AnthonyG

I failed badly at trying to edit that list, put me down for the 12/13 August and the 2/3 September.

Someone at work was offering a load of plastic & paper cups/cutlery/‘glasses’ for free so I have snaffled it all for Shitefest. Anything left over can be used at a FoD event.

Hmm not sure that’s worked very well on the phone.

I vaguely remember a few of these getting sold by South Hereford Garages, the early ones ran alongside the Mk1 Golf Caddy but then sort of replaced it (the dealer told me the Yugoslav civil war stopped supply of Caddys, which were built in Slovenia). Neither model was popular in the local area. There was a successful Toyota dealer who sold quite a few Hiluxes so I assume Taros were more expensive, thus rather pointless where farmers were the main market. The Caddy was cheaper but struggled to sell - rural tradesmen like carpenters wanting a 2wd pickup bought a Ford P100 (same sort of price range but more load space) and most of the farmers got the 4wd Subaru MV - they were everywhere.

VW have indicated the current Golf is the last. Perhaps they meant the last ICE one, but all the press reporting on the announcement seemed to imply the Mk8 was the end of the strasse for the name as well.

The next EV thing is another SUV lookalike named the Explorer: https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/feu/en/news/2023/03/21/new-all-electric-explorer-engineered-and-built-in-europe.html I suspect there will be a more normal looking thing based on the VW ID platform that this uses as well. The Mustang thing is a different EV platform designed in the US and nothing to do with VW. Maybe if Ford hadn’t pissed billions up the wall chasing the driverless vehicle dream in the US they could have used the money on their own EV platform…

I’m up for a trip to the aircraft museum. I suspect all this rain means I will be coming in the Jag, which means there will be two boxes of books/magazines to give away.

Love the tractors, the old stuff and the Dacia. Tractor and quad are very Shropshire. Still remember someone at my school drove his dads massive MF tractor to Hereford Leisure Centre for Wednesday afternoon ‘games’ (you could choose to do tennis/squash/golf etc in the 6th form) and then home because it had been at the dealer being serviced. It was about the same size as the Case in your first pic. He had to park it in the area normally reserved for coaches! WTF is the chrome thing attached to the ‘50s Cadillac’s window?

Lovely. Although the current wheels (which I assume are the originals) look more suited to a Primera, they are still better than the chrome ones. Plus chrome wheels have a lifetime measurable in weeks in the British climate. The ones Ford offered as an option on high spec Mondeo Mk2s - we used to replace them all the time under warranty after the winter salt stripped the finish off - after the second or third set the customer usually accepted something else that was more durable!

Possibly the owner tried to move it without fixing (or noticing) the flat, and perhaps now wishes they hadn’t! I take it the white marks on the ground next to the exposed rim are unrelated?

The Mk3 Escort convertible was Glynis Barber’s car in Dempsey and Makepeace, and also I think featured in some Leslie Ash private detective dross named Cats Eyes from about the same time. This was when Ford’s press department knew how to get their cars into the ‘right’ sort of programmes. I can see the Mk5 convertible featuring more in something like ‘Birds of a Feather’. I think the blonde one had a Nissan Sunny ZX coupe with that awful factory body kit, so a flabby Escort cabby would be a perfect replacement.

Have you decided what to bring to SF? The Citroen BX looks ideal but it sounds like you’ve already made your choice?

Probably won’t be able to do the bank holiday in August due to family stuff but the other dates look OK for me.

We should do another next year, so everybody comes your way for a change. I’m binge watching Still Game at the moment, so I suggest the car park of the Clansman pub in Craiglang. Might need some security to keep the neds away though.

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).