AnthonyG

That’s designed-in heritage, dating back to at least Mk1 Cortina’s if not before: From a book published 40 years ago!

Judging by the seat colour, I suspect the specification of that car was a lot less sporty (no spoiler or body kit) when it was new. I don’t know Opel trim levels that well but whatever the equivalent of a Capri L would have been. Late Manta GTE interiors on the U.K. market were grey or black from memory. I’m also doubtful of the 1990 date as I’m sure these ceased production in 87 or 88. It may well have sat unsold for a year or two, not requiring registration - if the Norwegian system works similar to here.

IIRC these are designed in Brazil and the ones we get are made in India, so I imagine they have all the theft protection you get with a 2001 Suzuki Alto or the like. They do seem to have taken over from the last generation Mokka as a default horrible cheap giffer car.

Sorry I missed this one, family duties intruded. Good luck with the Saab!

Great thread by the way, with a great selection of vehicles. Loving the oddities like Vauxhall Victors and Morris Marinas, but my favourite has to be the Volvo PVs. The one at the top of page 5 is absolutely fantastic, although the pale green 62 model further down the page is probably more useable as a daily - without worrying about scratches and paint chips, I’d be afraid of taking the top one out.

I have been watching the Norwegian series ‘State of Happiness’ (Lykkeland) - about the early days of the North Sea oil business - on BBC 4 and there are some superb period cars featuring in it. My favourite so far is a circa 1966 Opel Kapitan in a gorgeous metallic blue. Several other Opels appear -so I take it they were popular in Norway, perhaps because they were more affordable than Volvo/Saab? Or maybe they have just survived better than other models? I also spied some Bedford trucks, and some very nice American cars.

I didn’t manage to get a picture, but I spotted a very smart E reg Renault 25 in silver in the local Sainsbury’s car park. It had what I assume was special edition ‘Symphony’ labels on the C pillars so I guess maybe a mid range model with the benefit of the full-on Philips stereo from the top specification which was ridiculously large in 25s. From memory it took up all the space between the heater controls and the gear selector, easily the equivalent size of 3 normal radios of the era.

Having driven a 1500 Special owned by @Andyrew at the weekend, the E series models certainly go pretty well, and the gear change is certainly a lot better than I remember (once I’d acclimatised to 3rd and 5th being basically next to the radio speaker grille at the bottom of the middle of the dash!). Best bit about it was - common to a lot of 70s/early 80s cars - was that when you ordered blue seat trim, you got a VERY BLUE interior. Dashboard, seats, door trims, carpet, practically everything was blue - even the boot carpet had blue edging to it. This wasn’t just on the Special, a brown 1300 DL I had many years ago was equally BROWN inside.

What does Rad refer to? It doesn’t look very radical…the only reference I can think of.

Should be about on the 17th/18th, can’t do the earlier date though.

A point about Golfs - in 1975 they may have been more expensive but they weren’t really seen as ‘premium’ in the sense they are now, just quite expensive for what they were, but that the extra was worth it if you cared about reliability and build quality. These were the two main reasons people bought Beetles. VW’s build quality and reliability was a step up from any other ‘normal’ manufacturer and the paintwork was particularly noted as being very good indeed (paintwork would often go very flat after 2-3 years in the 1960s, particularly if a car lived outside). VW also had tremendous brand loyalty. It was basically a cheaper, smaller Volvo. Funnily enough the early Golfs (74-77) were not that well-built, and had poorer paintwork than the Beetle - which could look tatty very quickly. I remember a friend’s mum had a 1975 ‘N’ one circa 1982/3 and it looked and sounded like a right old heap. I doubt that many people would have shopped an Allegro against a Golf - far more likely a Fiat, Datsun or Renault, if they looked at a ‘foreign’ make at all. Looking at period Which? magazines, Allegros were regarded as quite reliable - particularly the A series cars - and indeed better than average for rust resistance. They weren’t regarded as particularly brilliant to drive, but certainly perfectly OK. Marina’s on the other hand - Which? thought they were ‘orrible!

Is that for real? I get it’s a ‘ST innit’ and all that but surely the best of those can’t be more than 5-6k? Maybe it’s Ford development car and it’s actually an RS…😆

And talking of resurrection of old American nameplates: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a39970134/volkswagen-scout-ev-revival/ VW is creating a EV 4WD brand using the Scout name, which they inherited from their purchase of a US truck maker named Navistar. Navistar was the truck business of the old International Harvester company, and the original Scout was kind of similar to the original Ford Bronco:

Lynk & Co are a Geely developed brand, started about a decade ago. I suspect there is some effort to maybe sound like ‘Lincoln’, although there are plenty of defunct American brands out there, if they really want to go down that road. Maybe not a recent one from GM, Ford or Chrysler (e.g Mercury, Plymouth, Oldsmobile), which they are still probably quite keen on protecting, but I can’t imagine Stellantis really need to hold on to Rambler, Hudson or Nash for example. Packard would be a brilliant brand to resurrect if you could unearth it from whatever corporate form Studebaker last existed as.

I will be up on Saturday, not sure about Sunday at the moment. @brownnova, here is an incentive to turn up: Dustbuster road test, from THE PAST.