In 1980 I found an advert in the local newspaper for an 18 month old Talbot Avenger which was a left hand drive Swedish export model. The car did not sell and the advert appeared for a second week. I went to see it and made an offer well below the asking price which was accepted.

I drove the car in LHD form for several months and went to my place of work which was at a research association called BCIRA where I was a development engineer. I also had an an Avenger rally car with plenty of spares. Over a Christmas holiday week I used some of the spares I had to convert the car to right hand drive. The job was straightforward involving changing the dash panel, moving the instruments, shifting the steering column and changing the steering rack and was done in a couple of days.

At BCIRA there was a long approach drive with a low speed limit and speed bumps. The director there was a dedicated but stern man with the manner of a school headmaster who called everyone by their surname. He was in the habit of standing in the bushes at the side of the drive and jumping out on anyone arriving for work he thought was speeding.
One day as I went down the drive I saw him staring at me intensely. I could not understand why, I new I was not speeding. After I while the penny dropped, he could not comprehend that I was sitting on the wrong side of the car.

I kept the the car for several years. Several times the rubber diaphragm in the Stromberg carburettor failing stopping the engine from accelerating. One day I applied the brakes and a headlight fell onto the road.

We had an Avenger estate at work. When I was still at collage, I used to work Sat mornings either serving petrol or in the workshop. I'd be picked up from home by the workshop manager, who used to go home in it. He'd slap an L plate on and I'd drive to work.

One morning in snow Phil was giving it some to get through and it dropped onto 3 cylinders. At work we found a plug lead dangling with the plug center/pot still in it. When we took the rest of the plug out, the earth electrode was missing. A new plug went in and it ran fine with nothing obviously amiss so we left it at that. Several years later the head-gasket went and we dug the missing electrode out of the edge of a piston.

It got hit from behind by a Cortina one day. The towbar saved it's bodywork but the chassis was bent and it was written off. We bought it back and straightened it. A couple of years later it was hit in the rear again by a van... from the same owners (Courtauld's), same insurance and same claims agent who was a bit surprised by the claim. He'd never written off the same car after a collision between the same two parties before... and had it bought back again. They only let us buy it back on condition they wouldn't do it again. We never got to find out how serious that condition was