Hello everyone,
My name is Shady and I'm new here. I am truly sorry to have to post in English on what's predominantly a forum for francophone enthusiasts, but I can hardly speak any French at all, despite the best efforts of the several teachers of the French language I've had throughout my grade and high school years (1978-1990.) I hope there are other speakers of English around here, because I'm probably going to need a lot of help!
Also, my apologies for making my first post here. I've looked around for a place for new members to introduce themselves, but so far as I could tell, there isn't one.
I'll be 47 years old this August; I'm a Jordanian expatriate living and working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with my lovely wife, and I'm the proud new owner of a 1996 Peugeot 505 GR estate (break familial?)
Although I had harbored a subtle fondness for 505s, and 504s before them, the proposition of actually owning one never struck me as a viable one; I never thought the day would come when I would just go out and buy one on a whim, but that's pretty much exactly what happened last month. I had sold my 1994 Mercedes E320, my daily driver of 10 years, last year, and I attempted to sustainably go car-less for a while, but, truth be told, that slowly but surely proved impossible in a place like Saudi Arabia, especially with everything that's been going on lately.
I had kept my eyes on the local online classifieds for something that I could not only live with, but actually like - and like to drive - as well. I looked at everything, both within and outside of my budget: from big old Detroit behemoths to tiny, cheap, late-model Chinese runabouts, I kept an open mind for anything and everything. For a while, I even considered buying a new economy car.
I even looked at other used Benzes and even looked into the possibility of buying my old E320 back - except I didn't really want it back; that car was little more than a great big disappointment, but that's another discussion for another thread on another day.
At the end of it all, though, with some cash in hand, I figured I wanted something different. And then I spotted this Peugeot.
I said earlier that I had never owned a French car of my own, but I'm no stranger to French cars. In fact, one of the very first cars that I recall from my childhood was the white Simca 1100 that my late dad drove when we lived in 1970s West Germany.
A few years after we moved back to Jordan in the late 1970s, my uncle followed and brought with him a Simca 1307, which my dad bought off of him shortly afterwards. How it happened was hilarious: a cousin of mine borrowed the car from my uncle for a road trip. My cousin, in his infinite wisdom, could not for the life of him figure out that the electronic dipstick that signaled the oil level to a blinking light in the instrument panel had been damaged for some reason; the oil level light kept on blinking, and my cousin kept on adding oil to the engine - about 12 liters in total - until the poor thing just couldn't take any more of the stuff.
A bent crankshaft and a few exploding oil seals later, my uncle decided that he wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with the poor old 1307, so my dad, a mechanical engineer by training and by education, offered to take it off his brother's hands, and managed to talk him down to little more than a song.
And it actually was a nice car, that 1307 - plush with light brown velour that went nicely with the beige exterior, and very cushy, with plenty of space. It even had powered front windows.
My dad drove it around for a while before he took it to the local dealer to see about having that engine rebuilt or replaced. The dealer offered him a trade-in instead: leave the Simca, pay a little more than what it would cost to repair that engine, and drive out of the dealership with a brand new, 1982 Talbot Alpine 1510 with air conditioning. Seeing as to how hard - and how long - my young mom had been nagging him about a new car for herself, my dad was all over that deal. (He had already bought his own new car accouple of years prior - a 1981 South Korean clone of the old Opel Kadett C, assembled by what was known at the time as Saehan, which later came to be known as Daewoo.)
And that Talbot stayed with us for a whopping 23 years. It was the car I learned to drive on in the late 1980s, and the one that I learned to wrench on throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Up until I left Jordan in the early 2000s, I had done plenty of work on the car myself, doing my best to keep it on the road. My mother eventually sold it after she decided she wanted something newer with an automatic transmission.
For a while in the early 1990s, my dad also drove a 504 (can't remember what year it was.) Although I quite liked that car, I never really got to drive it much - probably just a couple of times, really. But that was enough for me to get a taste of what "real" Peugeots were like. Comfy and plush as it was, it also could be quite a handful in quick turns; if I recall correctly, it had the old live axle instead of the more modern De Dion arrangement.
Our first landlord after we moved back to Jordan also had a 504 - this one in burgundy and a lovely matching interior. For years, he drove me to school along with one of his kids, who went to the same school as I did at the time.
And then there were all the French cars we used to ride in whenever we crossed the border into neighboring Syria - and we were there often. Many of the people we knew there gad Peugeots - mostly 504s - and plenty of the cabs we rode in were French, including quite a few old 404s.
But my first encounter with the 505 came in the mid-1980s, after the father of a school friend of mine bought one brand new. It only took one ride for it to become one of my favorite automobiles of all time.
My second encounter with a 505 came almost two decades later. By the end of the 1990s I was an aspiring automotive journalist who covered local motor sport events, including the Jordan International Rally at the time. By then I had built enough rapport with the gentlemen at the Royal Automobile Club of Jordan that they gave me one of their fleet cars - a 505 estate and a club driver - for the entire three days of the event. By late morning on the first day, the driver gave up and decided to relax for the rest of it all, so he handed me the wheel and I got to drive the 505 for three days and 500 kilometers.
Which is why I'm still having a strong sense of deja vu after more than a month with this 505. Everything looks, feels, and sounds familiar. I'm really enjoying driving a manual transmission again after all these years, and I'm both surprised and impressed with how well the car handles. It's far more stable and predictable than my old Benz.
So, here we are. I've got plenty of questions about spare parts and how-tos, but I'll hold off for now. Thanks for having me around here, and it's great to be here.
Shady
My name is Shady and I'm new here. I am truly sorry to have to post in English on what's predominantly a forum for francophone enthusiasts, but I can hardly speak any French at all, despite the best efforts of the several teachers of the French language I've had throughout my grade and high school years (1978-1990.) I hope there are other speakers of English around here, because I'm probably going to need a lot of help!
Also, my apologies for making my first post here. I've looked around for a place for new members to introduce themselves, but so far as I could tell, there isn't one.
I'll be 47 years old this August; I'm a Jordanian expatriate living and working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with my lovely wife, and I'm the proud new owner of a 1996 Peugeot 505 GR estate (break familial?)
Although I had harbored a subtle fondness for 505s, and 504s before them, the proposition of actually owning one never struck me as a viable one; I never thought the day would come when I would just go out and buy one on a whim, but that's pretty much exactly what happened last month. I had sold my 1994 Mercedes E320, my daily driver of 10 years, last year, and I attempted to sustainably go car-less for a while, but, truth be told, that slowly but surely proved impossible in a place like Saudi Arabia, especially with everything that's been going on lately.
I had kept my eyes on the local online classifieds for something that I could not only live with, but actually like - and like to drive - as well. I looked at everything, both within and outside of my budget: from big old Detroit behemoths to tiny, cheap, late-model Chinese runabouts, I kept an open mind for anything and everything. For a while, I even considered buying a new economy car.
I even looked at other used Benzes and even looked into the possibility of buying my old E320 back - except I didn't really want it back; that car was little more than a great big disappointment, but that's another discussion for another thread on another day.
At the end of it all, though, with some cash in hand, I figured I wanted something different. And then I spotted this Peugeot.
I said earlier that I had never owned a French car of my own, but I'm no stranger to French cars. In fact, one of the very first cars that I recall from my childhood was the white Simca 1100 that my late dad drove when we lived in 1970s West Germany.
A few years after we moved back to Jordan in the late 1970s, my uncle followed and brought with him a Simca 1307, which my dad bought off of him shortly afterwards. How it happened was hilarious: a cousin of mine borrowed the car from my uncle for a road trip. My cousin, in his infinite wisdom, could not for the life of him figure out that the electronic dipstick that signaled the oil level to a blinking light in the instrument panel had been damaged for some reason; the oil level light kept on blinking, and my cousin kept on adding oil to the engine - about 12 liters in total - until the poor thing just couldn't take any more of the stuff.
A bent crankshaft and a few exploding oil seals later, my uncle decided that he wanted to have absolutely nothing to do with the poor old 1307, so my dad, a mechanical engineer by training and by education, offered to take it off his brother's hands, and managed to talk him down to little more than a song.
And it actually was a nice car, that 1307 - plush with light brown velour that went nicely with the beige exterior, and very cushy, with plenty of space. It even had powered front windows.
My dad drove it around for a while before he took it to the local dealer to see about having that engine rebuilt or replaced. The dealer offered him a trade-in instead: leave the Simca, pay a little more than what it would cost to repair that engine, and drive out of the dealership with a brand new, 1982 Talbot Alpine 1510 with air conditioning. Seeing as to how hard - and how long - my young mom had been nagging him about a new car for herself, my dad was all over that deal. (He had already bought his own new car accouple of years prior - a 1981 South Korean clone of the old Opel Kadett C, assembled by what was known at the time as Saehan, which later came to be known as Daewoo.)
And that Talbot stayed with us for a whopping 23 years. It was the car I learned to drive on in the late 1980s, and the one that I learned to wrench on throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Up until I left Jordan in the early 2000s, I had done plenty of work on the car myself, doing my best to keep it on the road. My mother eventually sold it after she decided she wanted something newer with an automatic transmission.
For a while in the early 1990s, my dad also drove a 504 (can't remember what year it was.) Although I quite liked that car, I never really got to drive it much - probably just a couple of times, really. But that was enough for me to get a taste of what "real" Peugeots were like. Comfy and plush as it was, it also could be quite a handful in quick turns; if I recall correctly, it had the old live axle instead of the more modern De Dion arrangement.
Our first landlord after we moved back to Jordan also had a 504 - this one in burgundy and a lovely matching interior. For years, he drove me to school along with one of his kids, who went to the same school as I did at the time.
And then there were all the French cars we used to ride in whenever we crossed the border into neighboring Syria - and we were there often. Many of the people we knew there gad Peugeots - mostly 504s - and plenty of the cabs we rode in were French, including quite a few old 404s.
But my first encounter with the 505 came in the mid-1980s, after the father of a school friend of mine bought one brand new. It only took one ride for it to become one of my favorite automobiles of all time.
My second encounter with a 505 came almost two decades later. By the end of the 1990s I was an aspiring automotive journalist who covered local motor sport events, including the Jordan International Rally at the time. By then I had built enough rapport with the gentlemen at the Royal Automobile Club of Jordan that they gave me one of their fleet cars - a 505 estate and a club driver - for the entire three days of the event. By late morning on the first day, the driver gave up and decided to relax for the rest of it all, so he handed me the wheel and I got to drive the 505 for three days and 500 kilometers.
Which is why I'm still having a strong sense of deja vu after more than a month with this 505. Everything looks, feels, and sounds familiar. I'm really enjoying driving a manual transmission again after all these years, and I'm both surprised and impressed with how well the car handles. It's far more stable and predictable than my old Benz.
So, here we are. I've got plenty of questions about spare parts and how-tos, but I'll hold off for now. Thanks for having me around here, and it's great to be here.
Shady
