Great Escape Classic Car Hire has introduced a new range of low cost 1980s classic cars for hire. Based at the company's Cotswolds HQ, the new cars are available to hire with the best value hire package on the market.
The range of new cars are from the 1980s and include a Saab 900 Turbo 16S, Peugeot 205 GTI, VW Golf GTI Mk1 and Rover SD1 Vitesse. Prices are just £95 for 24 hours use or £160 for a 48 hour weekend, including unlimited mileage, comprehensive insurance and full nationwide AA breakdown cover.
"Our customers want to drive the cars they remember from their youth and 1980s classic cars are the next thing in classic car hire," explains Graham Eason of Great Escape. "We've put together a range of iconic classic cars from the 1980s and by sheer chance, most of them are finished in period bright red.
"Some people are a little sniffy about 1980s classic cars but the Saab, Peugeot, VW and Rover are simply brilliant drivers cars. We can offer them so cheaply because they are more reliable than our older fleet - so they cost us less to run."
For more details on the new range of low cost classic cars to hire from Great Escape Classic Car Hire visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/ or call 01527 893733.
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Bodmin or Bust

Bodmin is a long way from the Great Escape HQ in Worcestershire. So when the Historic and Classic-car Hirers Guild (HCHG) decided to hold its AGM in Cornwall's former judicial centre our first thought at Great Escape was - which car shall we take?

The obvious choice for the wet weather, 225 mile mainly motorway jaunt was either the Porsche 928 or the Jaguar XJR saloon. These mile munchers are perfect for long distance travel being extremely comfortable, very fast and very relaxed at motorway speeds. Except by the time the AGM came around both of these cars were out on hire with customers.

So we took the Alfasud. Our 1984 Alfa Romeo Alfasud Green Cloverleaf is new to our fleet. Like all of our new cars it has to have a minimum 500 mile 'shakedown' before it goes on hire to iron out any problems. So what better way to do it than a trip down to Bodmin?

The Alfasud performed faultlessly, holding a steady - if a little noisy - 70 all the way from Worcestershire to Bodmin via a short stop in Paignton. For 6 hours it battled torrential rain, wind and bad motorway drivers to reach Cornwall. And the next day it did it went all the way back again.

Over 450 miles the plucky little Alfasud used just 70 litres of fuel and held a steady engine temperature and oil pressure. So who says Alfas are unreliable?

We bought the Alfasud at the end of 2009 and have spent the last few months steadily fettling it to a hire standard. The car was already in excellent condition - it was used as a dealer showroom exhibit for many years - but needed detailing to bring it up to the standard we expect. After 18 months off the road it sailed through its MOT.

The Great Escape Classic Car Hire Alfasud is now available to hire from our Worcestershire site. It is part of our growing fleet of 1980s classics, joining our existing Jaguar XJS convertible, Porsche 928, VW Golf GTI and Ford Capris.

Rewind to the 1980s

When your business is running a classic car hire fleet you can end up spending quite a disproportionate amount of your time ruminating on what's going to be the next classic car that everyone will want to drive.

At Great Escape we like trying to second guess what cars people will want that we don't already have. Certain cars like MGBs, Jaguar E Types, Morris Minors and Jaguar Mk2 will always be popular. But for many customers in their 30s and 40s these are cars from an older era. What we've realised is that people love the cars they grew up with.

So here at Great Escape Classic Car Hire we've rolled up the sleeves on our collective white jacket, pulled up our white socks, smoothed down our rumbled Stay-Press trousers and donned our comedy baseball cap with cap-mounted beer and drinking straw to ponder the 1980s.

The decade that fashion apparently forgot is now actually extremely fashionable. Pop stars have raced to revisit the age of gold Bacofoil jumpsuits and frightwig hair. And we're racing to cars like the Rover SD1, VW Golf GTI, Porsche 928, Jaguar XJS, Ford Capri and Ford Granada Ghia X. These cars epitimosed motoring 1980s-style and if you're like us you'll remember seeing or being in these cars when shorts were something you wore rather than something to help you unwind.

We've spent the last 12 months developing our fleet of 1980s cars and several iconic classic cars from this list are already on our fleet. If you fancy rewinding the clock and either getting behind the wheel of a car you've always loved or reliving your first car or your dad's car, call us on 01527 893733 or visit the Great Escape Classic Car Hire website.

Keep a classic original or improve it?

It's an age old debate amongst classic car enthusiasts. Do you keep your cherished classic car original or is it alright to sympathetically upgrade it - or even radically customise it?

For the Great Escape classic car hire fleet I've always been strongly on the side of originality, but an issue with our VW Golf GTI has made me challenge my position somewhat.

We have been gradually improving our Volkswagen Golf GTI since we bought it and I've finally decided to bite the bullet and replace the engine. This car is one of the last 1600cc fuel injected Golf GTIs before Volkswagen replaced this original engine with an 1800cc version. Ideally, sticking to my ethos of originality, I'd drop in a replacement 1.6 engine. The trouble is they're extremely hard to come by.

There are plenty of 1.8 litre Golf GTI Mk1 engines around, many in excellent condition, but the smaller capacity motor is much harder to come by. So I'm faced with a dilemma - hold fire and wait for a decent 1600cc engine to come along or plump for a 1800cc upgrade?

After giving it some thought we're going to go with the 1800 engine because I want the car to be mint, quickly, for customers and I guess the 1.8 litre engine was virtually concurrent with our 1982 1.6 car. So hopefully soon it will be back on the fleet as a fully fledged member of our growing 1980s classic car hire fleet.

Hire a Ford Capri Brooklands

It's just coincidence that after we've spent the last few days being amazed by the snow-plugging power of the Great Escape Classic Car Hire Ford Capri S, we've gone and added a second Ford Capri to our classic hire fleet. Our existing Ford Capri S 2 litre is now complemented by the ultimate Ford Capri - a 280 Brooklands. So now there are twice as many Ford Capris available to hire in the world - and they're both available from Great Escape.

Our new Ford Capri is one of the 1000 limited edition runout 280 models, known as Brooklands Capris because of the beautiful metallic green finish. The Ford Capri Brooklands was made over by Ford's Special Vehicle Engineering division (SVE) who tidied up the handling with suspension improvements, including adding a limited slip differential. The Brooklands Capri features the venerable 2.8 litre V6 Ford Cologne engine, which saw service in several high performance Ford cars of the 1980s.

The Ford Capri Brooklands has achieved true classic status over the last 25 years because it was the last of the great Ford Capri line and was the last classic old-school rear wheel drive Ford.

The latest addition to the Great Escape fleet is part of our growing line up of aspiring classic cars from the 1980s. The classic car hire fleet also includes VW Golf GTI, Porsche 928, Jaguar XJS, Alfa Romeo Alfasud and the Ford Capri S.

We have classic Ford Capri cars for hire from our Suffolk fleet, where our Ford Capri S is now based and our Cotswolds fleet, where our Ford Capri 280 Brooklands is based. Hire prices start at £145 for 24 hours and including insurance, unlimited mileage and breakdown cover.

For more information on the Great Escape Classic Ford Capri cars for hire, visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/ or call 01527 893733.

Classic VW Golf GTI Mk1 now available to hire

The VW Golf GTI has come of age and been recognised as a true classic by the UK’s largest specialist classic car hire company. Great Escape Classic Car Hire has added a 1982 Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk1 1.6 in iconic Mars Red to its fleet. The car is available for self drive hire by the day, weekend or week.

The VW Golf GTI invented the idea of a fast, highly entertaining family hatchback. Interest in these cars has never faltered but has been increasing over the last few years, fuelled by nostalgia for the 1980s and the car’s suitability for tuning and styling tweaks.

The Great Escape VW Golf GTI is the first Mark 1 GTI available for self drive classic car rental in the UK and possibly the world. It is a totally standard 1982 car fitted with the free-revving 1600cc fuel injected engine developing 110bhp. The car is fitted with a sunroof, rear seatbelts and a five speed manual gearbox. Great Escape has been developing its fleet of 1980s classics with the addition of a Porsche 928 and Ford Capri during 2009.

Great Escape, which operates from three bases in Worcestershire, Dorset and Suffolk, has classic cars from the 1950s to 1990s. The VW Golf GTI is based in Worcestershire. It is an icon of the 80s and appeals as much to those who grew up with it as it does to younger people who love its old school styling. It’s the perfect car for scooting around the Cotswolds and Welsh Border roads on Great Escape's doorstep.

Great Escape has a fleet of self drive and chauffeur hire classic cars including coupes, convertibles and saloons from Bentley, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Jensen, Rolls Royce and Morris as well as Porsche. For more details visit http://www.greatescapecars.co.uk/, call 01527 893733 or email info@greatescapecars.co.uk.