Cars you didn't know existed until very recently.

[myglaren]

This just popped up on YouTube.

 

Apologies for the waffle.

[STUNO]

This shows the Timbs Special "as found" at about 1 minute

 

[jon.k]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:06 PM, Talbot said:

Having a car that is so notorious for galloping rot with such a long-lived engine as an XUD is why I can weld.

And leaving Peugeot and Citroen owners like me confused when they open the Haynes xud manual to find lots of the main pictures are of some kind of talbot no one’s ever seen.

[bunglebus]

On 3/3/2020 at 8:01 PM, bunglebus said:

Saw one of these in France today. Most exciting!

 

20 hours ago, brownnova said:

And now....

 

Didn't spot any of the modified hatchback ones but there were a few (presumably) factory ones in rural France

[Spottedlaurel]

I've seen a handful of them over the years, but they're certainly not common:

Peugeot 205 XAD by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Peugeot 205 XAD by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Neither is the 205F van for that matter.

When I was looking for them I remembered this Polo oddity, hidden behind the Mercedes:

Mercedes SEC W126 by Spottedlaurel, on Flickr

Apparently a Transfer model made by Gruau: https://petrolblog.com/2015/07/vantastique-volkswagen-polo-transfer/

Looks like they also did a Fiesta conversion, but I don't recall ever seeing one of them:

[EyesWeldedShut]

On 5/24/2020 at 4:06 PM, Talbot said:

I had three Diesel Talbot Horizons, and several more petrol ones.  I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the XUD engine-d cars were smoother on the road than the simca engine-d ones.....Having a car that is so notorious for galloping rot with such a long-lived engine as an XUD is why I can weld.

Coincidentally I just stuck a photo of my dad's Horizon on another thread - he lived in a seaside village and that car was looking poor by the time of it's first MoT. There were a couple of Simcas in the area that were also rotten and, in the dark, they all sounded the same. 

Only thing I recall on the Horizon which I only drove a handful of times was that the brakes seemed incredibly hard to feather as they snatched - kind of all or nothing.

He traded that in against a Skoda Rapide (which wasn't).

 

[EyesWeldedShut]

Ah OK - reason I cam to this thread.  Vauxhall Monaro?

Reading the 'ask a Shiter' discussion on Sierras and there's a link to carcavesscotland.co.uk which (of course) I had to visit. There's a £10K Vauxhall Movano on there. Wow! There's a pricey van methinks.

Nope - looks like I'm a troglodyte, Murano - it's a thing. Even got a discussion on the forum about it. I guess I'd stopped reading car magazines by the time that one reached the UK (and I was driving a star shite car - Mitsubishi Spacewagon, 2.0l petrol - so not in the Murano league - and at £10,750 I'm still not)

 

[Talbot]

38 minutes ago, EyesWeldedShut said:

Only thing I recall on the Horizon which I only drove a handful of times was that the brakes seemed incredibly hard to feather as they snatched - kind of all or nothing.

Horizons were actually remarkably high mechanical specification cars.  They had double-wishbone front suspension, independent trailing arm rear suspension,  torsion bar front springing and two-piston fixed front brake calipers on fairly large discs.  The brakes, as you mention, were astonishingly powerful for such a humdrum car and you had to be a bit careful with them.

As a Horizon was the first vehicle I really worked on, I was genuinely surprised to see that so many other cars have a "lesser" specification when it comes to braking and suspension.

[chaseracer]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:24 AM, brownnova said:

And now....

 

On the same theme as the Polonez Cargo these 205 van type something... 

Slightly different to one another, but variations on a theme... 

Top one's by Durisotti, t'other is the 'factory' version by Gruau.  I looked out the brochure just now, so that's work fecked for a while...!

[Richard_FM]

Those vans remind me of those conversions for wheelchairs that seemed to be common in the 1980s.  

[bunglebus]

 

Found images of MK2-5 wearing them!

 

[bunglebus]

 

[twosmoke300]

On 5/26/2020 at 12:01 AM, jon.k said:

And leaving Peugeot and Citroen owners like me confused when they open the Haynes xud manual to find lots of the main pictures are of some kind of talbot no one’s ever seen.

The bx manual tells you to remove the battery tray with 3 bolts iirc. Which would be fine and dandy if it wasn’t welded in on production cars. 

[Snipes]

8 hours ago, bunglebus said:

You'd think they'd match the wheels for he promotional photo shoot.

[Adrian_pt]

The poor Opel looks worryingly like it's being humped.

Meanwhile, lucky* UK customers could go to Blackpool and blow their hard-earned on an "FSO Freedom": a camper conversion on the base of the FSO 125 pick-up, done by Madisons. The guy who converted them says, with admirable understatement, "there weren't many made".

 

[LightBulbFun]

The Renault 900 prototype

code name: MindFuck (probably)

      

I honestly thought it was one of those joke cars and had to google it LOL

[GeordieInExile]

Those caravan conversions remind me of this:-

 

[quicksilver]

On 5/30/2020 at 11:41 PM, bunglebus said:

 

Poor Mini. First an upturned boat fell on its roof and then it was swallowed by a carnivorous caravan

[Austat]

Vanden Plas 1800 prototype:

 

[High Jetter]

Ooh I like that! Anyone else see a resemblance to the Shadow T2 in the side roofline?

[barrett]

I knew it existed, but I didn't know it survived!

[Austat]

Ford Fiesta Tuareg Concept, the origin of SUVs? If only today's SUVs were this cool:

[Mr_Bo11ox]

That thing humping the Astras is shocking, it must scrub tyres out in no time for a start. I wonder how it attaches? I'm envisaging something like a couple of picture hooks that clip on the rear edge of the sunroof aperture.

[barrett]

I don't know anything about physics, or weight distribution or owt really, but why didn't they at least put the slave wheels at the back of the thing instead of having that ridiculous overhang?

[bunglebus]

3 minutes ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

That thing humping the Astras is shocking, it must scrub tyres out in no time for a start. I wonder how it attaches?

Combination of towbar and roof rails 

[bobdisk]

14 hours ago, Austat said:

Vanden Plas 1800 prototype:

 

They should have put a front like this on the Vanden Plas Allegro. Would have looked better than the piggy snout.

[Rod/b]

14 hours ago, Austat said:

Vanden Plas 1800 prototype:

 

Isn’t it just an Oztin Kimberley with a VDP face?

[chaseracer]

47 minutes ago, Rod/b said:

Isn’t it just an Oztin Kimberley with a VDP face?

Pretty much...

...or Tasman, depending.

Wikipedia sez: "In the early 1970s, British Leyland had an idea of a medium-sized Vanden Plas model, based on the Australian X6 models. Had the car entered production (there was a running prototype made), it would have had a formalised Wolseley 1800/2200 front end, the rest of the car's bodyshell being X6 based. The car is now in private ownership, one of very few prototypes to leave a factory."

So, about 70% correct, then... ?

[GeordieInExile]

70% gets you a first class degree, though!

[Austat]

On 6/2/2020 at 3:53 AM, LightBulbFun said:

The Renault 900 prototype

code name: MindFuck (probably)

      

I honestly thought it was one of those joke cars and had to google it LOL

Very much like Tom Tjaarda's first design for Ghia, the '59 Selene I concept.