AnthonyG

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.

A 66 plate Ford Ecosport has finally been removed from a main road in Cheltenham (Princess Elizabeth Way, a very busy route from the north to the west of town, and not a road you’d easily dump an old banger in) having sat in the same spot since at least December. I can only assume the owner died, as it would have been worth fixing no matter what had gone wrong with it, and a finance firm would have repossessed if the owner had stopped payments. It was only removed after the Untaxed vehicle stickers appeared a couple of weeks ago.

I should be able to make the 20th/21st. I can see why you like that garage, a very neat job on the DS floors there.

I can’t believe how bad ‘Car’ magazine is now, it seems to be printed on toilet paper and the reviews of anything that’s not from a German brand - or a Tesla - automatically assumes it’s readers would only buy it as some sort of ironic joke. Even for a quid on EBay I couldn’t be bothered to buy a recent one. I still read Octane and CS&C , but tend to buy them on EBay when someone’s selling a recent year’s worth for a tenner or so. Old/vintage copies of Car, Car and Driver and Motor Trend are my go-to reading now. I have a subscription to Private Eye though, as @HMC says it’s prospering despite the total lack of online/digital presence. Maybe that’s the key. I kind of like the fact it looks like the ones I bought in the early 1990s apart from maybe more colour inside. And the fact that the quality of political scandal - indeed politics in general - has got a lot worse!

As usual, Autoshite’s resident librarian has some car books and magazines to dispose of, I’ve had a bit of a clear out! Mags will be free (apart from 1970s Cars & Car conversions, which will be 50p each), and some of the books. I’ll stick up a list of the books later on, staying with my folks on the Herefordshire/Brecon borders tonight.

I suspect there may be actual teachers there, and possibly a deputy headmaster - @brownnova, did I get that right? Shiters are definitely closer to the mild end of the spectrum, I would say. But there definitely will be (inoffensively) drunk people in the evenings as well.

A couple of recent charity shop finds - Dinky Packard Clipper, very happy getting this for £4: and a Karrier Chipperfield Circus booking office van for £3: The place with the Karrier van had a massive box full of stuff in packets, so will have to keep on eye on what they put out. Some boxed Corgi Chipperfield stuff from the 1990s was already on display, but you had to go on EBay for it. Can’t be doing with that nonsense.

I am planning to attend for at least Saturday and can be a backup to collect Des if required.

To be fair, it does look a lot better than I expected in the photos, but they don’t show the underside. It can’t hurt to go and have a look at it, then at least you can check if it still has a floor pan. Is it lacking some Hydragas at the back or is that just a quirk of the photo? - looks a bit low to me. Beautiful shade of blue though - was that Moonraker Blue?

Did he have a Scottish cousin?

This is the sort of thing I was thinking of, a VW Karmann Ghia stuffed full of lead acid batteries: Built by a couple of engineers at the Allis Chalmers (tractors) Research Laboratories in the early 70s, using one of their cars and a lot of company money, I imagine.

I think the Breadvan thread above is about modern EV technology and how they can substitute for an ICE car. This thread sorts like the perfect place for all those weird American experiments of the 1960s/70s/80s as well as more modern junk like the Reva G-Wiz. I think someone in the US tried to sell Renault Dauphines with the engines replaced by lots of batteries, under another name. This would have been early to mid 1960s, I’ll have to see if I can dig out the article. There was a fantastically successful* attempt by Peugeot to sell an electric 106 in the early 90s, I think for the French market only. There was one on the Peugeot stand at a recent Retromobile.

@Six-cylinder’s MG Metro is a great car to drive, but every time I do I do find myself looking for 5th gear. I imagine the Turbo is the same but more so? £7k seems a lot for something that needs a engine rebuild, a ‘bit’ of welding (it’s a 1980s Metro, it will probably need more) and a respray. If it had just one of the above issues, it would probably make sense, but it sounds a lot like Condition 2 money for a Condition 3 car. That’s using the old Practical Classics criteria, where 2 equalled useable and 3 equalled fucked…

Chris neglected to mention the modernz were invited to the Jubilee display as well: The 90’s TVR Chimera at the top of the row was being revved up by the owner to the delight of small children and elderly men. The black Jag F type looked a bit of a weapon as well. Its a shame no one bought a BRG Freelander 2 as we could have staged Prince Philip’s last driving adventure* with it. Cue jokes about white Fiat Unos…..

According to yesterday’s Times, MG now have 3% of the market, more than Mini, Volvo, Citroen or Volvo. They (along with Hyundai/Kia) are the only mainstream brand to have increased sales this year. Hyundai and Kia sold 80,000 vehicles last year between them and now have 11% of the market. MG were described as a ‘British heritage brand’ and the article did point out everything is now made in China.

I thought that handbrake was a bit dodgy. There’s not much of a slope on your front drive, and it was getting very close to the front of the Sovereign!!

FTFY 😉

That’s not NCAP, it’s some copycat bullshit put together by a fire brigade to prove a point about wearing seatbelts. None of the airbags deploy which rather prove the point that it’s staged. Plus the B pillar has been cut to film the ‘bodies’ flying about. Lamposts are not trees, unless it’s a really old iron or concrete one they are designed to have some ‘give’ if something hits them.

Is that bottom one American, or a British/Scottish copy?

I imagine it’s awaiting collection by a scrapyard or car breakers. I doubt a demolition firm would just dump it hoping the council would collect it. I guess if it goes to a car breakers it will get sold on or dismantled for usable bits, if it goes straight to a metal yard it might just get crushed. The alternative is one of the demolition guys or builders has said they’ll do something with it.

I should be around from Thurs midday onwards to assist - have PM’d.

I watched Brannigan a couple of months ago when it was on TPTV. There’s a very early yellow Capri II (M reg I think) that chases an S type Jag and ends up in a roadworks skip after the Tower Bridge jump. I doubt Ford would have used it afterwards, so I wonder if it was a pre-production model or something similar they couldn’t (or didn’t want to) sell on to the public. Edit: Just read on wiki that the black E type used by the hitman character in this film survived, the current owner is trying to get the original registration back. I’m impressed as the car looked a bit of a mildly customised heap in the film.