Puch Grand Prix Special
Hillman Avenger GLS
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Does my Duci count, the wife says my MX-5 is as close to a motobike as you can get in car!
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Yep, bought mine to replace my last bike after a stupid accident when I broke my left ankle 
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I’m sorry to hear about the accident, I hope you made a good recovery, I don’t know any bikers without any injuries, it does get harder to justify the risk. Keep safe in that MX-5.
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It would take much too long to explain in a post, but it was an accident that changed my life in SO many ways - professionally, emotionally, financially and spiritually.
It all turned out beautifully in the end though 
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Just a few of the latest ones…
The Alfa 3.2v6 with a wizard exhaust was the best sounding car I have heard this side of a supercar.
The BMW which I still have is a 4.4v8 and although its a lovely thing it sounds nothing like the Alfa.
The Mazda though is now number 1 alongside the Speed Triple.
I still find it amazing that so many mx5 owners also are bikers.
![20180128_132341|690x388]
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Here’s the slow old trials car I built, as above. It initially used a tuned Reliant 850 engine and gearbox. I later needed a bit more performance so I fitted a 993cc, 3 cylinder Suzuki Swift engine with “artificial respiration”:
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Am having a wee drool over your pictures here!
As a fellow biker-fiver, I think, as others have remarked, MX-5s really are the bikes of the car world. It’s the closest thrill you can get on four wheels and let’s face it, no one buys a Five and doesn’t mod it. Kindred spirits 
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MX5s are nice enough , of course , but if you want a bike style adrenalin rush , try a Seven …An MX5 feels a little tame in comparison .
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Oddly enough, there’s a Caterham at work that the new engineering students get to build and dismantle every year. My colleague and me keep threatening to pop in one day and put ‘em all to shame! 
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Really any kit car in 7 esque form or those similar to Fisher Furies will knock any MX5 experience into a lower bracket of thrills but as a balance of all worlds, the MX5 hard to beat.
Oh and my bike. Can’t go wrong with Hondas. Had a Blackbird, Fireblade and now a tamer CBR600. Still has enough go to be entertaining without being mental like my Fireblade.
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Back in the eighties I got into the 7 / caterham / Westfield thing as a safer alternative to bikes, I lasted a year before giving up. They’re just not the same, and still get caught in traffic.
Currently own a 2018 Aprilia tuono 1100, and yes, it is as unhinged as people say it is, but brilliant none the less😁.
I’m keeping it to go with my new RF 30 AE, due in a few days.
True - but they leave the bikes for dead on the corners…
They do. Me and a mate were in our kits on a nice sweeping dual carriage way. Outside lane. Bikes cranked over riding well but we still sailed underneath them like they were just pottering along. The expression was priceless. A double take
I know a chap who collects them for historic rallying as well as a rally prep lotus cortina. They are tiny but a real connoisseurs car.
I keep one eye open for a clan clover as I like Alfa boxer engines.
I once drove to Epsom from Leeds to pick up some Recaro seats for my Alfa 75 and the bloke selling them had 8 imps In a double garage on what I can only describe as big homemade wooden racking.
8 Imps. Wow. My mate has tuned Imp engines in hist Ginetta G 15. I wonder how many on here have never seen an Imp?
I helped a schoolfriend take the engine out of his mother’s almost new Imp. It was amazingly light with no water in it.
She was horrified to see the back come off the car.
Still fiddly, doing an old Mini is so much easier.
We replaced the head gasket after a gentle skim to make block and head flat again.
This was just before we had passed the driving test, and of course after the job was done the car needed a careful ten minutes on the local roads to make sure she would be OK…