Proposterous, or at least it was when I looked. I went for a 156 2.5 V6 in the end, the 20V was considerably more expensive.

Depends on your circumstances I guess, my 2 were perfectly reasonable for myself & my OH but I'm 40 with a clean license & full NCB & live in a good area. Its a heck of a lot of car for the money & reasonably practical too.

Less than £300 a year for me, and that's on street parking in central Edinburgh!
31 with full NCB though.

Good luck with it, I was going to ask about the suspension etc as I couldnt remember you mentioning it in the past. Is it (the suspension etc) about ready for a refresh or is it more of a case of replacing everything you can while you've got it in bits?

Update;

A new job and the resulting house move has put my suspension ideas at bay for the time being but the car is still going through some changes. I've just had a full cam belt kit, auxiliary belts and all the tensioners replaced along with a new water pump and cam phase sensor. That should see her in rude health for the foreseeable future. My specialist commented on how mechanically solid the car now is and the engine really is a smooth runner. One of the best he's seen. I'm very happy

Whilst up on the ramps we spotted some surface rust that has crept in since the car was in storage over the last three months. Thankfully there's none on the body that we can see but a bit of under seal was showing a small patch of bubbling. The radiator support is pretty crusty as are the rear bumper supports so I've set about tackling it as we've been lucky and caught it before it develops into proper rust. I'm starting with the front of the car, then the rear and finally the underside.

I'll be going over any surface rust with a wire brush, then I'll apply rust eater or something of that nature followed by a healthy dose of Hammerite and then cover it over with under seal. I'll be doing a very thorough job, so that should last for a fair few more years

I started out by giving the refurbished wheels a clean;





I applied one coat of Chemical Guys All In One polish followed by three coats of Autoglym HD Wax and three coats of Poorboys Wheel Sealant. They smell lovely now

I began stripping the front end by removing the front wheels followed by the arch liners. I needed to free up the wings in order to completely remove the plastic liners;



The offside liner removed;



Underneath the wheel arch was in remarkably good condition



The was very little rust anywhere although there is a small bit in a few easy to reach areas including the underside of the shock which will be cleaned up easily. No welding required here!



With everything from the front removed I can now easily access the rad support and some other areas of more substantial rust, although nothing serious.



Considering the front takes the worst of what British roads can throw at it, there's very little rust worth worrying about. The worst area effected is a support for the nearside cooling duct. It's rusted through and broken off so I'll be replacing it after I've removed all the surface rust elsewhere;



Overall I'm a happy man. I was expecting much worse. It just reinforces the fact that I've got a good one

Here’s most of the bits I had to remove including the under tray;



The next update will follow after I've treated the entire front end. I’m off for a beer

Personally I'm not a massive fan of the car. I do, however, like what you're doing to it which seems like a really thorough and professional job. Keep up the good work; I look forward to seeing future fantastic results!

wait till you start replacing all the bolts with stainless items (it will happen)

reading this thread has reminded me that of all my cars over the years my coupe is the only one I regret selling, the noise, the speed, the handling and in my case the reliability.

Right I'm off back to FCCUK to have a look for another.

Now that you mention it, bits and bobs have happened since I last posted in January.

The car passed it's MOT at the end of June without any advisories.

I was convinced it would fail on the condition of the rear brakes. The discs are in a poor state and I'm fairly sure that one or both of the rear calipers need freeing up. I'll get onto this at some point in the near future I guess. To be honest, it'll probably end up being a small part in a big braking refresh.

Musing over the car whilst bored in work ended up with me paying a visit to eBay where I promptly snapped up two jubilee clips, a 45 degree 76mm silicone hose in black and an Apexi air filter with 3" adapter to fit inside the hose. Rapid delivery from the first seller meant I had the clips and hose the next day but I ended up waiting a working week for the filter with minimal correspondence from the seller.

For those interested, the Apexi filter is a dry cotton filter as opposed to the wet cotton used by K&N for example. I read an article (and viewed the results) comparing foam, dry cotton, wet cotton and mesh filters and the dry cotton had the best filtration of the lot. Shame I cant find it now.

Technically the standard paper filter in these cars are good up to ~300bhp but I felt childish and wanted something different from the car. Induction noise.

So Friday came and my filter arrived. Armed with a spanner, a cable tie and a screw driver, ten minutes later I went from this;



To this;



I've read plenty of opinions over on FCCUK about these filter upgrades and the general consensus is that they sound like Darth Vadar suffering from a bout of asthma whilst locked in the glove box. Yep, OK. It's true.

The childish part of me likes it hissing and whooshing away. It's loud, although lacking in pure induction growl. It's more like sucking in air between your teeth followed by the mother of all dump valve impersonations on throttle lift off.

The other part of me appreciated the straight burble, pop and rasp of the exhaust more so. I'm undecided about keeping it. Potentially, the killer is the fact that there is definitely a reduction in low down torque. I read about it prior to fitting but dismissed it as a placebo effect but all in all, I'm fairly certain that I need to use the gearbox more now than I did before on certain roads.

In other news, the suspension is well and truly exhausted. There's plenty of rattles and squeaks now so I suppose I'd better get on and refresh it all as I said I would a while ago in this thread.

I've also noticed a bubble in the middle of the nearside sill.

I'm visiting the parents in a few weeks so I'll strip both sills back to bare metal to see what's lurking beneath the under-seal. Pics to follow.

Fingers crossed.

Nice car.

I used to run a 20vT engine in a Marea and your photos remind me of all of the horrors i suffered

fantastic engine when it works, they sound amazing and go like stink. Shame about the bit's of rust that build up and endless turbo issues i suffered.

A small update but one worth adding.

I ditched the Apexi air filter. I found the noise it made quite irritating. I love induction growl but this thing didn't give me any of that in the cabin and it ruined the throttle response at low rpm - compounding the crapness of the turbo throttle response further - so it had to go.

On the plus side I sold it within a few hours of advertising.

I also gave the car a two stage paint refinement with the DA and it came up like a mirror. Well worth the investment if you take enjoyment from seeing your car gleaming.



When cleaning the car a while back I noticed the powder coat on my refurbished wheels has cracked on all four. I can't pin point why apart from the possibility that the job wasn't up to scratch.

Either way, my specialist who had them refinished initially agreed and has offered to to re-do them free of charge. That makes me a happy chappy so I'll be sending more business his way in the future.