For those interested in old cars.

[boxbrownie]

52 minutes ago, PatB said:

At least the metallic bronze didn't seem to fall off in great scabrous patches like the silver on the more plush Mk2s seemed to. Presumably metallic paint technology was moving on quite fast in the late 60s and early 70s.

But at least the brown finish had the advantage of disguising the rust coming through all over the place 

[Northmoor]

10 hours ago, Owd Bob said:

Ford day today.  More later today.

 

Lovely collection, especially nice to see so many estate versions as relatively few tend to survive compared to saloons.

[5 C]

16 hours ago, PatB said:

At least the metallic bronze didn't seem to fall off in great scabrous patches like the silver on the more plush Mk2s seemed to. Presumably metallic paint technology was moving on quite fast in the late 60s and early 70s.

My father had a Mk2 saloon in Blue Mink - similar to the Escort estate above - which suffered the same fate. Some late 1980s Vauxhalls suffered in the same way. The scourge of single coat metallic paints. The paint would go dull and flat, then flake off in large pieces which you could practically peel off to reveal the - by now shiny - grey green primer underneath.

[5 C]

Spotted in the leisure centre car park at last weekend's Milton Keynes exhibition.

[Owd Bob]

I've had three mk3 Cortinas, the last was a 90 quid buy just to get me to West Yorks and back daily for a 12 month job i had in the mid '80's. It had 10 months mot and six months tax left on it, i used it until both ran out...well until the mot did Then i scrapped it as it was a right heap of rust and would never have passed another mot, it was a two door and one of the last being a 'P' reg' it originally had a 1300 engine which i swapped for a 2ltr pinto and a five speed box from a scrap mk5, much better for zooming up and down the M62 twice a day. I think i had to change the prop' shaft as well? I always a leaning towards taking picks of the bog standard working mans type car and also the van derived and estate versions and two doored ones as they seemed never to get saved as much. Sports and prestige classics and kit cars are'nt really my thing but the odd special one or two did take my fancy and helped to use up my roll of film now and again. 

 

 

[boxbrownie]

Fire engine red AM.......I’ve never understood that choice 

 

That Simca is a peach, must be a bit difficult getting bits for it though?

[Wolseley]

A few carpark finds:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

31 minutes ago, Wolseley said:

A few carpark finds:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did not know that you had rhd Citroen TAs in Oz. Were they assembled locally or back here in Slough?

[BernardTPM]

1 hour ago, Wolseley said:

 

Of course now the old Humber is fashionably tall like an SUV.

[alastairq]

One can wear a hat, sitting in the back seat?

 

Probably one could cross one's legs in the back seat as well? [Try that in  Land Rover defender station wagon??}

[MJI]

On 20/02/2020 at 20:46, peanuts said:

everything but the sunbeam tribute to the late great Russel Brooks 

 

 

Years ago he knew my boss and gave him a lift, I think they averaged 90 on a twisty A road.

 

In an Escort

[Wolseley]

14 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I did not know that you had rhd Citroen TAs in Oz. Were they assembled locally or back here in Slough?

 

I'm not a Citroen expert, but I don't think that many 2CVs were sold new here, and those that were sold date back to the mid 1950s.  The later models would probably all be private imports from the UK (right hand drive of course).  I have seen a few Charlestons out here, and they were definitely not sold new in Australia.

 

 

[PatB]

14 hours ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

 

I did not know that you had rhd Citroen TAs in Oz. Were they assembled locally or back here in Slough?

I suspect we never officially got them at all. The vast majority of older Cits I've seen (and their rarity here does make that a small sample) have been private imports from the UK (or Europe, and then subjected to the usual Australian butchery to convert to RHD). 

[Wolseley]

You used to see Humbers fairly often in Sydney in years gone by (mostly Super Snipes and Vogues) but, excluding car shows and club runs, it's been about seven years since I saw a Humber "in the wild" so to speak.  I remember, back in the early 1960s, there was a funeral director at Gordon, on Sydney's North Shore who had a fleet of cars, limousines and hearses, all of them Humber Super Snipes.  Here are a few more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Wolseley]

5 minutes ago, PatB said:

I suspect we never officially got them at all. The vast majority of older Cits I've seen (and their rarity here does make that a small sample) have been private imports from the UK (or Europe, and then subjected to the usual Australian butchery to convert to RHD). 

 

I'm pretty sure that Citroen sent a batch of them in 1954 or thereabouts to Australia to gauge the market, and were to send more if they sold well, but they didn't.  I'm just going on my memory here, so I might have to dig out some 1950s copies of Wheels to check.

[rockershovel]

I’ve always been a fan of Ford estate cars, including the present Mondeo. They are just good workhorses, comfy to drive, with no real bad habits and plenty of room in the back, which is pretty much all I ask of a car. 

 

I once briefly owned a Granada estate which was a super thing, one of those cars I bought for the winter and sold in the spring when I went back to work.. one of the few cars which I wish I’d kept. 

[PatB]

I guess, as far as preservation is concerned, estates suffer from a triple whammy. They're generally produced in smaller numbers. In later life they tend to be run into the ground as expendable workhorses. As emerging classics, they're often less popular because they're not generally the model that today's classic owners lusted after as yesterday's schoolboys, which is often what drives the market. So by the time anyone recognises their worth, they've all been hammered to bits, abandoned, rather than repaired when terminal rust appears and/or robbed of their running gear to donate to sexier variants. 

As for Ford estates, I get where Rockershovel's coming from, but was turned off them by a bad experience with a Fairmont wagon, which is one of only two vehicles I truly regret owning, mostly through no real fault of its own. 

Edited February 23, 2020 by PatB

[Enterprisingwestern]

2 hours ago, Wolseley said:

You used to see Humbers fairly often in Sydney in years gone by (mostly Super Snipes and Vogues) but, excluding car shows and club runs, it's been about seven years since I saw a Humber "in the wild" so to speak.  I remember, back in the early 1960s, there was a funeral director at Gordon, on Sydney's North Shore who had a fleet of cars, limousines and hearses, all of them Humber Super Snipes.  Here are a few more:

 

Not knowing my Australian car history too well, but were Vogues badged as Humber over there?, they were Singer in the UK.

[rockershovel]

American Fords were quite different from U.K. Fords, aka Dagenham Dustbins. The Fairmont was never sold in U.K., AFAIK. 

 

I had a Corsair estate for a short while, it was junk. Overweight and underpowered, with the problematic V4 engine. It deserved its derogatory nickname, related to “coarse ‘airs”

 

One of my “bogey” cars was the Jeep Waggoner, the first example of what are now known as SUV - a good idea let down by weak execution, with too much reliance on existing components. I drove them in N Africa and was glad to get a 60-series Land Cruiser instead. Mind you, the Austin Champ was all-new and fit for nothing. 

[PatB]

1 hour ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Not knowing my Australian car history too well, but were Vogues badged as Humber over there?, they were Singer in the UK.

IIRC the Humber Sceptre was badged as the Humber Vogue, rather than the Singer Vogue being badged as a Humber. Apart from the Humber, though, Rootes doesn't seem to have had much of a presence here, judging by the very few survivors, at least some of which are likely private imports. Wolseley's right though. The Super Snipe seems to have been relatively common. When I first came here in the late 90s I saw more Super Snipes on the road in 6 months than I had in the UK in the preceding 15+ years. 

[Oldddudders]

7 minutes ago, PatB said:

When I first came here in the late 90s I saw more Super Snipes on the road in 6 months than I had in the UK in the preceding 15+ years. 

Some parts of the world are less encouraging to the metal moth than the UK, so cars last longer. I imagine Oz to be one such place.

[Owd Bob]

Those big Humbers from my fading memory were always rot boxes, an uncle had a few for towing his caravans but he did'nt have them long and he also used the Consul mk2's for towing his Sprite Major, although i always thought the Fords looked very low at the back once the van was stuck on, but he obviously thought they were good pullers. A few more mixed up vehicles today including my own old P5 and my old Tranny camper which was probably one of the last of the mk1's to be registered in July 1978. Seems the camper van/coach builders 'Glendale' must have bought the last mk1 pickups pretty cheaply to convert. Mine had a diesel front added on to fit a pinto engine in, it once had a V4 from new. 

Edited February 23, 2020 by Owd Bob

[Wolseley]

2 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Not knowing my Australian car history too well, but were Vogues badged as Humber over there?, they were Singer in the UK.

 

The Singer Vogue was sold as a Humber in Australia, and the Singer Gazelle was sold in 1966 and 1967 as an upmarket Hillman (earlier gazelles were sold as Singers, but they only sold in small numbers).  The Hillman Gazelle had the cylinder head from the Sunbeam Rapier, giving it better performance than the Minx.  There was also a version of the Humber Vogue also with, I think, a Sunbeam Rapier head, called the Humber Vogue Sports.

 

They may have been sold here in (very) small numbers, but I have only seen one Humber Sceptre in Australia, and that car was, I believe, a private import from New Zealand.

 

Hillman Gazelle:

 

Humber Vogue:

Edited February 23, 2020 by Wolseley
fixing typo

[Owd Bob]

Did you get the Hillman Avenger down under? If so what was it badged as?  This one was a solid, restorable car and a rare survivor estate version even back in 2006 when it was used and then blown up up for a certain TV series, i tried to save it but it still turned up one morning all stripped out/down on the trailor and ready for the FX man to fettle about with, we pushed it off the trailer right under a street lamp, the director would'nt be told 'cos when we did shove it a bit further down the street he snarled put it back and leave it exactly where it was, so when the explosion went off later in the afternoon the street lamp and its cover got melted. The explosion was a lot bigger than was planned with the flames going at least 40-50 foot in the air, the overhead camera got scorched. Watch the Drama channel on the telly next Sat' night and see for yourself. Crude pipe bombs were used to 'Blow the bloody doors' off. The wife and i then spent over two hours that evening cleaning up the mess before it went dark,  just three of us were left on the set/street where we pulled and shoved it back onto the trailor. It went back to the BBC studio car park at Oxford Road. I never saw it again and i was told that it went to a local Manchester scrap yard.

 

[russ p]

17 minutes ago, Owd Bob said:

Did you get the Hillman Avenger down under? If so what was it badged as?  This one was a solid, restorable car and a rare survivor estate version even back in 2006 when it was used and then blown up up for a certain TV series, i tried to save it but it still turned up one morning all stripped out/down on the trailor and ready for the FX man to fettle about with, we pushed it off the trailer right under a street lamp, the director would'nt be told 'cos when we did shove it a bit further down the street he snarled put it back and leave it exactly where it was, so when the explosion went off later in the afternoon the street lamp and its cover got melted. The explosion was a lot bigger than was planned with the flames going at least 40-50 foot in the air, the overhead camera got scorched. Watch the Drama channel on the telly next Sat' night and see for yourself. Crude pipe bombs were used to 'Blow the bloody doors' off. The wife and i then spent over two hours that evening cleaning up the mess before it went dark,  just three of us were left on the set/street where we pulled and shoved it back onto the trailor. It went back to the BBC studio car park at Oxford Road. I never saw it again and i was told that it went to a local Manchester scrap yard.

 

 

What an absolute waste of a rare car, what was the programme it was used for?