out here.

For the price of Britain's most expensive rail ticket - that's £1000 between Newquay and the Kyle of Lochalsh - you could have bought a whole fleet of these, and still have enough left over for fuel and road tax.

Now that's what I call motoring.