AnthonyG

For a comfortable drive I vote one of the more modern Citroens so BX, XM or Xantia. If @maxxo is coming you may find him unavoidably attached to the XM by the end of the weekend, unless his ownership of one last year cured him of that particular addiction. Somebody needs to bring a C6 to a SF sometime soon….just not me!

Oh my, looking for a bit more info on the roof design and found this delightful* facelift for the lucky Nissan fans in Mexico and Latin America - Hmm. Not sure that’s a completely coherent piece of design 😄!

I only noticed the otherwise very bland Micra K13 had two weird semi circles pressed into the roof panel when one parked next to me recently - I can’t find an easily shareable pic, but this short test write-up discusses it: https://business.cap.co.uk/driving-impressions/nissan-micra-tekna

I assume a new one, as that CF is going nowhere. Hopefully an IVECO to appall Cavcraft with.

If the Metro can’t come to Shitefest because it has only a 4 speed box, but the Toledo is still on the list of potentials - does that mean you’ve fitted a new gear box to the Toledo we don’t know about? 🤔

No idea! These were amongst some ancient farming related books I rescued for @Mrs6C- my parents’ neighbour was chucking a load of stuff out and I intercepted them on their way to the recycling bin.

I have some old books/mags to bring, and the latest vacuum find -some Chinese PoS named a ‘Xylonic’ which has remarkably poor suction despite me not finding any blockages anywhere. Something to Beko to investigate (and then launch into a skip, I imagine)! Does anyone want a couple of carpentry books? Bang up to date* as they are the metric versions!

Definitely only sold here as a Fiat 133, albeit only for a few years. Sort of a gap filler between the 126 and the 127. Although sold as a Fiat, it was common knowledge from Autocar/Motor/The Daily Express Motor Show Guide etc that they were built by Seat, and anybody interested enough to read a road test would have been aware of the origin, hence perhaps the difference in the recollections of @GregZX’s parents. I think possibly the last year or two of Fiat 850s (73-74) sold here were sourced from Spain as well. The British car market in the mid 70s had all sorts of basic models re-appearing due to high petrol prices and rampant inflation. Hence the 2CV arriving back on these shores in 74 after a decade or so of being unavailable. Plus you had the introduction of homemade ultra poverty spec stuff like the Mk2 Escort Popular and Viva ‘E’. The 133 was bang ‘on trend’ for all this misery!

I’ll be there both days but will get a B&B in Llanberis. Put me down for a Saturday breakfast though, please. As always, I will have a big pile of shite-fantastic books/magazines to give away. Edit: please can I have breakfast both Saturday and Sunday.

Also, I suspect a good 50% of the ones on ‘SORN’ have either been scrapped but without the correct paperwork being done, or are so dead they might not even be a particularly good source of parts.

HHR Rover 400s were mainly sold to fleets if I remember correctly. They weren’t that desirable even when new. Private buyers, most of whom probably owned and traded in the R8 400 or maybe even the old box like 200, might have hung on until the 45 was launched. The early 45s, before Project Drive really got going, were rather nice. Although I suspect the target market, even by that point, was mainly giffers who couldn’t stretch to a 75. Would be interesting to compare to the MG branded cars, I suspect these have had a rather higher attrition rate for various reasons, including a much higher crash rate than the Rovers (at least for the ZRs).

Either is fine with me.

Anyway, put me down for the FoD event at the end of May.

Harsh!

I have only just noticed this post😆! Anyway, yes, I have this, it is in my garage somewhere. Will bring to the next FoD, or maybe even a Shitefest in Shropshire?

@Schaefft, I don’t think they were low volume curiosities but someone did accumulate 10-15 Mazdas, mainly mainstream ones like 323s, 626s, dating from roughly 1980 to 1992ish. When storage was lost, there was then an attempt to sell but all in one lot or something, I think they were all scrapped in the end but I don’t think there was anything as rare as a Cosmos. Possibly a Montrose coupe? There were a couple of 323 Turbo 4x4s, which I suspect were the only two in the collection with any real financial value. It’s like the ‘Vaux-haul’ of @Six-cylinder of two-three years ago, if the 6cyls hadn’t been looking for a Manta coupe, and willing to buy the other 7 or 8 cars that came with it, all of them would have been scrapped.

I strongly suspect the car was first sold in France and then made its way to North America as a personal import (presumably before emissions regs etc made doing that really hard). I very much doubt Peugeot went to the trouble of fitting a French language instrument pack to the cars destined for dealers in Quebec!

It wasn’t a boring old V6, it was a shite-tastic straight six….and 2 litres as well. Literally an answer to a question no one in the UK car market even asked: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daewoo_Tosca

I have a dim memory of a kid doing exactly this on an episode of That’s Life or similar show circa 1985. There were 10 cars, the kid identified them all from the engine noise. It wasn’t you, was it?!

Re the 404, has it got French language instruments? - when I was sitting in it in November doing my best French cabbie impressions I have a funny feeling it had ‘huile’, ‘essence’ written etc on the little gauges. Or maybe I just dreamed this🤔? If it has French language instruments it’s likely a French market car that made its way to the US somehow. Original US market cars would have had English on the instruments.

Anyone into Checkers should check out (!) the Richard Pryor/Harvey Keitel film ‘Blue Collar’, from circa 1980. It’s about union corruption in the car industry, obviously the Big Three wouldn’t let the film makers anywhere near their facilities so all the factory scenes were filmed at Checker Motors in Kalamazoo. Let’s just say the factory makes somewhere like Browns Lane look cutting edge!

The sheer size of these cars is one of the reasons that Brit lookalikes such as Crestas and Zodiacs are worth serious coin - I reckon a really decent Zodiac convertible would be well over £20k these days. You get four-fifths of the style for two-thirds of the size, plus it will fit in a domestic garage (ok not in a new build😂) and do 20-25mpg instead of about 10-15. Of course, you miss out on the V8 ‘throb’ but otherwise they are generally easier to live with.

It would probably be pretty desirable if it was in good condition, albeit not as much as the iconic 59-60 models. The cost of restoring it to even half decent condition would be considerably more than importing a reasonable example from the US or a drier bit of Europe though.

Early 1950s Plymouths and Dodges are the very definition of American stodge.

Yes, the UK is not a good home for classic American cars. You need proper money to look after one properly, and our climate really does them no favours. They don’t take well to living outside in shitty damp weather. Plus, I’m sorry and obviously no reflection on anyone on here, but some of the owners are simply moronic, with a penchant for Confederate flags etc.