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quicksilver

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Everything posted by quicksilver

  1. quicksilver
    That's a Matchbox 1/64. They were definitely made with the flip-over roof as I had one and was fascinated by the mechanism. I'm not aware Corgi ever did anything similar.
  2. quicksilver
    I know, it looks like a recipe for bent pillars and cracked glass as it's strapping one of the weakest parts of the body yet must have been okay. Far easier than crawling underneath to strap the chassis but it just seems wrong.
  3. quicksilver
    I think they were transported like that. I'm sure I've seen photos of them on railway forums on flat wagons with the straps across the windscreen. Seems a very odd way to lash them down but no doubt there was a reason and Dez will be along shortly to explain it
  4. quicksilver
    If it didn't have Mustang plastered all over it, I would have thought that was a Mk3 Escort on silly Max Power wheels.
  5. quicksilver
    @Datsuncog remember this market find? A little bit of work and it's gone into the fleet with plenty of other Bill Day scratchbuilds for company.
  6. quicksilver
    ERF did do some export business, particularly with the EC series. Quite a lot went to Spain and a few to France and Benelux. They look a bit unusual because the position of the badges is reversed so the ERF logo is still on the driver's side on LHD trucks. As for why they weren't more popular, I guess the reason was lack of after-sales support; without a large network of dealers throughout Europe who could get a broken-down truck back to work ASAP operators weren't willing to take the risk of buying them for long-distance work. There's a thread discussing them on Trucknet: https://www.trucknetuk.com/t/left-hand-drive-ec-series-erfs/98494
  7. quicksilver
    K155 HAR exists as a cherished plate on a Harley and is in the middle of a block of Peugeots. The lowest Ford I've found is K205 HAR (a blue Escort 1.3 LX) and it looks like the Ford block ran right to the end at K998 HAR. Have you been reading Mr Del Mar's book? K155 VJU is another of those rare exceptions illustrated. Something else I read there and didn't realise is that K111 is forbidden from issue, presumably because it looks too much like KILL.
  8. quicksilver
    It still happens quite a lot. I've seen a good number of tractor units, particularly ex Stobart Scanias, made into 6x2 or 8x2 rigids. That involves not only a chassis stretch but usually moving the lift axle to the rear (most tractor units are midlifts but almost all rigids are tag axle) and in the case of eight-wheelers adding another steer axle. This one for instance was a Stobart 6x2 unit (PO66 UHU, Isabelle Skye), not that you'd recognise it as such now.
  9. quicksilver
    Check out this rarity. Plenty of horseboxes around recently as we're into horse dancing season but mostly fancy modern types. Not this one though, a 35-year old AWD that looks very well kept and is possibly the nicest of the few AWDs still working. The passengers look enthralled at travelling in such a rare vehicle.
  10. quicksilver
    The irony being that Gatsonides invented the speed camera to encourage faster driving. As a racer he wanted to measure his speed so he could improve it, so its role as a speeding deterrent is the exact opposite of its original purpose. He apparently often was caught speeding by his own invention and wasn't embarrassed because in his own words "I love speeding".
  11. quicksilver
    Whose horsebox is this? Why it's OURS of course. OUR 5 is a 1953 Hertfordshire issue that must be worth quite a lot of money now.
  12. quicksilver
    Spotted LE55 PAY yesterday. It's on a BMW M4 so their pay seems to be adequate.
  13. quicksilver
    This 100%. Once a thread has replies it no longer belongs to the OP but has become communal property and every contributor has an equal stake, so it's not right that only one of those contributors has the power to delete everyone else's posts. No ordinary user (moderators excepted) should be able to delete any content other than their own, but there are valid reasons why someone might want to delete their own posts. The fairest policy would be to allow deletion of posts but not threads, and if a thread starter really wants to have an entire thread nuked then they should have to justify that to the moderators. It's happened before on other forums and was mightily annoying when I'd spent time writing a reply, only to find my effort wasted as it disappeared with no warning when the OP unexpectedly and without explanation deleted the thread.
  14. quicksilver
    According to Wikipedia there was a 4-month gap between Princess and Ambassador production - Princess discontinued in November 1981 and Ambassador launched in March 1982.
  15. quicksilver
    My pet hate: so many otherwise good truck models have no rear light detail for some reason. It's like they put all their effort into detailing the front, then get to the back and totally lose interest. Even a spot of red/orange paint would look so much better than nothing.
  16. quicksilver
    Those are early proper Vanguards as they have decent wheels and a bit more detail. The Moggie van is one of the castings that started out as a Days Gone Vanguard though. I'd forgotten about the 1/64 Vanguards trucks; I don't think they were very popular as 1/64 is an odd scale and didn't continue under Corgi ownership except in the occasional twin pack with a Corgi Superhaulers modern truck.
  17. quicksilver
    Buckingham is a wasteland when it comes to toy cars. There are no toy/model shops and that Tesco is about the only place that sells new toys. The many charity shops never seem to have anything either and the only hope is occasionally finding something interesting among the mountains of Days Gone and battered Chinese rubbish on the Saturday flea market.
  18. quicksilver
    A lot of Lledo models are let down by the wheels, skinny things designed for pre-war vehicles but used on almost everything - they even did modern trucks with these wheels, which look ridiculous. The casting is very good and captures the difficult shape of the Moggie well. I had one and bizarrely it was painted lilac like the Minor Millions.
  19. quicksilver
    Anyone remember Days Gone Vanguards? They were the precursor to the proper Vanguards around 1994/95 and were basically a sub-brand for Days Gone models of fifties and sixties vehicles. Some of the initial Vanguards castings like the Mini, VW Beetle and Moggie van/Traveller started life in this series before being upgraded into the new range a year or so later. Some optimist on Amazon wants 20 quid for this one photographed with a potato.
  20. quicksilver
    Fairly recent import with a correctly declared date of manufacture. Someone at the DVLA clearly wasn't paying attention.
  21. quicksilver
    It certainly is, but I suppose the classic car community around here isn't particularly large. That Merc was taken to its resting place by a Sherpa spec lift that ended up in the same stash - possibly the last job it did before it was laid up. I remember it in use with the local Rover (later Ford) dealer but hadn't seen it for years and didn't realise it still existed. The good news is it's now been bought by someone who worked on it when he did his apprenticeship at that garage and wants to restore it to original condition.
  22. quicksilver
    Autobianchi A112 4x4, surely?
  23. quicksilver
    I thought it was an early prototype/concept of the Renault 25.
  24. quicksilver
    I haven't seen it said anywhere but perhaps the idea, in BL's usual muddled way of thinking, was that the Ambassador would replace both the Maxi and the Princess, so the Maxi replacement budget contributed to the Ambassador. To spend so much on a total redesign, then sell so few and drop it after a couple of years is still madness though. Come to think of it, the Maestro was well in development when the Ambassador was designed, so the money would have been better spent on getting that to market a bit earlier. BL have form for this sort of thing: the saga of redesigning the Allegro to accommodate the surplus E-series engines that would fit in the Marina is another great example.
  25. quicksilver
    The Ambassador is one of the craziest BL decisions. The Princess was the model least in need of replacement, yet they changed every panel where a simple facelift would do, and left the Allegro, Maxi and Marina that did need replacing to soldier on with nothing more than cheap facelifts. So little they did ever made any sense.
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