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Missy Charm

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  1. Whereas I have to make do with a Ford Soft-Focus... The VW Touareg isn't well named either, given the moniker's derivation from 'Tuareg' - a collection of peoples in the Middle East and Africa known, amongst other things, for mass rape, pillage, slaughter and the use of child soldiers.
  2. Someone will know the actual answer, but I suspect the last car to be fitted with a manual column change was the Nissan Cedric Japanese taxi. The taxi was based on the 1987-debuting Nissan Cedric private car and remained in production until, unbelievably, 2015! It was sold only to commercial clients, of course, and was equipped with various oddities to suit the Japanese taxi driver - including, until some point in the production run, a column-change manual gearbox: Quite when that feature was dropped I don't know, but other things about that photo suggest it's a fairly recent car. The radio is certainly nineties, if not early 2000s. Toyota's Crown Comfort taxi seems to have gone over to floor change for the manual somewhat earlier than the Nissan, so perhaps doesn't count.
  3. Have you seen this? https://www.mg-rover.org/threads/1989-sterling-827sli-crank-no-start.874076/ Relates to the American Sterling, but assume certain bits might be the same...
  4. As someone else has said: that's in an enclosure at Colchester Zoo. The odd thing, however, is that that Land Rover Discovery has been in use as an enclosure decoration or piece of animal play equipment for a very long time indeed, perhaps 25 years or more. Here's a photo of it from 2011 in the same position (the Pileated Gibbon enclosure): I remember the car performing a similar role much earlier than that, too. At one time, a long time ago, it looked almost in showroom condition; bizarre, considering it would have been worth money in those days. You could see through the windows quite clearly, back then, and the interior was immaculate - almost like that of a car that's never been driven. I don't know what the story behind it all is.
  5. You could get a much better Consul than Anne's, i.e. a going concern that was just about roadworthy, for under a grand twenty years ago. Twice that would buy you something quite nice and even Zephyrs and Zodiacs were quite cheap. The only old Fords worth anything back then had Cosworth badges.
  6. An informative piece about Miss Naysmith and her life can be found here: https://josephclift.com/writing/miss-naysmith/. It contains various details not seen elsewhere as well as - for those here - another photo of the Ford Consul. The red Mercedes that replaced it was, apparently, torched; people these days forget how much crime there was twenty years ago. Naysmith seems to have been the architect of the life she led; rejecting of society rather than, as observers assumed, rejected by it. It's a case that raises interesting an interesting ethical question, namely should that sort of thing be allowed? At some level her choices would have been detrimental to others and her behaviour, at times, left a lot to be desired, but that's one of the prices of liberty. But the counter-argument is that we are straitjacketed by convention and cannot comprehend such a life of apparent autonomy. We can't all live like that. Ought one or two of us do so, if only to hold a mirror up to the majority? Incidentally, the verse on the side of the Consul is from Dacre's 'I'll be Your Sweetheart', an 1899 music hall number.
  7. Final thought: could this be anything to do with the brakes? My parents' automatic car won't start without the brake pedal being depressed. Would something like the Rover have a similar system?
  8. No, it's a different sort of problem. The issue I have is that rainwater collects somewhere on the exterior of the tailgate and then runs off, invariably into the boot, when the tailgate is opened. It's not a leak per se, as no water is finding its way past the seals - it's purely runoff. Is yours one of the newer ones? Looking at photos, it seems Ford may have solved the problem on the facelift models by redesigning the tailgate peak spoiler. On the facelift ones it's full width and sits over the taillights, thus looking as if it acts as a sort of gutter to direct water away from the boot aperture. On earlier cars it sits between the taillights, meaning it directs water into the gap between tailgate edge and rear wing. Incidentally, ST models have always had the full-width spoiler. Perhaps it was noted that ST models didn't suffer the same way and the modification was carried over to the normal line.
  9. I take it that's a proper Puma? Used to have a 1.7 Puma myself, with green paintwork and a grey interior. Fab car which drove as well as promised. Don't remember anything about the boot leaking, though!
  10. A quick missive about the motor, which is still motoring on: Recent MOT pass! Hooray! Not fully clean, but what's a rusty spring between friends? Recent rust and flaking paint! Boo! Only some very minor stuff inside rear arches that came off with a wire brush and glasspaper. I have repainted it with silver Hammerite as a temporary measure. Seems to have halted the corrosion, at least. One of the sills is now bubbling a bit, too. I see welding in the future. Air conditioning: still broken. Don't care. Side repeaters have been replaced with some very cheap pattern items from a local factor. One of the original repeaters fell to bits recently (the Ford ones are rubbish to begin with) and I was left with something of a problem. A trip to the local place produced a pair of 'crystal' finish items that look like they came from a Christmas cracker but actually fit quite nicely. They work, which is all that's needed. Now clean inside and out, again. Water in boot! Boo! The boot isn't actually leaking, but ended up with water in thanks to the Focus's well documented Niagara Falls act whenever the tailgate is opened. Rainwater pools along the top of the hatch then cascades down the sides when it is lifted and, usually, ends up pouring into the boot through the tailgate aperture. There is nothing to divert the runoff, meaning that significant quantities of water can enter the car. I found that out to my cost when lifting the boot carpet and discovering that the backing felt was sopping wet and slightly mouldy. A quick clean and disinfect has solved all that and the carpet is back in. It'll inevitably get wet the next time I open the boot, but you can't have everything. Think that's all for now.
  11. Would the Triumph 1500 TC be an example of that sort of thing? It was a continuation of the Toledo/Dolomite family main line and killed off the 'newer' range of front-wheel drive Triumphs. On similar lines, the German 12M Ford Taunus was replaced by the Taunus TC Cortina, which is familiar to us as the Mk3 Cortina. The TC was a development of the earlier Dagenham Cortina, and quite different in some ways, but it a descendant the same family - ideas-wise, there were no doubt claims of an 'all-new' Cortina at the time. The 12M Taunus was a very different proposition, being front wheel drive and V4 powered. One might argue that the 12M was much closer in spirit to the far later Mk3 Escort than the English Mk2 Cortina. Or perhaps these are examples of technology going backwards!
  12. Toyota Highlander. Had no idea what one was until this afternoon and not, ordinarily, the sort of car I'd look twice at but the Highlander is something of an attention-grabber. Why? Because it's enormous. I mean really, really big. Big enough for Royal Caribbean to consider buying one and calling her 'Princess of the Universe' or, being serious, only a few inches shorter and about as wide as the current Cadillac Escalade. The one I saw was having difficulty getting out of a railway station car park - to be expected as the car is quite obviously too big for British roads. Otherwise, it just looked like the usual, useless fake SUV thing that is also good for the environment because 'hybrid'.
  13. I've never believed in the fake photo theory either. If you look at the eyes of the two chaps crossing the road behind the blue car, you'll notice they are swivelled towards it - both seem to be having a discreet butcher's. One would expect that, given the possible uniqueness of the car. I'm sticking to the theory that it's a homemade special with humdrum Ford or Triumph underpinnings. There were dozens of cars of that nature in the sixties and many will be undocumented. Even if there is existent paperwork for the blue car, it'll be in someone's loft rather than on the internet.
  14. And some are born to sing the Maritime Blues... I think you've done all right for the money with this one.
  15. Looks great! Would have been a good car to have this morning, too, as the cold weather overnight in the South East left us with a touch of frost. Are the 1.8 ones any good? I had a 1.6 CVH in an Orion and found it willing, if somewhat unrefined. Would it be a lot slower than a 2.0 Pinto? Those were hardly refined either (if old memories of driving a Cortina so equipped are anything to go by), but quite willing once the revs were up. The CVH is, presumably, the opposite. I've somehow managed to get through life, at least thus far, without ever having driven a Sierra!
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