Bangernomics
The Tisdales’ dailies cross over into neo-classic territory
Cash-neutral motoring the Practical Classics way. Signum, P38, Xantia.
Ian Tisdale
Like my wife’s daily driver, three of the six classic city cars reviewed in PC’S July issue bore 53-registrations. So it dawned on me that, to some at least, we now have two more classics than I’d imagined. My own daily is a shabby 170,000-mile 1997 Range Rover P38 that I’ve owned for five years. It’s absolutely essential for towing my car trailer and getting us to the main road if it’s snowy, and it runs on LPG to shield me from 16mpg on petrol with a diet of half-price gas, albeit at 13mpg. Kirsten’s Vauxhall Signum, though, has to maintain a professional image, which it still manages after 16 years and the same mileage as the Rangie.
Built on the extended floorpan of the Vectra estate – and unique aft of the B-pillar – the Signum was poorly marketed, misunderstood and had the wrong badge to be aspirational. Before we bought ours, a Signum Elite 3.2 V6, the first one I’d noticed was a silver example at Silverstone, bearing the evocative registration DTV 1. It was being driven off-circuit by late Dealer Team Vauxhall hero Gerry Marshall, and must have been his ‘company car’. This association gave the mysterious Vauxhall immediate legitimacy in my eyes, and Kirsten was happy to abandon plans for a Vel Satis in view of its quite similar accommodation. Probably just as well, because the inevitable corrosion and electrical issues that afflicted Sam Glover’s quirky Renault would have seen it off years ago, just like the last of our three lovely Safranes.
Cinderella Signums, when new, were almost immediate bargains. Ours came from Vauxhall’s company car fleet at just half the cost new, with a Network Q warranty that we wisely extended just before the whole ICE and sat-nav module gave up.
It’s proved a good choice with massive rear leg-room, four reclining seats, and a fridge between the rears that also have folding desks. Respectable performance, too – 147mph, 0-60mph in 7.4sec and its ability to squirt into the traffic, rather
than wait for a long gap, is impressive. You also have the choice of sequential clutchless manual gearchanging or automatic. So yes, you can run the right car as respectable business transport in its seventeenth year, but our maintenance regime has begun to align with hobby culture.
Our lady-owner-only car (its first brief keeper was also female) is on its second front sub-frame, and that had to be sourced online through Breakeryard because Vauxhall and Opel no longer support these cars. Ironically, another was found on the same industrial estate as our MOT man just after we’d ordered online, so if anyone needs our spare?
Recent replacement of the corroded metal inlet and outlet pipes to the oil cooler involved ordering from the US, where this V6 engine was used for longer. They were bought as Saab parts, the Swedes having used the engine too, and cost well over £200 including shipping and import duty. We had to have the front head rebuilt after a burnt valve on its middle pot, later identified by Sam as having been caused by a dodgy injector weakening the mixture.
Long-term ownership always reveals design flaws sooner or later, in this case the suspension – we’ve had to replace no fewer than seven road springs. The suspension is comfortable enough on the continent, but too hard for our pocked roads and not tough enough. The Met Police stopped using Vectras years ago once the crims realised that plod’s springs wouldn’t survive a chase over speed bumps; we should probably research Eibach alternatives. Our snazzy quad-pipe Irmscher exhaust was simply a longer-lasting stainless replacement from a scrapper after the original had flaked away.
Anyway, Signum ownership has worked out rather well and – touch wood – there are no immediate plans for replacement. Who knows, perhaps when we do need to move it on it may even have started to bounce back from being almost worthless. Or is that being a bit over-optimistic?