Tico for sale

[PP Porgy]

I often think of what someone posted here long ago re lexi : "Nothing says Class like twelve inch stick on letters". I cannot find that post now.
I suggest that such identification would be just the touch of savoir faire that your mini needs. ( Maybe change the X to a T....

[andyinasia]

Semi-amusing little update:

The Tico was looking a little bedraggled although it gets me from A to B no problem. Finally, today, I had a few hours to get some jobs done - broken headlight, broken gearstick, broken driver's door lock and no aircon were the priorities.

Ken Svay had recommended I use the mechanic the previous owner had used - reasonably priced and reliable. Armed with an invoice from the company the missus and I headed off for it this afternoon. On the headed paper was the company name, phone numbers and address - #623 Monivong Bvd.

I was crawling along on the inside lane, yet the missus insisted I'd passed it. Swung round for a second go. I stopped and pulled into what was clearly #623. It was a lot full of cars. Fucking huge Hummers, Landcruisers and Range Rovers loomed over us and salesmen through gritted teeth insisted that new cars have always been sold there and a bashed-up little Tico was really not welcome. Turns out the right place is a kilometer further down the road on the other side - WHY do they have the utterly wrong address on their headed paper?

So, we found it and the grease monkeys were working on a Lexus. They came over to us, looked the car over, took pity and quoted $80 to get all the jobs done. I'd have settled for double. That's the thing about this little fella - no one's gonna rip me off; they either chase me away for lowering the tone, or feel sorry for a bum barang. Suits me.

Come to think of it, I wonder if our previous mission was connected. We were hunting for desktop PCs for our internet cafe. We pulled up outside the first place and got quoted a decent price. Left the car there and wandered into a few other stores. Every time the opening gambit was a piss-take. The missus wanted to negotiate but in my view the opening offers were too far off the mark to bother. Seems like the thinking goes, 'Barang minus crappy Tico - fleece to fuckery; barang with crappy Tico - price up the poor bastard accordingly'.

[Banker]

Andy, ask for Mr Lot at that garage, he speaks a little English and I always gave him a tip. I was going to send you his phone number the other day but I have lost it.

Just keep TICO along.

[andyinasia]

Andy, ask for Mr Lot at that garage, he speaks a little English and I always gave him a tip. I was going to send you his phone number the other day but I have lost it.

Just keep TICO along.

Yeh, Bong Lot's a good chap. Job well done, tip given. Aircon's a bit urgent - first time I've had aircon in a car in my life - will take a bit of tweaking to get it right.

[Dacah]

Good luck with the Tico...

Charles Tubbence let me have a ride in his beat up one ....I loved it

but my g/f at the time wouldnt even look inside it let alone get in for a test drive...

Tales of Living with a Tico very welcome

[andyinasia]

Good luck with the Tico...

Charles Tubbence let me have a ride in his beat up one ....I loved it

but my g/f at the time wouldnt even look inside it let alone get in for a test drive...

Tales of Living with a Tico very welcome

I'd've bought the Tico and dumped the girlfriend!

Tales of Living with a Tico? Could provide occasional updates - likely to be quite entertaining! I'll just keep adding to this thread.

[Nasty Canasta]

Try them on the 'estate' car...

[Banker]

Good luck with the Tico...

Charles Tubbence let me have a ride in his beat up one ....I loved it

but my g/f at the time wouldnt even look inside it let alone get in for a test drive...

Tales of Living with a Tico very welcome

I'd've bought the Tico and dumped the girlfriend!

Tales of Living with a Tico? Could provide occasional updates - likely to be quite entertaining! I'll just keep adding to this thread.

Smart move AiA TICO is more fun & less expensive to run.

[andyinasia]

Tales of Living with a Tico very welcome

Tales of Living with a Tico? Could provide occasional updates - likely to be quite entertaining! I'll just keep adding to this thread.

Smart move AiA TICO is more fun & less expensive to run.

Update time! Banker - more fun? Definitely, especially this one with all its quirks and foibles. Less expensive? Dubious - note that you used it as a townie runaround; I'm putting in harder miles. Here's the tale:

An immediate problem I had was parking outside/near my apartment on ST. 63. I'd negotiated a space outside a dental clinic but the security guards kept jerking me around in favour of arse-licking the Lexus owners. After a while we found a lovely family who permitted us to park in their compound. Problem there was they had to jockey a couple of cars and bikes around to get vehicles in and out. Last week the evidently pushed my car with the gear in Parking and not Neutral and buggered the gear system. I got in one morning and found all the gears were stuck in Drive, which was tricky given there was a car in front and I had to reverse out.

So I got a mechanic in from the cheap and honest place banker or ken svay used. It took him an hour to remove the cable and then he disappeared for two hours to find a replacement. My wife and I were hungry by then so we nipped off to eat. As soon as we sat down we got a call to say he was back, but he's take a long time to fix it. We returned 15 mins later to find he was gone. He called to say he got a phone call to be somewhere else but he'd finished the job. I jumped in, put the gear in Drive - and shot backwards. Thank god no one was standing behind the car. All the gears were jumbled up. They guy had moved the car from the compound to the street using the gears, so he knew but just didn't care. We got him back early next morning to fix it - finally the gears were fine and all of that cost $35.

This brings us to Friday. One of the foibles of the Tico is that the engine temperature gauge doesn't work. We set off loaded up with our sunnies and beachball and drove quite normally along Highway #4. Suddenly without warning, the oil and battery lights came on and a second later the engine went dead and steam poured out of the bonnet. Could have been bloody fatal but luckily I could pull over. Very very luckily we conked out right in front of a garage in Kompong Speu, only half a k from our business/family. The radiator had overheated and the head gasket had blown. This was a bigger and more expensive job; fortunately we could doss at our second home and pick the car up in the morning to commence our holiday in Sihanoukville. She's right as rain now, but given her age and condition, she does seem to struggle with my demands. Still love her, though.

[nightmare.believer]

No one cares about your car. Really...why would they?

[cambod]

No one cares about your car. Really...why would they?

Where u looking to buy a Tico? No? Why did u open the thread then? Seems u care a lil too...

[krisduncs]

i dont understand how one can love such an unreliable hunk of shite. reminds me of the yugo zastava,or the mini metro. nothing whatsoever appealing about it,but they sold truckloads of them! get rid aia,and buy an old camry or corolla.

[andyinasia]

No one cares about your car. Really...why would they?

If you'd noticed, I was replying to a specific request to tell such tales. But being so narcissistic, you wouldn't notice, would you?


krisduncs - the rational part of me says, 'Save up for a Camry'; the irrational part has many fond memories of the many cars I owned in my youth - all clapped out wrecks. My first car was my gran's old Morris Minor which literally had magic mushrooms growing in the damp floor in front of the passenger seat. Being such an extreme anti-snob among the car-owning fraternity in Cambodia really is FUN!!!! Eventually the hassle will overwhelm me, but not yet!

[Dacah]

No one cares about your car. Really...why would they?

If you'd noticed, I was replying to a specific request to tell such tales. But being so narcissistic, you wouldn't notice, would you?


krisduncs - the rational part of me says, 'Save up for a Camry'; the irrational part has many fond memories of the many cars I owned in my youth - all clapped out wrecks. My first car was my gran's old Morris Minor which literally had magic mushrooms growing in the damp floor in front of the passenger seat. Being such an extreme anti-snob among the car-owning fraternity in Cambodia really is FUN!!!! Eventually the hassle will overwhelm me, but not yet!

AIA...cheers for your report, the Tico is a car that everyone seems to have an opinion on, whether they have a car or not....

It does seem fun and cheap to run.....

[Banker]

They are good for running around PP. I took it to Kampon Speu a few times, be kind to her AiA.