Stephen James is just around the corner from me. When I was looking for a 4.5 a couple of months ago I gave James a ring, he didn't have a 4.5 but said he had this 4.2 if I wanted to take a look. Unfortunately at the time it didn't have an MOT so couldn't take it for a test drive, but it did look really nice, the paintwork and interior are in lovely condition and a nice colour combo.
In fact, if the 4.5 I eventually bought hadn't come along when it did I suspect I would have bought this, pending the test-drive.
The only thing I would say is that did start it up for me and it's the loudest thing I've ever heard on this God's Earth, I think I even detected a slight trickle of blood from my ears!

He wasn't advertising it, he was having a few jobs done at Central first and getting an MOT on it. I only went to see it because I called him out of the blue knowing he was based in Telford.

Yep your story adds up to what he said to me last night. It was a nice car, a few bits around the edges needed tidying and the engine wasn't running 100% (possibly new coil packs needed, along with a good drive!) Hideous sounding exhaust that was way OTT and ruined the ajp note! But drove quite well. I'm going to give it consideration over the weekend but do think its a tad over priced for a 1996 car. It looked like it used to be red too and has been resprayed....so I need to look into this a bit more.

Thanks for the info, oddly enough there were some 'red' patches in places where paint had been worn away that made me think it'd had a full respray and used to be red!!?