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Weird Shite


Saabnut

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The final photographs from my weekend awayplaying.

 

My friend Alan has a small penchant for oddball microcars, and has a few French Sans Permis cars in his collection. I will try and remember to take pictures of the others sometime, but thought I would put up pictures of two of them. For a bit of fun, I will not say what they are, see if anyone can identify them. I will spill the beans if no one gets it this evening, but for now will refer to the red one and the yellow one.

I love the way, in true elf and safety mode, the red one has a fuel tank as a seat backrest! The yellow one has to be the best ever Noddy car, love the styling of the rear that also hides the engine. A great touch on this one is the clockwork indicator switch, turn the indicators on and you hear the ticking as the switch slowly returns to the off position so is self cancelling!

 

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If we were not so up our arses with regards crash protection - stuff like this would be ace for commuting.

 

A 125cc bike engine, electric reverese, basic interior  seating for 1 or 2 people and a bit of clutter ( handbag etc) and people wouldnt moan about not being able to park, the cost of fuel, tax etc.

 

Bloody ace. I'd rock in something like that.

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Apparently that kind of indicators used to be fairly common, my father said he had 2 Land Rovers with self cancelling indicators. One with clockwork and one that pushed against a sprung plunger that slowly leaked down and finally switched the signals off.

 

A good idea really

 

 

Phil

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....A 125cc bike engine, electric reverse...

 

Or you could do what various British micro-car builders did and use a Villiers two stroke with a reversible dynostart. It would start the engine 'forwards' or 'backwards' giving you instant reverse (and all the gears, allowing you to drive backwards just as quickly as driving forwards).

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Yellow one looks like a Rolux Baby, made in Clermont Ferrand between 1945 and 1948 with rear-mounted Ydral (no, i've never heard of them either) 125 cc engine :)

 

Red one is a mochet, CM 125?

 

Edit: curses, you posted the answers while I was still looking them up on the Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum, which has actually closed  down but still has a website?

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Ydral (no, i've never heard of them either) 125 cc engine :)

 

 

 

I had to find out more about Ydral - turns out they were a French equivalent to Villiers. The company was founded by Anatole Lardy in 1926, Ydral is an anagram of Lardy. They supplied a range of 125cc to 250cc engines to various, now defunct, manufacturers, including AGF, Bernardet, Blotto, Cazenave, Daventry, D.S.Malterre, Follis, Gima, Gitane, Hirondelle, Mochet, MR, Ravat and Sterling (Sterva).

 

Now we have a founder called Lardy and a manufacturer called Blotto and I can't think of a single pun.

 

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Turns out the Blotto made a three wheeler called a 'Triporteur' from the late 1920's...

 

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That engine looks rather like a Bantam. So it could be a licence built DKW.

 

I think the looks are superficial - the flattened bottom of the gearbox doesn't look right for example.

 

Somewhere else in this parish I made a list of all the manufacturers (I knew about) who used the DKW design (the 'RT125') after the second world war (as war reparations). Off the top of my head there's MZ (obviously as they are/were DKW), CZ, Minsk (MMZ 'Moska' before that), Yamaha (strange as they were on the wrong side during the war, I think it was an 'unofficial' copy), WSK, Hardly Dangerous and BSA.

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