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Too Luce

Another Luce, I do like the look of these and the manual ones are pretty uncommon. Shame they got the poxy 2L engine not the big quadcam 3L.

This car was a lesson in buying sight unseen. I saw it on Trademe, the seller was in Oamaru and i was in CHCH so we agreed to meet in Timaru. I had sold the CRX so had no car, and got a lift down to pick the Luce up.

The guy arrives, and up until the moment he hands the keys over, he is puffing away on a smoke. Needless to say, the moment I got in the car I just about suffocated, it STANK. Mechanically it was good, and visually it was OK. Had some half done panel work on the LH side, but hey, it was only like $1500 with reg and wof. I got half way back to CHCH before I had to have a rest, the headache from the ciggies was doing me in, and when I got back all my clothes stank. It took a solid day of work to clean all the windows and febreze the fabric. All the glass made the paper towels yellow with sticky tar.

I drove this to work for a bit, and learnt to valuable lessons.
1. Directional tyres need to be facing the correct direction, or the rear of the car will step out violently going around an intersection
2. Clutch kicking to drift the car around an intersection is not a good idea when you can’t see the motorcycle riding Police officer coming the other way. He was not best pleased and I was super lucky to get away with a warning (“Sorry officer, its a new car, I’m not used to it yet”).

After the run in with the Police I decided I was best to calm down, sell the car and get something sensible.

1986
2L JE V6
Manual
The twin of my silver one
Smokers have a special place in hell

Update 15/3/20 – Unfortunately it appears this car met its end due to being deregistered 12 years ago.