Shitescan; preservation of fading old newsprint is our concern

[Tadhg Tiogar]

I see the VW K70 mentioned. I bought one in 87 after first owner. About 40,000 miles. A very odd car - super smooth engine - nice but bland cabin...but very odd to drive with strange seats which felt like sitting on a spacehopper. Sold it after a year. Can see why it was not a success

 

You might remember there was no space beside the clutch pedal to rest your left foot.

 

Definitely not a sales success in Britain - only 800 RHD cars ever built. I had a '73 90hp "L" between 1989 and 1992. The only other one I saw at that time was a blue 1971 LHD car brought in from Sweden and re-registered on a "K" plate.

 

I had an RO80 too. Again a bit bland - had a Ford V4. Not a car I fell in love with either

 

Shame you didn't get to try one with a proper rotary in it! Better with a Mazda.

[lesapandre]

My K70 was white. Don't remember the pedals. Styling was crisp and not too dated. The RO80 just felt a bit flimsy and a bit too big. Just didn't like it much. Moved on to Mercs of that era and the later ones. I have a 28 year old W124 which is a fantastic design.  In my top 5 cars.

[somewhatfoolish]

Bump for issue 7.

 

 

 

If I lived in Brazil, where labour is cheap, I would employ a small boy to perch on top of the engine, slowly pouring petrol into the inlet manifold. This would be much more effective than having a Solex C36EIEA carb.

[Shep Shepherd]

YES!

[UltraWomble]

That MG in Issh 7 hasn't been on the road in a few summers

[UltraWomble]

Nostalgia time

[somewhatfoolish]

Sticker shite; my one is still attached. Mint condition*!

[Datsuncog]

Okay then... while avoiding pat phrases about ennumerating poultry prior to full incubation, I think we may have source material available soon for a scan of Japloy #1...

Looks like that unexpected £10 voucher for getting sent the wrong stereo lead came in handy after all.

[UltraWomble]

Sticker shite; my one is still attached. Mint condition*!

I had some knocked up on ebay from a scan of my original one.

[Datsuncog]

On 1/11/2018 at 8:18 AM, somewhatfoolish said:

I don't have a copy of issue 1, if someone lucky enough to own this clearly priceless tome would lend it to me I can scan it for posterity.

  

Should you still be undertaking this selfless task of epic proportions... then it's only fitting that you should be aware a copy of Jalopy #1 has been procured; bartered at great cost from a blind Berber tribesman deep in the desert wastes of southern Morocco. Possibly been nibbled by a camel at some point, but largely intact and legible.

If you want to PM me your address, I'll get it over to you, post-haste!

[Asimo]

I don't remember ever seeing this magazine back then? Did it make it into WH Smith or was it specialist outlets only?

Is the Mark Williams (publisher) the same guy who wrote in Bike magazine in it's early days?

[Datsuncog]

As far as I can remember, Jalopy was a fairly mainstream mag - I was mainly buying it from an independent newsagent in Northern Ireland (we had no WH Smith, Tesco etc at that time) but readers' letters stated they were indeed obtaining their copies from such quarters... but publishing schedules were erratic and sometimes there was a hiatus of several months between editions, so it wasn't always easy to track down. It was also an awkward size liable to get obscured on the shelves, possibly prompting the last four or so issues being published in A4 size in a last-ditch attempt at visibility.

I understand that Mark Williams was involved in Bike and a few other magazines of that ilk (Used Bike Guide, too?), and some of the Jalopy team went on to publish Real Classics mag, that carried similar 'real life' old car stories but lost much of the humour that underpinned Jalopy - and which I never really found again, until I discovered this place.

It's great to be enjoying them all over again, though terrifying that 26 years has passed! These are still the 70s/80s cars I'm drawn to, although it's weird to think that a fair few of the 'rusty old bangers' profiled were less than ten years old in many cases.

[ProgRocker]

I first discovered Jalopy on a dreary December Saturday in 1993 aged 16. 9 months away from being able to apply for a provisional driving licence and acquire a shit car of my own. I had gone to Great* Yarmouth with my parents to do a bit of Christmas shopping. I broke away from them to walk around the shopping area, went into a newsagents and lo and behold, the copy with the green Cortina 80 on the front with the headline 'Old Frauds' was too tempting to pass on (Dec 1993 or Jan 1994 issue?)

 

I just loved the irreverent humour...a bit like this site really. Not trying to be a serious motoring publication. Reading it was light relief. I bought 2 further copies: the one with the yellow citroen GS on the front and the larger A4 one with the brown mark 1 Capri on it.

[Datsuncog]

On 2/10/2018 at 12:07 PM, ProgRocker said:

I first discovered Jalopy on a dreary December Saturday in 1993 aged 16. 9 months away from being able to apply for a provisional driving licence and acquire a shit car of my own. I had gone to Great* Yarmouth with my parents to do a bit of Christmas shopping. I broke away from them to walk around the shopping area, went into a newsagents and lo and behold, the copy with the green Cortina 80 on the front with the headline 'Old Frauds' was too tempting to pass on (Dec 1993 or Jan 1994 issue?)

'Old Frauds', the green Cortina issue, is Jalopy #8 and has a date of January 1993 on the cover... so I'd hazard that it was perhaps December '92 that you began your shiter odyssey? Either that or some newsagents in Great Yarmouth really need a stern talking-to about managing their print stock efficiently...

I recently found an album of photos I took in Gt Yarmouth/ Cromer/ King's Lynn and it was absolutely chock-full of shite in 1996... absolute chod heaven.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

As far as I can remember, Jalopy was a fairly mainstream mag - I was mainly buying it from an independent newsagent in Northern Ireland (we had no WH Smith, Tesco etc at that time) but readers' letters stated they were indeed obtaining their copies from such quarters... but publishing schedules were erratic and sometimes there was a hiatus of several months between editions, so it wasn't always easy to track down. ....

It was definitely sold in the local independent grocery chain and was always on the shelves there. Don't remember Smith's having it, but possibly not the branch I usually went to. The quality of the paper used was similar to the stuff that disposable hand towels are made of - it was surprisingly absorbent if you spilt your drink on the page. I was hoping that they might feature either the car I had at the time - the VW K70 - or the Ro80, but both cars only got a passing entry in the guides in the back; maybe there just weren't enough of them around to merit a full feature.

[Datsuncog]

I found that my local indie newsagent didn't always have it, for whatever reason... either they quickly sold out (unlikely, but possible) or suffered various problems getting hold of it. Unreliable publication was a bugger, though, hence several gaps in my run of copies - I was never sure if they'd gone belly-up, as was repeatedly hinted at in the editorials. NPO and (later) Easons did sell it too but there were none near me - so Rainbow in Bangor was my weekly port of call.

I didn't see any copies for sale between #5 and #10, and then after finding #10 (Mini) nothing appeared on the shelves until #14 (Herald/soft-top motoring special). I did buy whatever back issues were still available with Christmas money one year, but still have some annoying gaps (which eBay may be about to help me to fill... with the intention of rehoming any 'doubles' to interested parties on these fair pages).

I can recall buying my copy of #15 from a Morrisons supermarket while over on holiday in 1993 (and promptly ripped the cover in twain when it got stuck down the back of the caravan's bunk bed), so it seems there were some national distribution outlets. As mentioned upthread, I distinctly recall some readers' letters mentioning that they stumbled across a copy in the magazine section of Tesco etc while their wife was doing the shopping.

It's odd that even Jalopy virtually overlooked the K70, as even though it was always a bit of a rarity there were plainly some still in circulation in the early '90s, in the banger category... I've only ever seen one on the road, and that was a bright yellow example parked up on a trading estate in Monaghan back in 1999, weirdly. It's good to know you've owned a car that managed to go under even the Japloy radar! I also seem to recall a Techs n' Mechs article on the Wankel rotary engine, but I s'pose the ethos was that content was dictated by reader submissions rather than the editorial board - no doubt if they'd received an Ro80 article, they'd have been delighted to churn it out!

It's a pity that the magazine finished when it did - even though there was some recycling articles from earlier issues, as this forum proves there is no limit to the amount of time that can be spent prattling on about rubbish cars. Financial realities aside, from a content perspective Jalopy could have kept going for years.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

....It's odd that even Jalopy virtually overlooked the K70, as even though it was always a bit of a rarity there were plainly some still in circulation in the early '90s, in the banger category... I've only ever seen one on the road, and that was a bright yellow example parked up on a trading estate in Monaghan back in 1999, weirdly. It's good to know you've owned a car that managed to go under even the Jalopy radar! ....

There were only 800 K70s built in right hand drive. Never a sales success. The one I had should have been the same colour as the bright yellow one you saw - it was a metallic colour called "Maya Gold" - but my car had spent a number of years sitting in a family friend's front garden and the paint had faded back to undercoat. The interior paint, on the other hand, was still perfect and the lacquer was intact. It was only one of about 12 UK-market cars still known to exist in 1990/91. That car was unique in the sense that it did not share any parts with any other VW other than maybe the oil filter.

 

There was a much better "Maya Gold" K70 owned by a fella named John Huggins. He owned "MFH 857L" and lived in Gloucestershire. He also owned a Ro80.....

[Datsuncog]

On 2/13/2018 at 1:06 PM, Tadhg Tiogar said:

It was only one of about 12 UK-market cars still known to exist in 1990/91. That car was unique in the sense that it did not share any parts with any other VW other than maybe the oil filter.

I can well believe the rarity... out of interest, whatever became of your example? Did it go out in a blaze of glory, or was it sold on and disappeared into the mists of time...?

I gather the K70's uniqueness was down to the NSU design as a cheaper, more conventional stablemate to the Ro80, initially shitcanned by VW when they subsumed NSU following its rotor seal warranty-related bankruptcy - and then kickstarted it into production a few years later to shore up the unloved VW 412's market sector share. Like the Ro80, handsome cars - and not hard to see how influential its airy cabin and overall shape proved to be on subsequent Audi and VW designs (there's a lot of K70 in the Passat B1, imho).

I did see a dark blue K70 at the Irish Classic Car Show at the RDS in 2016 - first one I've ever had a proper look at. Will see if I can hoke out some pics later on.

EDIT: My mistake - it was actually a yellow example at the RDS. Crammed into a corner, hence crappy pics. Dunno how the hell I thought it was blue. Hey ho. There's a slim chance then that this might be the very same car I spotted seventeen years previously - it's certainly the same bright yellow.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

I can well believe the rarity... out of interest, whatever became of your example? Did it go out in a blaze of glory, or was it sold on and disappeared into the mists of time...?

"OPJ 976L" was sold in 1992 to an enthusiast who lived with his wife on the Margaretting Road in Chelmsford, Essex. The cylinder head rebuild kit that I bought from Germany in those pre-Internet days also went with the car. Never heard anything of it after that, and DVLA has no record of it now.

 

I gather the K70's uniqueness was down to the NSU design as a cheaper, more conventional stablemate to the Ro80, initially shitcanned by VW when they subsumed NSU following its rotor seal warranty-related bankruptcy - and then kickstarted it into production a few years later to shore up the unloved VW 412's market sector share.

The only thing that VW changed before they put it into production at Salzgitter were the badges. Everything else was the original NSU design. NSU had no option but to try to build it to offset some of the losses on the Ro80 that were just beginning to filter through. "K" stood for Kolben which is German for "piston", in the same way that "Ro" was self-explanatory. What's not often remembered was that NSU also planned to fit the rotary engine to the K70 once the seal problems had been fixed, so there would have been a "Ro70" as well.

 

Initially built to produce 75hp from 1605cc, it was quite slow and heavy. No power steering. My car was the later "L", which VW had upgraded to produce 90hp. Quicker but still heavy to park. The top model was the "LS", with a bigger 1807cc engine producing 100hp and only this version could do the ton.

 

Like the Ro80, handsome cars - and not hard to see how influential its airy cabin and overall shape proved to be on subsequent Audi and VW designs (there's a lot of K70 in the Passat B1, imho).

 

I did see a dark blue K70 at the Irish Classic Car Show at the RDS in 2016 - first one I've ever had a proper look at. Will see if I can hoke out some pics later on.

There was only one other K70 near where I lived - it was also dark blue, carrying the plate "RBY 326K", and was LHD brought in from Sweden and re-registered. That one has also disappeared from DVLA records; last taxed up to December 1992.

 

I had non-digital photos of my K70, but I can't remember which album they were mounted in..... I did manage to own and run a Ro80 ("NSU 508") for about four years; the previous owner had fitted a Mazda 13B rotary in it before he died, so it was noticeably quicker than the original. It was also metallic brown. Still regret having to sell it. It was bought by Ro80 guru Phil Blake, but I think he broke it for spares. Phil is a bit of a madman - he owns something like 20 of them (so a fair chunk of the surviving cars) at his place in Suffolk - but there's nothing he doesn't know about rebuilding and keeping them going. He's the go-to for spares.

[ProgRocker]

'Old Frauds', the green Cortina issue, is Jalopy #8 and has a date of January 1993 on the cover... so I'd hazard that it was perhaps December '92 that you began your shiter odyssey? Either that or some newsagents in Great Yarmouth really need a stern talking-to about managing their print stock efficiently...

 

 

Ah, Jan 1993 issue. Sounds more like it actually. Thanks Datsuncog.

[Datsuncog]

Okay, the Shitescan Procurement Programme continues apace... looks like I've managed to secure TWO more copies of Jalopy #1, as well as some of the copies missing from my personal stash: #2 and #11.

My longstanding copies of #3, #4 and #15 are also looking somewhat ragged due to time/mishaps, so I'll see whether these new arrivals are substantially better or not. #10 and #14 are effectively duplicates, so copies of these five (plus a spare copy of #1, since the other will be going to Somewhatfoolish) may well be seeking new homes in the not-too-distant future...

I've had a good old read of the scan taken of #12 already up here (Allegro 20th Birthday Extravaganza), though would still be keen to acquire my very own copy. Which leaves #13 as the only 'mystery' copy, which I've never seen or read, but which I believe was likely to have had a Ford Escort of some description adorning the cover.

Also - if anyone has any further information on Real Classics mag - the mildly more professional looking quasi-successor to Jalopy, involving some of its former editorial team - I'd be very interested... I have the first eight issues, but cannot now recall whether it folded after that - or if I was too busy spunking the money from my Saturday job on Super Furry Animals singles to shell out a further £1.95 for its inky delights.

[flat4alfa]

if anyone has any further information on Real Classics mag - the mildly more professional looking quasi-successor to Jalopy, involving some of its former editorial team - I'd be very interested... I have the first eight issues, but cannot now recall whether it folded after that 

 

Paul Guinness | LinkedIn

Editor, Real Classics. Reality Publishing Ltd. 1997 – 1998

[Datsuncog]

Postie brought some top-notch mailings yesterday:

All in cracking condition, providing two missing issues - as well as four issues in better nick than those I've been thumbing through for many a long year.

Issue #4 came with its WH Smith receipt still inside, so t'would appear that it was indeed on their shelves back in '92. 

[BeEP]

Also - if anyone has any further information on Real Classics mag - the mildly more professional looking quasi-successor to Jalopy, involving some of its former editorial team - I'd be very interested... I have the first eight issues, but cannot now recall whether it folded after that - or if I was too busy spunking the money from my Saturday job on Super Furry Animals singles to shell out a further £1.95 for its inky delights.

 

I have Real Classics up to issue ten.  I believe this was the last but could be wrong.  I also have a duplicate copy of issue 3 which I would be happy to pass on for the cost of postage:

 

[Datsuncog]

A minor update for all of you still interested in Britain's Slowest, Dullest Motoring Mag...

After some discussion and horse-trading, a few of my duplicate Jalopies from February's eBay haul have now been successfully re-homed.

This leaves me with the following waifs and strays depicted a few posts above, deserving a place in a discerning shiter's collection of rammel-related literature:

• Issue #3 (July 1992) - Care for a Capri? - *En route to chatsharris, 30/3/18*
• Issue #10 (March 1993) - Mini-Nous
• Issue #14 (July 1993) - Super Sizzlin' Summer Soft-Top Special - *En route to chatsharris, 30/3/18**
• Issue #15 (August 1993) - Old Ton-Ups

These are available for a mere £4 each, including postage to a UK address of your choice - with the exception of Issue #15, which is missing its rear cover after a terrible, terrible accident involving the swing-up bunk bed of a Lunar Moonlight caravan in a campsite near Weymouth (otherwise absolutely fine), and so is reduced to clear for only £2 posted.

Obviously, random and generous shiter discounts will apply to anyone requesting two or more issues - and even if you happen to reside overseas, I'm sure we can come to some sort of convoluted arrangement re. shipping.

I'd do all four for a tenner, posted, tbh - just trying to claw back some of my excessive splurging last month.

PM followed by PayPal for those interested in snapping up this once-in-a-lifetime offer is, I believe, the order of the day...
 

I also received eBay notification only this morning of further Japloy auctions, which may be of interest to those lurking on this thread:

• Issue #6 (November 1992) - Alfas to Ashes, Suds to Rust
• Issue #7 (December 1992) - SCOOP - We drive the old MGB

Both starting at £4.50, with £1 delivery. Nowt to do with me - seller is in Bideford, Devon, and presumably also ought to be on here...

[garycox]

Many thanks to Datsuncog for selling me issue 4!

 

RECOMMENDED TAT VENDOR 146/10 A++++

 

I now have 29 of the holy grail full set of 31 issues. If anyone has issues 18 or 31 that they'd be willing to part with (or issue 1 as mine's missing its cover) I would be eternally grateful.

[Datsuncog]

^^^ Glad it arrived safely, and delighted to be of assistance!

Which reminds me - I also now have 29 issues out of the 31 published in total, and am still seeking:

• Issue #12 (Allegro 20th Anniversary) and
• Issue #13 (something about Ford Escorts, I believe)

in order to complete my very own Jafloppy collection. (It's kinda like shite Panini World Cup stickers,isn't it?)

I am willing to pay cold hard cash for either or both of the above, or possibly barter interesting and unusual model cars, or even (depending whether unwise quantities of cheap alcohol have been consumed) engage in sordid and depraved acts of lewd and/or lascivious behaviour.

Not necessarily in that order of preference.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

....even (depending whether unwise quantities of cheap alcohol have been consumed) engage in sordid and depraved acts of lewd and/or lascivious behaviour.....

D'ye not think yer man Max Mosley might have the missing issues?

[Datsuncog]

^^^ Well now... I didn't just want to come straight out and ask, but if the cap fits...

[JeeExEll]

Not so much a shitescan, more a series of pics from a July 1982 road test taken from an Argentinian car mag. Original text is in Argentinian.

Maybe not the best place to post it but I don't want to start a thread right now based on just one roadtest.

Link to the original article and some interesting stuff at the end. (Try reading a roadtest in Argentinian and roughly translating it in your head, you'll be fluent by the end of the article and thinking in some strange Argentinian voice).

 

The car, a 1982 Taunus (Cortina) 2.3 Ghia S.

 

 

You will look after it, won't you.

- "Yeah sure, just hand over the keys and it'll be fine".

 

- Vroooooooom . . . . .