I know exactly what you mean about the simplicity of older cars. In fact I have just this week bought a 1988 Peugeot 205 gti.
Had one when young, which i’d mainly self service (or my dad would).
Couldn’t be happier- 2 Gtis to choose from, depending on mood. One raw, one cooked. Marvellous!
What engine? 1.9 or 1.6?
I had a 1988 1.9 back in the day. Great fun but shocking quality!
One of the best fun per ££££ cars ever built and I nearly bought a restored one some years back, I’ll assume they change hands for much more money now(?)
Get some photos up (unless you have in another thread), I’d love to see it.
Mine creaked, squeaked and rattled like hell and was only a couple years old at best when I had it.
It bad non assisted steering too which was really heavy and at odds with the lightness of the other controls. Definitely one car you’d never need a pedalbox for!!
Mine had the common fault of stalling if steering lock was applied at low revs. The front drop links used to fail too.
A friend of mine had a Team Hartwell modified 1989 1.9 at the same time. His rattled less and went much faster! I think it was 160 bhp and had a very noisy stainless exhaust.
He also had Bilstein suspension which made the ride height a bit more sports hatch like and unlike mk2 and mk3 Golf Bilsteins they didn’t ruin the ride quality.
He ended up chopping it in for a Mazda MX5 of all things then promptly ended up needing a bigger car again when he got his girlfriend pregnant. C’est la vie!
Back to Capris, when I was at school one of my best friends’ older brother had a 3.0 Ghia auto in gold with a brown vinyl roof. Not a bad car for an 18 year old apprentice!
Many fond memories of that rude engine noise and its ability to do some impressive wheelspins!
Nearest car to it nowadays would be a 5.0 Mustang I guess?