quicksilver

Just seen a few of these in a Talking Pictures film about the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally and wondered what on earth they were. Amazingly a near-complete list of entrants is online, which told me they were Glas 1004 or 1204 saloons. I know about some Glas products but I'd never heard of these.

I made them myself. You can buy waterslide transfer paper for inkjet and laser printers, then use the graphics program of your choice to design the decals.

It's another 3D printed Metro, this time a 3-door Rover 100. I guess that's the beauty of 3D printing; it's easy to produce different variants by altering the drawing. The three best Rover Group colours: Polynesian, Nightfire and Amaranth. Why can't modern cars come in fantastic shades like these?

Inspired by the talk of Midland Bank mobile branches a couple of weeks ago, I dug out this Leyland National and turned it into a might-have-been JHV 611N. I think I got it from someone on here some years ago and aptly it was a United bus with a Whitby destination as that's where JHV was based. The real one disappeared without trace but its sister got converted into a bus so my story is that the same happened to JHV: it went through the local auction, was bought by Quicksilver and fitted out as a school bus.

This is no ordinary Rover 25. It's the Paul Williamson art car. If you think the exterior is bad, wait until you see inside (brace yourself, it's not a pretty sight!) It looks like he got the carpets from his granny's parlour and the dashboard from Fisher-Price. It was supposedly intended to make Rovers appeal more to a younger demographic but he seems to have gone for more of a giffer Barbie aesthetic.

They sure did, but for some reason Comet was also a long-running name among that menagerie of animals. On that basis I'll say Comet was the worst name for a Leyland truck as it's okay by itself but didn't fit the theme of the range.

It's sad to see how truck names have changed over the years. The old British marques had great names like Mammoth Major, Warrior and Super Mastiff that reflected their tough and dependable nature, my favourite being the superhero Guy Invincible. Nowadays it's either a string of random letters and numbers (DAF XF 105.460 FTG and MAN TGX 26.470 XXL for instance), meaningless words that look like typos (Actros and Arocs) or just plain silly like the Iveco Sway (S-Way) and Renault Thigh (T High).

He's not a legitimate peer of the realm but Pete did buy him one of those phony Lord titles in one of his videos so he has a piece of paper declaring him Lord Barrington. I don't think anybody has ever been ennobled for services to bus preservation, but he sounds like a deserving candidate.

They look like PTT (Swiss Post) Beetles.

First one is a Fiat 1200. Not sure on the others but the estate looks Opel-ish.

Would that be 'Lord' Tim Barrington? Often seen in Pete and his Bus videos working his magic on various dilapidated RMs.

No, it's not an Austin/Nash Metropolitan and I'm sure we all know those exist - it's a Hudson Metropolitan. After Nash took over Hudson in 1954, a quick fix to expand the range was by badge-engineering the Metropolitan without much success. And another even rarer Hudson. The Italia was a superleggera coupe based on Hudson Jet running gear, designed in conjunction with and built by Touring in Italy. It cost more than a Cadillac so they only made 25 and Nash immediately killed it off.

Always a sign of a quality highly-collectible product when the manufacturer misspells their own name on the certificate.

Flickr has just reminded me of K492 HAR, photographed by @cms206 back in 2010. Sadly not a survivor as it appears to have been scrapped in 2011

Kei Ka! Fun* fact: according to Wikipedia it was the first hybrid kei car on the market.

Some are probably family heirlooms. Their parents/grandparents/etc. bought a new car in the fifties/sixties and were lucky enough to get a short plate. They've inherited the plate and use it on whatever mundane car they have because of its sentimental value, and won't sell it as they don't need the money.

That G-wagen looks like a Siku rip-off. The Caprice is probably an original casting that wasn't copied from a reputable manufacturer, hence it being so much shonkier than the others. An odd set indeed and I wonder if it was ever sold in the US or just foreign markets that might not realise the absurdity of putting the US president in a Mercedes. And the style numb Mini - it looks even more brilliant* up close. I bet it could tell a psychologist an awful lot about the nutcase who made it. No, I do not want it, not even for a quid. Having that thing in the house would give me nightmares.

Never heard of that but it sounds crap. Did they seriously think they could take on Jaguar with an underpowered, stretched and slightly restyled FE Victor? As Panther were involved, Jankel would probably want to sell it for eleventy million quid.

And before the Kaengsaeng came the Paektusan in the late 1970s. Like everything in North Korea it's still very enigmatic but it seems a handful were built. https://chinacarhistory.com/2022/06/12/there-was-a-small-production-of-the-north-korean-sungri-paektusan/ Be warned; that site is a rabbit hole and 99% of the stuff on it will be cars you didn't know existed.

It was indeed going to the NEC, just seen it in dollywobbler's preview video on the Panther club stand. They've also got a Rio, the Castrol Lima, a De Ville and a lurid metallic green J72 there, so basically most of the cars discussed in this thread in one place.

Does anyone remember the Dodgey Charger 'Generally' from the Practical Classics 'Dukes of Wisbech' feature in 2001? I recall at one point it got nicked and was found about a mile down the road neatly parked in a public car park. It's still around but with the numbers and flag removed and now runs a 2-litre Zetec for the go to match the show.

He and his drivers don't hang about and get all over the country in these old girls. He's got a third now, this older E14. With the big Cummins in a 4x2 chassis it should go even better than the ECs.

Didn't manage a photo but I've just seen this looking rather out of place in Milton Keynes Arriva Southend painted it into the old Southend Transport livery a few years ago. They were going to scrap it but MK decided Southend's scrap was good enough for them to use in service. And in a complete contrast, in front of it was one of these experimental autonomous buses.

Those would have been Strachans bodies like this, the standard military bus of the sixties: The blue one is actually a Metal Sections body assembled in Ireland and never seen in the UK in either military or civilian use. It does look quite similar to the Strachans with its pointy front.

Some bus shite in miniature. These look like the sort of miserable 1970s school buses Scarfolk Council might have run in its Department of Education, Schools and Learning (a multi-faceted department with many diverse responsibilities). I can just imagine them waiting to pick up a load of happy* kids outside a grim brutalist comprehensive made of dodgy concrete and asbestos. They're all resin kits of Bedfords usually found with the Irish state-owned operator CIE/Bus Eireann.