AnthonyG

Great stuff. I remember two things about early Novas - the strapline for the advertising was ‘the little better car’ and when I was 9 I had a red Corgi Juniors one which I think was an SR. Novas did seem to resist rust better than many of their competitors, if they hadn’t been the darlings of the Max Power scene I suspect we’d see more about. I’ve seen more saloons than hatches as survivors, presumably due to giffer ownership and undesirability to 90’s modders. A Nova saloon would have been an ideal replacement for a giffer looking to upgrade his aging Viva HC or Shuvit circa 1984.

Although perhaps boring in terms of classic chod, that photo does show the longevity of cars in Portugal. The newest any of those models could possibly be is 11 years old (Picasso). I’m not sure what the blue thing behind the Picasso is, but it doesn’t look 2010s to me.

Also a Triumph enthusiast applying what looks like semolina to an innocent Vitesse:

I found the below periodical amongst all those MotorSports that had been living in the Renault 11. I know @Mrs6C loves this sort of old crap, so will bring it with me on Sat. Look forward to a really half-arsed road test of a MG 1300, a buyers guide to about 50 different makes of identical looking caravans (of which I think only Elddis are still going), and a great ‘repair your door sills’ feature where some donkey goes to the trouble of buying new sills from a Vauxhall dealer for his FB Victor and then pop-riveting them on and ‘blending’ the join with filler ?

I have no idea how this knackered Focus got in the field - no evidence of disturbed hedges anywhere. Obviously abandoned before the corn really started to grow... Nr St James’ Church, Colwall, Malvern.

I am sure several forum members would be happy to take that van off your hands and return it to the road. What condemned it for the MoT?

Should be there on the Saturday.

The Plymouth Cricket. Not a success as Chrysler was already building the Mitsubishi relationship for sourcing their US market small cars in the early 1970s. Plymouth dealers got the short-lived (‘71-73) Cricket. Quality issues and lack of any ongoing improvements from Chrysler UK led to lack of sales which led to withdrawal of the model before the ‘74 model year. Dodge dealers got the Dodge Colt (early Galant) at about the same time - this car was a bit of a minor hit - particularly after the oil crisis of late ‘73 - and spawned an entire range of Dodge branded Mitsubishi’s which la

Barely anyone. It was only available for about a year. By this time they would really only have been readily available in New England and California. That model’s poor image was why the Rover 800 was sold Stateside as the ‘Sterling’ a few years later. Conversely, Peugeot did pretty well in certain areas, there were quite a few 505s running around Connecticut/NY/Massachusetts when I visited - this would have been in 2000-2001. The 405 suffered from being too small for the price segment, and unless I’m corrected, the 605 was never offered. They sold to the same demographic as Sa

Probably going to get flamed for this - but Invacars. They would have been acceptable in about 1955 but they should have been completely updated/replaced by 1970. There were loads of different concepts and designs by the early 70s that could have been used or adapted, or the vast majority of users could have been offered converted Minis or the like. The fact that they were still offered to the disabled concurrent to the first era Renault 5, Volkswagen Golf or Ford Fiesta is shameful really.

What is it about Honda catalysts? Someone at work had one stolen off an ‘02 Accord Type R, the replacement value (and the fact it was special order from Japan) wrote the car off - although someone did buy the car off the salvage yard and put it back on the road.

I will be there Saturday afternoon, plan to leave Cheltenham 9ish so hopefully be there about 11. I’m staying over in Buckingham, so will be around for most of Sunday as well.

Lovely car, good to see it’s moved on to another caring owner. I don’t generally like white cars but OEW has a nice mild ivory shade to it. And that interior! Just WOW ❤️

Good to see it’s getting rebuilt, hope the restoration company encourage the owner to purchase some proper reproduction number plates! I didn’t know the car had actually survived, it was only when a period of extreme boredom during lockdown led me to look up cars from ITV 4 shows on the DVLA checker that I found out it was still about. Sadly none of Chisholm’s vehicles, including a pov spec Solara in doom blue, have been preserved for history.

Interesting, didn’t know there was a 1300 version of the ‘Pinto’. The car he drives in the chase is a silver 4 dr, I can’t capture and paste the pic on its own but it’s on this imcdb page: https://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_809270-Ford-Taunus-TC2-1977.html