I think you're spot on with the opinion of 90's car technology. I've said it myself many times. Reliability, performance, safety, ease to repair, longevity of components etc were all that anyone needed. In my opinion, it too was peak times for most decent car manufacturers.
Never owned a 626 but did own its little brother the 323F from 1998. Like the 626 it was well built, practical comfortable and utterly reliable. It was good to drive and a really good looking car. More of a five door coupe than a conventional hatch with frameless windows and low slung driving position. A complete breath of fresh air against the sea of Golf's, Astra's Escort's etc.
A very good conclusion, there Paul. It still hurts that Rover are no more... if only they had stayed with Honda. Or any other Japanese marque, come to think of it. All ifs and buts though 😣
My grandma had one of these. Bright red auto version. Was a brilliant car for its time. Sadly got written off in about 2008 i think id have been 5 maybe 6 years old. So hard to come across these now sadly
My old man had a string of interesting and cool cars but appeared to lose his mind in the early 2000s and bought a Mazda Premacy. It looked like this would but if it were a van. It was useful, I used it to move house, the seats would slide back and forth which I suppose is food for someone somewhere and it was easy to drive with light controls and good visibility and as you observe with this Mazda it was very well built. It was also spectacularly boring. It was the same silver as this car which is almost like it has no colour at all and the entire interior, seats, carpet, roof lining and plastics were all the same light grey and that light grey was very similar to the non colour of the outside. It reminded me of an Airfix kit that had been assembled but not painted. It was the car as an appliance, like having a nice, mid range fridge.
A perfect conclusion, I agree it is an automotive nutritionally balanced meal, containing everything you need for a well balanced driving experience. Am I correct in thinking this also came as an estate? The build quality is perfect and looking at your T reg 600 in the background it would have been good to park them side by side for a comparison to put into context the difference in styling.
I bought one early 2000s from auction direct from fleet, was 1999 V reg 2.0 glx 70000 miles for £3000 great car very reliable and roomy, for a to b transport hit the bullseye.
There's one of these lef in my dad's yard by an ex employee. It's got 200k on the clock and has stood for five years at least. I started it up a few months ago and everything was in working order. It would piss through an MOT. I parked a fairly new Volvo up for a year and it needed a plugin into diagnostic tools and a few quid thrown in just to start again. Let alone all the gizmos that had stopped working.
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Great cars. I've driven a few varieties of 626 over the years ranging from 86 - 99. I used to call them the Apple of cars.. akin to Apple's old slogan of "It just works" (well that was back in the day when Apple and cars "just worked" 😂😂)
Excellent review. Damn Japanese. Building motor vehicles that do exactly what they are supposed to do. Furthermore, they had the gall to learn how to engineer vehicles to suit so-called Western driving styles and conditions. Interesting that they are often called 'characterless'; personally, I find reliability, build quality and dependable performance to be highly desirable characteristics.
If Rover had paired with Mazda instead of Honda, a few Rover styling swishes here and there and perhaps we'd be looking at the Rover 600! My cousin owned his own car body repair business. Every year I'd be taking one of my Minis to have the sills or valances welded and every year he'd laugh and drive home in his Mazda! When a chap like he in the motor trade chose Mazda for himself I think it spoke volumes. It was because they looked so dull I couldn't become interested, but I don't think that at all now - certainly not about this 626 which looks a design of rare beauty aside many a modern car carbuncle! I'm going to stick my neck out and say, in spite of keeping my eyes peeled, no yellow cars featured today! 😀
