The Wedgister - Princess and Ambassador Records

[AndyW201]

A few I remember from yesteryear!

 

DUS 933T, Gold 1.7 HL, run by a local taxi firm in the late '80s.

 

JAJ 977N, White early Austin 1800HL, owned by one of my neighbours, scrapped late '80s.

 

FTC 87W, Russet brown 2.0 HL, owned by my geography teacher at school. Traded in for a new Mk2 Fiesta festival, late 80s.

 

BAJ 591Y, Damask red Ambassador 1.7L, owned by my mates dad. Last taxed 1995.

[Datsuncog]

I know I've a few snaps of Ambassadors and Princesses snapped while on holiday in Norfolk in 1996. I'll look them out and scan them in later.

Annoyingly, I've no recollection of the registrations on either the Damask Red 2200HL owned by my friend's dad c.1985, nor the slightly crispy Vermilion 1700 I went to look at on a dark night in 1997.

[vulgalour]

Dave:  If you're on desktop (may be different on mobile, I only use desktop) you can put the picture directly into the post.  If you click on the 'more reply options' button to the bottom right of the post it will open a new page that then has 'attach files' at the bottom left.  You can then click 'choose files' and directly transfer the images of choice from your device of choice.  After that, make your post and add the images as normal.  I'm not a Facebook user so hopping on Facebook to get the images isn't an option for me either.  The modern world has given us too many options to make life easier!

 

Andy:  cheers for those, I didn't have any of those at all.

 

Datsun:  I look forward to it!

[666jjp]

vulg, are you keeping a record of the non suf/pre fix plates(private) like the hearse on page below

 

http://www.leylandprincess.co.uk/hearse.htm

[Dave289]

Dave:  If you're on desktop (may be different on mobile, I only use desktop) you can put the picture directly into the post.  If you click on the 'more reply options' button to the bottom right of the post it will open a new page that then has 'attach files' at the bottom left.  You can then click 'choose files' and directly transfer the images of choice from your device of choice.  After that, make your post and add the images as normal.  I'm not a Facebook user so hopping on Facebook to get the images isn't an option for me either.  The modern world has given us too many options to make life easier!

 

 

 

[vulgalour]

666jjp: yes I am.  I didn't have a dedicated section for those yet.

 

Dave:  it worked!  Nice matching speed boat.  Are they both the same car?

[Dave289]

Dave:  it worked!  Nice matching speed boat.  Are they both the same car?

No, these photos should have been with my original post.

 

On the left is PTF738R - Princess 2200HL manual, registered 1st June 1977, untaxed since 28th January 1991, taken at Ambleside camp site in August 1979

 

On the right is LLA552P - Austin 1800HL manual, registered 4th August 1975, untaxed since 28th June 1987, taken at Lee On Solent in September 1977

 

 

[JeeExEll]

 

Lots more on here.

http://www.imcdb.org/vehicles.php?make=Princess&model=

[vulgalour]

That's added a few more to the list at least.  Unfortunately, a lot of the IMCDB shots are too blurry and indistinct to be of use, there's still some gems in there so was well worth the link.

[vulgalour]

Vehicles of Note

Police

HJW200N

JVP904P

KOA263P

LPT147P

MUM531P

RSC813P

WVF737P

 

Ambulance

YKH760X

HAG642Y

 

Government

KYT5P - Ministerial car

KYT13P- Ministerial car

KYT20P- Ministerial car

DCP458V - Bradford Mayoral car

FHN740V - Darlington Mayoral car

LCW402W - Preston Mayoral car

 

 

Limousine

LVH943P

OCP87X

OEL825P

VJX802V

VJX803V

JHD605W

JHD607W

PWL861W

 

Hearse

81D1679 - Father Ted episode

81WW309

THD90R

APW817S

YCP663V

YCP668V

LHD475W

MGK2P - Keeping Up Appearances episode

MJK934W

RHD528P

YVH612Y

TIB4796

UCP171X

 

Club 100

GMR650W

RPV585W

PRC351X

 

Torcar

85-SV-46 - Torcars hatchback conversion

 

Campers and Convertibles

DIB3583 - Starcraft camper conversion of an Ambassador.

URR260X - Camper conversion of an Ambassador.  Retitled the Coaster Tremor

AHY199 - Convertible

XTC958V - Convertible

 

 

[vulgalour]

Updated the W reg section and added 'Vehicles of Note' section.

 

I'm thinking I need to set up a dedicated web archive for this really, I just have absolutely no idea of how to go about it, or what the best layout would be.  Doesn't need to be anything interactive, just a basic information and tiny image archive as I'm doing here.  If anyone can help with this, please get in touch.

[quicksilver]

Thought I'd found another one. Oxford Diecast normally model real cars and they've done models of UOX766S, VRW475S and YBJ243X. The fourth version is a Staffordshire Police car registered LRE750P but sadly that doesn't seem to be a genuine reg as DVLA says it was a Suzuki moped.

[vulgalour]

Images - The best of what I've got available have been turned into thumbnails for all the vehicles that were listed here.

 

Extra info - coming soon.  I've got a spreadsheet for most of what you see here, but I need to research more on the ones you don't see.  It will also take me a while to type all the relevant information out and since I'm doing this for fun rather than as paid work, I'm not going to work on this after the point it stops being fun.

 

Non-UK cars - again, coming soon.  I've got plenty of images of these, none of which are organised.  I don't have access to a DVLA type database for these either and some of the number plates I may have misidentified the country of origin, so there's a lot to do on this side of things.

 

---

 

The sad thing doing this is just how many of these cars simply don't exist any more.  Many of the pictures I have are cars in an abandoned state or, at the opposite end of the scale, at shows.  There's no many cars from this selection that you see in the wild simply being cars.  It has been interesting to see how colour trends change with each new registration year, with earlier cars being a much wider range of colours to begin with fading out to just beige and silver for the most part at the end.

[Noel Tidybeard]

eh- up flower thys got the silver limo on a beavertail labelled wrong

 

 

good work nontheless

[alcyonecorporation]

I found one in a skip once if it helped

[Dannyk]

 

Saw this at a local car show back in the summer.

Edit, just seen you already have it.

[Amishtat]

Spotted this last year somewhere in Suffolk

[vulgalour]

Noel: fixed it now, m'duck.

 

Alcyone: a WHOLE one?

 

Dannyk:  Got quite a few of Noggin.  Good to know it's still out and about.

 

Amishtat:  NEW FIND!  Have added it to the pile of images still to sort.  Thank you.

[sierraman]

This is really wierd but In 1994 my grandparents took me to the Pontins at Morecambe. I remember a beige rust stained ambassador sat by the boating lake. As I got older I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it as an 8 year old, anyway, fast forward to last year and there was footage on YouTube of a Star Wars conversation the same year, lo and behold but the beige Ambassador was there, I hadn’t imagined it.

[rovamota]

That's a good list and thanks for putting it together. NOG 833X has recently been restored after years being passed around.

[vulgalour]

I would have liked to have put it on the club site but this is really the only way I currently have of doing it in an easily accessible way.  I'm sure there's going to be cars that are known to the club that aren't here too.  Difficult to keep track of them all even though there's barely any left.

[adw1977]

KUD305X from a January 1982 brochure.  No record of it now, I can't be certain this was the genuine registration as sometimes they were made up in brochures.

 

[adw1977]

From AA Drive and Trail magazine Apr 1982:

 

LOV755X - 2 litre untaxed since June 1993

 

LOV758X - 1.7 untaxed since September 1992

LOV756X - 2 litre untaxed since April 1994
 

All registered November 1981, long before the Ambassador went on sale, and registered as Austin-Morris cars of unknown model.

 

Incidentally, online searches show that LOV753X LOV754X and LOV759X were also probably pre-production Ambassadors, the DVLA record them all as Austin-Morris unknowns and they have 1700 or 2000 engines.  None have been taxed for years.

 

 

 

 

[vulgalour]

I do wonder if they planned to release the Ambassador a year or two earlier than they did and to keep it in production a year or two longer.  It seemed an awful lot of effort to go to for a car that was barely in production for two years.  While it does look superficially the same as the Princess, almost the entire body was reworked on the Ambassador so it was a bit of an oddity in that it was almost a completely new car that didn't actually look like more than a facelift.

[rovamota]

The Ambassador was developed (for £19 million) with a maximum two year life span in mind; enough to refresh the Princess design and keep sales afloat until the Maestro/Montego were in full production in 1984. They even spent money giving it a facelift (including an expensive new dashboard moulding for the VP to accept a wood insert) in August 1983 knowing production would end two months later. However, there was six months stock sitting in fields and the car remained in brochures until April 1984 though dealers couldn't guarantee you'd get an Autumn '83 facelift car until all the old stock had gone.

[vulgalour]

That doesn't seem like the most sensible or focused approach.

[Austin-Rover]

One for your 'Governmental' section. Ex Bradford MBC civic car.

[rovamota]

That doesn't seem like the most sensible or focused approach.

 

It was just a small part of the hopelessly misguided product planning at Austin Rover at the time. 

[adw1977]

There was a further model planned, based on the Maestro/Montego platform:

 

 

This was LM14/15 - a large hatchback which would have been a much more direct replacement for the Ambassador.

Details on the AROnline site: http://https://www.aronline.co.uk/cars/austin/maestro/concepts-and-prototypes-meet-the-lc-family/

 

Was there an idea within BL that the Ambassador would remain in production alongside the Montego until LM14/15 was ready?  That might explain why more resources were put into the Ambassador than seemed sensible.

[flat4alfa]

LCA711T

LCA711T.jpg

That's sitting in my garage only feet from where I am sitting right now