Top 10 Sixties Rep-mobiles

[Junkman]

For quite a while I have the impression that older saloon cars are now getting on the radar of the mainstream collectors, who hitherto concentrated more on the flashy and even sporty (yech!) non-shite.
This is kind of confirmed by prices for old multi-door shite suddenly skyrocketing.
Now even the media covering old chod is picking up on them. My latest email newsletter from CCFS puts 60s repmobiles into the limelight and suggests the following cars as their top 10 shite:
 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/austin/cambridge/1962/204982/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car1

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/ford/corsair/_/224570/

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/ford/cortina/1966/255938/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car3

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/volvo/121/1968/251364/

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/rover/p6/1969/258254/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car5

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/nsu/ro80/1968/245052/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car6

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/triumph/2000/1967/240579/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car7

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/peugeot/404/1965/192020/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car8

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/hillman/minx/1966/257462/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car9

 
http://www.classiccarsforsale.co.uk/car-advert/vauxhall/victor/1965/178879/?utm_campaign=060614&utm_medium=email&utm_source=ccfs-newsletter&utm_content=car10

 
 
Please note that those are CCFS's choices.
However, I can see the trend, and what this means for us is, that whoever fancies cars like this should act quickly, before they all are priced out of shiters' territory, or whoever fancies a healthy profit, should stock up on them now.
 
I also have the impression, that many 70s bread and butter cars are going to have their day soon.
 
Discuss.

[UmBongo]

We had a Corsair briefly.

 

My Dad seemed to spend every Sunday afternoon underneath the thing trying to fix the latest problem.

 

I seem to recall there was always a big oil patch on the driveway, too.

[TRW]

Surely that's a bonus to ownership of one?

[mouseflakes]

We had a Corsair briefly.

 

My Dad seemed to spend every Sunday afternoon underneath the thing trying to fix the latest problem.

 

I seem to recall there was always a big oil patch on the driveway, too.

 

Was that his Brylcreem?

[barefoot]

Do you think its anything to do with all the old saloons on that Endeavour telly programme?

[mouseflakes]

I also have the impression, that many 70s bread and butter cars are going to have their day soon.

 

Discuss.

 

Would say this has already happened for many Japanese models?

[eddyramrod]

I had a Corsair, 32 years ago    It was a 2000E, bought as a scrap-value trade-in and punted on when it became clear it wasn't ever going to pass another MoT.  I thought it was lovely, much comfier than the Granada I brought back from Cyprus.

Conversely my dad had a Corsair 1500 brand new, and kept it a mere 11 months, he loved it that much.  I didn't mind because it didn't have enough doors, and he replaced it with a brand new Zephyr so we got back doors at last!

Pretty safe to say I'm not going to have another one, as being RWD Fords, they are already running out of reach.

 

Repmobiles?  I'd have to nominate the Cortina at the top of that list.  Ford got it exactly right from the start, at exactly the right time, the beginning of the company car boom.  All the Cortinas were perfect for repping, then it all started to go wrong.  Sierra, oh dear, then, horror of horrors, the FWD Mondeo. 

I'd say quite a few cars on the list above would totally fail to qualify as repmobiles back in their day, at least in Britain.

[mercrocker]

I am a young executive, no cuffs than mine are cleaner

I have a Slimline briefcase and use the firm's Cortina

 

When no less an authority than Sir John Betjeman uses a line like that, what higher accolade can a repmobile be given?

 

Ro80 company cars must have been thin on the ground outside of the Audi-NSU concessionaires, I would have thought.   As for Volvo Amazon's I reckon only Hants Constabulary probably had them outside the private car sector!  

[Junkman]

Do you think its anything to do with all the old saloons on that Endeavour telly programme?

 

 

Not sure whether the trend towards collecting old saloons was triggered by the mainstream media.

I think it's the other way around, the trend towards collecting old saloons has triggered the mainstream media to feature them.

[Junkman]

I am a young executive, no cuffs than mine are cleaner

I have a Slimline briefcase and use the firm's Cortina

 

When no less an authority than Sir John Betjeman uses a line like that, what higher accolade can a repmobile be given?

 

Ro80 company cars must have been thin on the ground outside of the Audi-NSU concessionaires, I would have thought.   As for Volvo Amazon's I reckon only Hants Constabulary probably had them outside the private car sector!  

 

 

Not all of the cars featured can be considered repmobiles IMO. Apart from the ones you mentioned, the P6 V8, and even it's brethren with half the cylinder count, were definitely executive transport. Even for a Corsair you may have to have been quite some rep.

 

For added 60s repmobilism, I'd rather suggest cars like the Fiat and Simca 1300/1500, ADO16, Hillman Hunter, and possibly even VW Typ 3.

[Asimo]

I did a lot of hitching around England in the early '70s so got to ride in a lot of real repmobiles with real reps in them. MkII Cortinas, and Hunters certainly but also Maxis, Austin etc 1100 and HB Viva Estates. In those days Rover and Triumph drivers did NOT give lifts. Ever. Nothing foreign at all unless it was a hippy-driven knacker.

[forddeliveryboy]

Not sure whether the trend towards collecting old saloons was triggered by the mainstream media.

I think it's the other way around, the trend towards collecting old saloons has triggered the mainstream media to feature them.

 

I agree. Such a common sight for so long and then obscured by more collectable stuff, now they appear relatively rare and unusual. Also, I wonder if classic collectors within a marque have had their fun with the sporty rarer versions, have spent way too much maintaining less durable engines and weaker body structures and have eventually begun to appreciate the more 'ordinary' saloons? Something like Spitfire - GT6 - TR6 - Stag, now with a family and a 2500 estate gives many of the same experiences plus it's rarer and more practical - and can be squeezed past a wife.

 

Not forgetting the first classic buyer who can afford £1200, not £5000. I'd say the Triumph and Rover 2000 are prime candidates for rises in value. A lot of younger people find modern cars deeply uncool and ridiculously expensive to keep running, perhaps simple old saloons are going to be their choice?

[Junkman]

Not sure about the younger people (in more than this respect), but I think you nailed it for those, who already are collectors, and now want to park something actually more unusual, more practical, and less troublesome, next to their row of fancy sports cars.

 

It looks like the trend is already in full swing in America, where hitherto a sedan or station wagon was merely seen as a parts donor for a hardtop or convertible.

Now suddenly old station wagons command prices only topped by the corresponding convertibles, and moredoor sedans also took a hefty spike,

even if they have B-pillars and door frames.

[ProgRocker]

Conversely my dad had a Corsair 1500 brand new, and kept it a mere 11 months, he loved it that much.  I didn't mind because it didn't have enough doors, and he replaced it with a brand new Zephyr so we got back doors at last

 

I never realised the Corsair were available as a 2 door.

 

Well before I was born my parents had a 2 tone Humber Sceptre which according to my mum was a gorgeous car. However due to financial pressures it got traded in for a mark 3 Zephyr 4 with lots of body filler. My mum wasn't happy. :-/

[mercrocker]

Company cars were a bit of a scarcity in the 60s anyway.   "Fleet" cars for reps to use were in the main things like Cortinas and Anglias -  because deals were easier to get from Ford maybe?   To get a company car just as a "perk" was pretty much the preserve of director-level.   When a big electronics firm re-located darn sahf when I was just leaving school a lot of the managers were lured down with P6 company cars.   My first job in 1975 was with a local engineering firm, the company motors were Fords - two reps Cortinas (both 1600L), a Granny Ghia for the engineering director and a 2000 Cortina estate for the production manager.   I was more impressed with the firm next door whose boss had a Manta A Turbo!  

[Sloth in a bowl]

The family car when I was a nipper was a Corsair 2000E H reg in sky blue. Sold on as a runner after 10 years hard use and if it had had a decent range in the gearbox (lower first and a fifth for top) then it may have been kept a bit longer.

[Bren]

My dad a had a 2000 v4 corsair when they were still in production.

 

He thought it was great and was pretty quick back in the day.

 

A noisy gearbox meant it had to go.

[mercrocker]

Wasn't the 2000E box the one everybody wanted?

[Justin Case]

I'm pretty sure that as well as the ubiquitous Cortina, The Austin Cambridge or Vauxhall Victor were the most common weapons of choice.

 

But don't forget the Wolseley 1500, a sort of plush Morris Minor on steroids. Surely the ultimate 60s rep-mobile. None of those little luxuries that todays 3 series driving photocopier rep has these days; life was a little more basic then for those who spent their days  on the road flogging typewriters and duplicating machines

Wolseley offered a ‘Fleet’ model in addition to the standard car; this can be identified by a lack of wood trim around the windscreen and vinyl seats in place of leather

[Junkman]

A fleet Woltzy?

Now them was ye goode olde dayse!

[Sloth in a bowl]

Wasn't the 2000E box the one everybody wanted?

It was a close ratio 4 speed box where 1st was a bit too high for good towing and 4th was a bit too low for motorway work. If you wanted a replacement for a hot Escort box it was fine.

[brickwall]

Don't know so much about the rep mobiles, but I just asked dad what sort of stuff he had as he was a senior engineer and director. Dad had a variety of Jags, but Rover was king!

 

He reckons the Ford Zephyr 6 (?) was popular for big account people and so too the Sunbeam Rapier and Hilly Hunter.

For folk selling a line of nuts and bolts, the Moggie and Popular  along with the later Marina.

 

 

Fleet cars had to be UK built at the time due to the Buy British campaign.

[eddyramrod]

A Zephyr 6 might have been offered as the alternative to a Rapier, but I would have thought a Hillman Hunter was a step below, directly equivalent to the Cortina.  Our Zephyr was a 4 but that was good enough for a six-year-old whose favourite TV show was Z Cars!  And anyway, my dad bought his own, he was a one-man business (I'm sure my mum did a lot of the bookwork but he was the one out all week).

 

 

Fleet cars had to be UK built at the time due to the Buy British campaign.

 

I think a lot of that was simple resistance to Johnny Foreigner.  WW2 was a pretty raw memory in the 60s, men who had survived being young soldiers/sailors/RAF crews were now middle-aged and holding the purse strings.  Not many of those chaps were going to buy Volkswagens when they could support the boys at home and buy a Morris.  That said, I do remember us all being urged to "Buy British" which I thought then, and continue to believe, would have been a good idea in general.  Says he, with one Japanese car and one Korean, and looking at one French and one Swedish!

[mercrocker]

My mates dad was a Volkswagen adherent from the 1950s, and he was a decorated WW2 vet.   He spent most of the time in the Pacific and so his hatred was for the Japs.   When we started hooning around on Hondas he wouldn't let his lad have a TS185 and instead bought him a Matchless 250.   We even got taken one night to see Tora Tora Tora (the proper original) as a reminder of how horrid it had all been.   The Matchy was crap TBH and mate's dad relented finally.  Point was though, the old man never ever bought a British car - he hired an A55 once and hated it.   After the Volksy came a Renner 6, Saab 96 and various Fiats.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Wasn't the 2000E box the one everybody wanted?

Yes they were,even though it was the same box as fitted to Mk2 Cortina 1600E/GT/Lotus,Capri 1600/2000V4 GTs and Escort Twin Cam/Mexico/RS1600, the Corsair got it first so the name stuck.

I think I've mentioned before that in my youth quite a few Corsairs met their end at my hands, they were the cheapest way to get a 2000E box, sometimes called a Bullet box,but they had even closer ratios , didn't stop everyone selling a 2000E box describing it as one when selling it though- ebay didn't invent months.

 

Edited to change months to monks , no, Mongs . Apple autocorrects every other fucking thing I write

[Squire_Dawson]

A chauffeur-driven Humber Super Snipe or Vanden Plas 4-litre R for the company directors. Possibly even a Rolls or Daimler depending on how well the company was doing. Humber Hawk, Austin Westminster, Rovers or the larger Triumph for the Regional managers/middle management. I don't think reps were very common in the Sixties, as other shiters have noted. The Morris 1000 was the choice of the commercial traveller - what we now refer to as salesmen.

[brickwall]

A Zephyr 6 might have been offered as the alternative to a Rapier, but I would have thought a Hillman Hunter was a step below, directly equivalent to the Cortina.  Our Zephyr was a 4 but that was good enough for a six-year-old whose favourite TV show was Z Cars!  And anyway, my dad bought his own, he was a one-man business (I'm sure my mum did a lot of the bookwork but he was the one out all week).

 

 

 

I think a lot of that was simple resistance to Johnny Foreigner.  WW2 was a pretty raw memory in the 60s, men who had survived being young soldiers/sailors/RAF crews were now middle-aged and holding the purse strings.  Not many of those chaps were going to buy Volkswagens when they could support the boys at home and buy a Morris.  That said, I do remember us all being urged to "Buy British" which I thought then, and continue to believe, would have been a good idea in general.  Says he, with one Japanese car and one Korean, and looking at one French and one Swedish!

 

 

I suppose, but a well specified Hunter was a pretty neat car, but it would depend on who you worked for and your position. The Buy British and I'm Backing Britain thing was when the marques were nationalised so it sort of made sense.

[Richard]

I am a young executive, no cuffs than mine are cleaner

I have a Slimline briefcase and use the firm's Cortina

 

When no less an authority than Sir John Betjeman uses a line like that, what higher accolade can a repmobile be given?

 

 

 

He didn't mean it as an accolade though.

[Junkman]

Back in Germany, there were various repmobiles in the 60s. One of them was the VW Beetle. The other one was the VW Beetle. And then, there was the VW Beetle, for all, who didn't like the aforementioned ones.

[forddeliveryboy]

brickwall, on 06 Jun 2014 - 4:16 PM, said:

Fleet cars had to be UK built at the time due to the Buy British campaign.

 

I think a lot of that was simple resistance to Johnny Foreigner.  WW2 was a pretty raw memory in the 60s, men who had survived being young soldiers/sailors/RAF crews were now middle-aged and holding the purse strings.  Not many of those chaps were going to buy Volkswagens when they could support the boys at home and buy a Morris.  That said, I do remember us all being urged to "Buy British" which I thought then, and continue to believe, would have been a good idea in general.  Says he, with one Japanese car and one Korean, and looking at one French and one Swedish!

 

 

Not sure you're altogether right about that, my grandad was an aircraft engineer living in a Northern engineering town and bought a Merc in the mid-sixties. I remember its total starkness but sense of indestructability and quality in the mid-seventies when it was still running like clockwork with well over 100,000 miles on it (almost unheard of at the time, it hadn't rotted, either). It raised a few eyebrows but he was a fairly well-respected guy and abuse didn't materialise, apparently.

 

Back then, German cars makers were still recovering after the war and their products weren't to everyone's taste. Even in the mid-80s, German meant very German. VWs and Audis had crap brakes, the gearing was often all wrong, BMWs only got going above the sort of revs most people were used to using when deliberately trying to wreck an engine and handling was designed without bends in mind. The only sop to the British market was swapping the steering wheel over.

 

Before that lie of all political lies when we joined the 'Common Market' in 1973, anything from our Euro chums had loads of import taxes slapped on it so choosing non British was an expensive option. A 1600cc Alfa may see off most UK motorway plod with ease (apparently you needed a two-litre one to outpace the stock Buick-engined Rovers, though - although I've heard of one P6 with 300hp under the bonnet on the M62 in the early 80s), who would also have had great difficulty keeping up with faster French shite both on and off the M-ways, yet foreign cars weren't just expensive and niche but complex, highly-tuned exotica which only wealthier or more eccentric types drove - those who didn't really have their feet on the ground. We even had special BritFords, designed down to match the Englishman's expectations and lack of sustained high-speed driving, in return for no import taxation. Even to this day, there are some - especially in the agricultural community round here - who perceive something French or German as very subversive.