I've owned this car for the past 2 years, and she's been my 'pride and joy', but due to a recently being made redundant, I'm no longer able to run her, and am faced with the sad fact that I have to sell her. :-(

When I bought her, she was a completely standard FTO GPX with a 4-speed tiptronic/automatic gearbox (now a 5-speed manual), but in the last two years, I have done a lot of work on her, and she has been lovingly cared for. I've either done the work myself, or she has been over to Japco, an FTO specialist for the occasional jobs I've been unable to do.

Standard GPX spec, and factory extras:

* 2-litre V6 engine, with Mitsubishi's variable valve timing (MIVEC) - the top engine in the FTO range, and sounds gorgeous.
* Climate control (the air-con appears to need re-gassing, but it did work fine last year, and was very cold)
* Sunroof, with tilt and slide (very unusual to find a sunroof, and climate control - normally one or the other)
* Rear wash-wiper, which has since been replaced with a one-off custom made unit to look similar to a modern car.
* Electronic extending aerial on the rear wing - All FTO's have an aerial built into the rear window, but it was a factory extra to have a bigger aerial fitted on the rear wing, and provide better reception.
* Folding side-mirrors.

On top of that, since I've had her, in the last 2 years I've done the following:

* Had a Thatcham approved Category 1 TOAD alarm/immobiliser fitted (with certificate for insurance) which includes keyless entry, window closure, and automatically folding the mirrors when locked.
* She has been completely undersealed, to prevent rusting from the salt on our roads.
* Replaced the standard 16" alloy wheels with 17" Rota Action alloys, with Bridgestone Potenza tyres. These are the correct offset and fitting for the FTO, and don't need any horrible spacers to make the fit properly.
* Replaced the standard springs with Eibach lowering springs, which lowers the car 25-30mm both front and back.
* Replaced the rear shock absorbers, as the old one's were knocking, and fitted uprated, KYB adjustable shock absorbers in their place.
* Replaced the (originally orange 'jaffa cake') side indicators with clear indicators.
* Upgraded the dipped-beam headlights to 6000K HID bulb and ballasts, similar to the ones fitted to later FTO's as standard, but often removed during the SVA test.
* Removed the sidelight bulbs from the headlights (an SVA bodge), and moved them back to where they should be in the indicator/foglight cluster.
* Replaced the main headlights clusters with some, sourced from Japan (at great expense), so they wouldn't have a hole drilled in them to fit the sidelights during the SVA test (see above)
* Upgraded the main-beam headlights to PIA bulbs.
* Upgraded the fog-light bulbs to PIA 'yellow' bulbs - theses are actually useful for seeing in fog!
* Upgraded all the indicator units, front, side and rear, the stop/tail lights, high-level brake, reversing lights, side lights, and rear numberplate light to high power, luxeon or cluster LED's.
* Replaced front and rear drop-links, front and rear anti-roll-bar bushes, rear suspension arms, rear shock absorber top-bushes, and numerous other little bits and pieces as and when needed.
* New rear brake pads (red-stuff), and rear brake discs skimmed.
* Front and rear strut braces.
* Stainless steel 'Mongoose' exhaust system, with twin 'oval' tail-pipes - not too far different from the original system, but will never rust, and sounds lovely.

... and lots of other things, I'm sure - that I can't think of at the moment.

She started off life, with Mitsubishi's automatic tiptronic 4-speed gearbox fitted, but in mid-2007 I had an FTO specialist convert her to a 5-speed manual gearbox, which included a new clutch too. The manual gearbox came from a special edition FTO, and also included a limited-slip-differential, which isn't standard on most manual FTO's. It is a well acknowledged fact that the automatic transmission sucks 25-30BHP from the FTO, which the manual transmission doesn't, making the car far more fun to drive.

She also has a private 'cherished' numberplate fitted, reading N999 FTO. This alone, appears to be worth over £1200 (type it into Google, and see for yourself!).

She is MOT'ed until late March 2009. She went straight her last MOT, without even getting an advisory on anything. The year previously, the only advisory was the rear brakes, which is why I replaced them before this MOT.

The bodywork is generally in pretty good condition. She has the odd stone-chips and a couple of minor knock/marks, but you need to look hard to see them, and for a car which is 13 years old, I think she's in very good shape.

Mileage - The speedo read 105,672 when I took the photos, but some of this has been clocked up in kilometers from when she was in Japan. I have a certificate stating exactly how to go about converting this reading to miles, and the formula says that 25386 needs to be subtracted, which works out as almost exactly 80,000 miles covered.

One final thing to note, is that the engine fitted is not the original engine. Recently, she was diagnosed with the big-end-bearing failure, which unfortunately is terminal on an FTO, unless it is caught very early (which in this case, it wasn't). As a result, I have had the same FTO specialist that converted the automatic gearbox to a manual gearbox, fit a replacement GPX engine from another similar mileage FTO. The car that the replacement engine came from was reading 82,000 on the speedo, although I am unsure how much of that is kilometers, and how much is miles, so it's more-than-likely that it had actually covered less miles that my original engine had. It also had a new cam-belt fitted in October 2007, although I don't have any record detailing this.

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