Our 205 GTi survived 10 years outside – but what do we do with it?

The useful part

When you've left a car under a sheet on a driveway for a decade, you will probably assume that peeling back the cover will reveal an unsalvageable heap of metal. Happily, this wasn't the case last weekend when my dad and I uncovered his cherished Peugeot 205 GTi, parked outside a friendly neighbour's house since 2016. He bought it back in 2003 for the grand sum of £150 – an outrageous figure when you consider that tidy 1.9 GTis regularly fetch well over a hundred times that figure today.

How it works

• In the late 2000s, the 1.9-litre lump started to show its age, and the head gasket eventually gave up.
• When I was a kid, it was a cheap, practical runaround that he used for commutes and school runs.
• As I got older, my dad started using it for amateur motorsport and took part in various autosolos and autotests, with me gleefully riding shotgun.

Details worth keeping

It may have been getting on in years, but this little Pug was well at home on these tight, twisting courses, where its taut body control and tactile handling helped us to outshine some of the more modern modified cars we were competing against. It was soon replaced and the 205 was back on the road.