Shed of the Week | Mazda Bongo Friendee

It's not often that a JDM cult classic drops into Shed territory - time to check out a Bongo Friendee

By Tony Middlehurst / Friday, 14 November 2025 / Loading comments

At the time of writing, and despite its high temptation value, nobody had been brave enough to buy last week's Range Rover Sport TDV8. It would take a different sort of bravery to pull the trigger on Shed's offering this week, unless (some might say) the trigger in question was attached to Max's fully loaded 'Old Painless' M134 minigun out of Predator.

Shed doesn't care. His remit is to find interesting vehicles with a current MOT certificate and an asking price below £2,000, and the Mazda Friendee Bongo you're now goggling at in disbelief ticks all those boxes. Shed has always had a hankering for a campervan, mainly because they offer a nice combination of motoring and extra-marital smut. He scratched that itch a few years back when he bought an old Hymer, but he feels that he owes himself another go at van life because that episode didn't end well. For a start the Hymer was powered, to use the word loosely, by a non-turbo Citroen 1.9 diesel engine. A week into Shed's ownership a local with a grudge used a permanent marker to change all the 'r's at the end of Hymer' to 'n's. Then Mrs Shed tried to climb into the over-cab bed. You can guess how that went. Once Shed had mended as much of the internal damage as he could, he thought it was time to cut his losses and get shot of it. He did all right out of it in the end, because it was Covid time and people desperate to get out of the house were paying big money for.

From an acceleration perspective, there wasn't actually a lot of point in working the column gearchange on that Hymer and Shed expects a similar story with this 120hp 2.5 diesel lazily marshalled by an old school automatic gearbox. Still, it could have been worse: Shed thinks there was a 105hp 2.0 litre petrol version.

The MOT certificate tells us that it was first registered in the UK in June 2010, but of course all the Bongoes you'll see on British roads will be imports as they were never officially sold here. The age-related T-plate confirms the build date of 1999, which was the last year for these. It would probably have been lovely and solid back in 2010, when its single fail was for a non-functioning rear fog lamp. The only other issue to disturb the inspectors' slumber over the next five years, during which time the mileage went up from 84k to 125k, was a bit of play in the ARBs.

That pesky fog lamp bulb came back to haunt the car in 2015. Despite that, they somehow managed to get it through the retest. Two years, some tyres and 7,000 miles later, things had taken a nasty turn as the effects of age and the British weather conspired to bring this flimsily rustproofed Japanese-spec car to its knees. Suddenly the MOT station was having to send out for backup supplies of printer ink, the headliners in an elongated list of issues including a major exhaust blow, excessive exhaust smoke, an oil leak, rust in the offside sill and seatbelt anchorage point and, would you believe it, another busted fog lamp bulb.

Them darn bulbs carried on popping every year until 2019. Amazingly, the one they fitted in 2019 was still working in 2021 but that was the least of the owner's problems at that point, major rust having spread to just about every structural area. Credit to them though, they must have loved the car because it was all put right. Sadly their patience and finances were tested again in early 2022 with more structural rot, but yet again they stepped up and sorted it.

Surely that was it? Well, it looked like it might have been in late '22, when the Bongo passed first time with a not too disastrous list of consumable advisories; but the rust was back with a vengeance in early 24, infesting both sides of the car at the rear, and the oil leak was now being described as ‘excessive', not a word that Shed sees very often on MOT oil leak descriptions. There were so many 'do not drive and 'repair immediately' warnings (including, of course, the fog lamp) the mechanics who had been tasked with breathing new life into it had to have two goes at getting it through the test. Still, that's what they did, and someone paid for it all again. It failed once more in February this year but only for a torn rear tyre and another blown light bulb, this time a sidelight so that was a pleasant change.

The vendor assures us that she won't hang around for long. That's obviously meant to refer to the time it will spend on their forecourt, such will be the stampede to buy it, but maybe the other possible interpretation of that phrase could turn out to be more accurate. Or maybe it won't. Four owners have thrown a lot of money at this thing to keep it going, and if you look in the classifieds you might be amazed at how much Bongoes go for. There's obviously something about a Bongo that makes normally rational people do mad stuff. If you know what that something might be, please write it down on a piece of paper and post it to anyone other than Shed.

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