New Vehicle: Suzuki Jimny

I wasn’t expecting to buy another car this soon, but here it is – my new Jimny!

The Cappuccino’s rust woes – preventing it from being put back on the road this year as originally planned (see the optimistic first post and the Oh-my-God-so-many-holes latest post) – have ended up forcing some vehicular changes through a lot more quickly than I had anticipated. The LS400, which has so quietly and comfortably taken me through winter, is now quickly being readied for a pre-sale MOT and the Cappuccino, stripped out and showing off its rust holes, is firmly out of the transportation picture until it can be restored – not something that’ll be happening soon.

The aforementioned optimistic plan actually went a lot further than I detailed in that particular post – in my head it went from the LS as a winter car to the Capp’s relatively simple (ha!) resurrection to the LS’s sale and on to the tucking-away of the Cappuccino and the purchasing of a new car for the upcoming winter. Of course, being me, this plan had already inspired plenty of pondering over the next winter car, something that came in very handy when the Cappuccino’s road-worthiness suffered an uncomfortable setback.

Whilst tiny sports cars and leviathan saloons can cope admirably with snowy conditions I felt it was time to get a “proper” winter car and buy a 4×4 (which guarantees it won’t snow from now on – sorry about that). I’ve always had a soft spot for Jimnys – I randomly snapped a photo of an almost identical one to mine about 9 months before I bought it – and it worked just as well as an easy-on-the-wallet Cappuccino replacement as it did a winter car. After viewing a relatively rough example locally (mainly to see if I enjoyed how they drive – I did!) I spotted a 44,000 mile, 3 owner example not too far away and figured with those sorts of stats it was worth a look – the photo above tells you it obviously was!

Saving money for the Capp’s restoration means any major (see, expensive) modifications are out of the question for Y153 MEN – at least in the short term – but that doesn’t mean there’ll be no tweaking or fettling at all. There’s a small package already making its way over from the USA to prove that point…