Sommaire pour March 2019 de Classics World

The political and economic turmoil that continues to ripple out from the seemingly never-ending Brexit negotiations is now edging ever closer to the classic car fraternity, with some industry pundits predicting the softening of prices for high-value classics. With prices for ‘blue chip’ cars, such as the ex-John Surtees 1957 BMW 507 Roadster that sold recently for £4m, that’s something that probably won’t affect the majority of us unless we win the lottery but the good news is that prices for popular classics are continuing to hold up. That’s of course as long as expectations remain realistic and it will be interesting to see how the post-Brexit market eventually settle down with regards popular classic prices once we’re out of the EU. Talking about Brexit, which almost every news bulletin…

As well as featuring dedicated retro races, car club displays and on-track parades, the annual Silverstone Classic event will celebrate several big automotive anniversaries when it returns to the Northamptonshire circuit this summer. Plans for a number of birthday track action and other anniversary celebrations will be announced shortly, but more than 110 car clubs have already registered to display at the 2019 Classic. Many will be honouring significant marque and model landmarks, including the Bentley Drivers’ Club, which will celebrate the prestigious luxury brand’s centenary and the Abarth Owners' Club, which will pay tribute to the 70th anniversary of the Italian racing car and road car maker. Meanwhile, Mini and Marcos clubs will be hosting Diamond Jubilee birthday parties as their cherished icons hit 60 in 2019, while the…

A new poll carried out by The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs indicates that interest by the British public in historic cars, motorcycles commercial, vehicles and buses has grown since last polled in 2016. Back then the survey indicated that just over eight million people had an interest in historic vehicles, but this new survey shows that number has grown to nearly 10 million. More people now claim to own a historic vehicle, 2.5 million regularly read about them and the number of interviewees who know someone who owns such a vehicle has grown by half a million to almost eight million. This is all good news for our hobby and for the businesses that support it and generates £5.5 billion for the UK economy. However, it only scratches…

After last month’s work, the only job that remained to do on the Jaguar was to properly align the upgraded headlights, as these had been initially roughly set up with the car in the workshop facing the rear roller door. Prior to changing the lights, the adjusting screws were difficult to access due to the screw heads being buried deep inside the headlight pod. The new light glass protruded further forward than the old sealed beams and this increased the difficulty of getting a screwdriver onto the screw heads. So I resorted to using a flexible shaft screwdriver for the adjustments, which turned out to be a two handed operation. After completing the adjustments and prior to replacing the Jaguar’s glass headlight covers, I went on an evening test drive…

With the growing number of painted and half painted Land Rover panels littering the lockup, storage was becoming a major problem. Rough old panels can easily be stacked in a corner, but once you’ve taken time to repair, prepare and paint new and cleaned up ones, the only real option is to get them back on the car. This meant having to prepare and paint the chassis on the Landy, which in my mind had built itself up to being one of those tasks that you just don’t want to face. Lying under the old truck while a mixture of oil, grease, road dirt, Gunk and cold-water drips on your head is not my idea of fun. It also meant having to drag the Land Rover into the fresh air.…

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that the 944 had been cutting out. Well, having chatted with Max at Porsche parts specialist FrazerPart, I sent him the ECU (Porsche refer to this as the DME) for testing. As it transpired, the tests revealed that the unit is functioning as it should do and that isn’t the reason for the engine cutting out. However, some of the joints on the circuit board were looking dry and there were a few other issues, so I took the decision to have the ECU completely overhauled. The 944 is rapidly approaching its 30th birthday and I felt that the overhaul would be a wise move, especially seeing how the original components would be replaced with considerably better and more reliable modern ones. Having had…

Saab 99’s are rare cars in the UK. Turbos are now making serious money but regular 99’s are still available for two or three grand. We found this orange 1974 car, an 1850cc 99L with the Triumph engine for £3000 at a dealer in Dorset. It’s in very decent solid all round condition and has a fair MoT history with fails and advisories on minor things. With just 100k on the clock and three caring owners, it looks great in the photos. The car’s practical brown vinyl trim looks excellent and is a good match for the orange paintwork. The boot and engine bay look nice and clean and it’s certainly begging to be used on a regular basis. A nice old car for a very reasonable outlay. CONTACT DETAILS:…

This year we celebrate half a century of ‘the car you always promised yourself’ – a European Ford model inspired by an American design that went on to become a peculiarly British icon. The story of the Capri begins with the Mustang, which was conceived as a response to the changing economic climate of the USA in the mid-’Sixties. The baby-boomer generation was coming up to car-buying age and as college attendance became more common, they were also becoming more affluent. This meant they were more likely to be buying new rather than used cars and as fashions changed they would be wanting something more modern than the massive 'Fifties land yachts their parents had bought as family cars. The four-seater layout was settled on early in the project since…

Based on a Morris Minor floorpan and also produced as the similar looking Wolseley 1500, the unitary-built Riley One-point-Five may have looked rather staid but its twin carb fuelled 1498cc B-Series engine cranked out 65bhp and the car was a good attempt at trying to revive Riley’s fast disappearing pre-war sporting heritage. Wrap round 'whisker' style chrome air intake on each side of the One-Point-Five’s traditional radiator grille distinguished the Riley from its badge-engineered sibling and in 1960 this pocket-sized saloon received a power boost in the form of a modified cylinder head and a re-profiled camshaft. Styling tweaks carried out for the following model year included fitted circular sidelight/ indicator clusters and in 1962 the One-Point-Five received modified a crankshaft. By the mid-‘Sixties, the Riley One-Point-Five was starting to…

The final Riley badged car was the 1965 introduced 1098cc Kestrel, although purists could argue that it wasn’t really a Riley due to the model being considered nothing more than a rebadged BMC ADO16. Twin carburettors fuelled the Kestrel’s 55bhp A-Series engine and a rev counter kept up the marques sporting pretensions, while a full width veneered dashboard gave this front-wheel drive Riley a more upmarket feel when compared to its cheaper siblings. From the summer of 1967 the MkI Kestrel could be ordered with a 1275cc engine and a revised MkII model in 1100 single carb guise quickly followed. The 1100 was discontinued the following year and the engine powering the 1300 was upgraded first to 65bhp, then 70bhp in October 1967. In 1968 the Kestrel name was dropped…

January 2019 marks 60 years since Mike Hawthorn’s death at the tragically young age of 29, so it’s fitting that this year’s Race Retro (taking place at Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire from 22-24 February) will be paying its own special tribute to this most talented of British racing drivers. Mike Hawthorn was born in Yorkshire in April 1929 and as his father owned the Tourist Trophy Garage in Farnham, Surrey, selling Jaguar, Fiats and Ferraris the young Hawthorn was introduced to the world of performance cars at a very early age. After winning his first single-seat race in 1952, Mike Hawthorn would go on to drive for some of the greatest names in the sport, including Ferrari, BRM, and Vanwall. Hawthorn was the first English driver to win a Formula One…

While each car has its own personality, some have a genealogy and a history that has a huge impact on the people that have owned them. One such car is a 1951 Morgan four-seat tourer that has made its mark over the years. Our story starts in 1950 when the UK was on its way to complete recovery from the devastation of the Second World War and car companies were able to resume motor racing and motor trials. One such company was the Morgan Motor Company with new models being introduced and just coming into production. By 1951 Morgan was putting its Plus 4 model into production at its Pickersleigh Road location in Malvern Link, Worcester. The Work’s team of Peter Morgan and Jim Goodall approached a successful club competitor…

Last year marked 70 years since the start of Morris Minor production at the Cowley plant in Oxfordshire and from those humble beginnings this long-term family favourite has gone on to evolve into the UK’s very own ‘Peoples Car’. The start of the Minor story goes back to the dark days of 1943 when the noted design engineer Alec Issigonis and a small team of engineers at Morris Motors started to sketch out the primary drawings for project Mosquito, the codename for the development of a small family car that would go into production shortly after the Second World War finally came to an end in 1945. Shown to the public for the first time at the Earls Court Motor show in October 1948, the Series MM Lowlight was billed…

If you wish to keep a low profile on the roads of Oxfordshire, a 1970 last-of-the-line Viva SL is not the ideal car. Throughout the day, a succession of older motorists performed double-takes on seeing a Vauxhall that is now rarer than a Bugatti while younger drivers were visibly curious and a few more seasoned onlookers seemed to recognise it as ‘the Rodney Bewes car from Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads?’. Such reactions were quite understandable, for when the HB replaced the Viva HA in September 1966, the styling instantly made its chief rival, the Anglia 105E, look like a throwback to the Teddy Boy era by comparison. Ford dealers became very worried, as the launch of the Escort was over a year away while Luton was now offering…

The brake master cylinder and fluid reservoir assembly on the Gentry are mounted at a slight angle, which means that the unit is slanted forward. Over the years, the rubber seal in the screw cap on top of the reservoir had become hard and has resulted in a less than perfect seal. This meant that I’ve had to keep a watchful eye on the brake fluid level, as the fluid was able to leak out after any heavy braking or harsh acceleration. The remedy was obvious of course and quite a simple fix – just fit a new rubber seal into the lid of the master cylinder. However, this simple job turned out to be one of the most difficult problems I’ve ever had to solve. No matter how many…

It was definitely a case of speaking too soon to anyone who cared to listen while I was rabbiting on about how well our Saab 900 Turbo was running after the troublesome cooling issues had all been sorted out. Unfortunately, another round of Saab shaped trouble was literally just around the corner and on the way home from our Peterborough office the 900’s oil pressure warning light lit up while I was overtaking a string of HGVs on the A1. It’s never good news when any dashboard warning light starts to twinkle but when the oil light comes at 70 miles and hour, alarm bells start to ring very loudly. What was puzzling was how the Saab’s oil pressure light started to light up very gradually before it ended up…

Launched at the Earl‘s Court Motor Show in 1963, the Rover P6 would transform the company‘s image. Famed for producing luxurious, well engineered but ultimately steady cars like the P4 ‘Auntie’, Rover took a clean sheet with the P6 and squarely targeted the thrusting young exec who wanted more from their personal transport than traditional values and would never be seen driving the same car as their father owned. The P6 won the first European Car of the Year Award in 1964 and with good reason. Technologically, the car had no British rivals. Its clean, modern lines clothed an almost unique method of construction and beneath the skin, innovation was everywhere from the horizontally mounted front suspension (designed to provide enough space for a gas turbine engine that would never…

Regular readers will recall the mountain of braking system and suspension components I bought for Pandora, my Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow II, in preparation for her first MoT test in four years. Calipers, discs, pads, hoses, bushes, dampers, ball joints and pretty much every other chassis component you can think of was ordered direct from Crewe cars parts specialist, IntroCar, ready for installation. The guys carrying out the work at independent Rolls-Royce and Bentley service, maintenance, repair and restoration outfit, Colbrook Specialists, were surprised to find rear discs with plenty of meat on them. “We can skim the face of each part using our in-house brake disc cutting lathe,” explained Colbrook’s general manager, Pete Wiles. The sound of saving pennies was music to my ears, but joy was short-lived when it…

The power steering system on many classic cars consists of a belt-driven pump that delivers hydraulic fluid under high pressure to the steering rack to assist with turning the steering wheel. Typical problems that can arise include leaking pipework and a worn or noisy pump. The following pages provide a general guide to what’s involved in removing and renewing that pipework, overhauling components such as mounting brackets and the power steering fluid reservoir and having the pump stripped and inspected. The work involved in stripping and inspecting a power steering pump is in theory a DIY job, but it can all go wrong if you don’t have the right tools to extract circlips and ‘O’-rings and cannot renew parts that may be worn, scored or perished. We visited the Steering…

MG performance matched with a taste of upmarket Wolseley trim gave the B-Series powered Pinin Farina styled Riley 4/68 a competitive edge over its badge engineered siblings and the attractive optional two-tone bodywork became a standard offering from the middle of 1962 on the 1961 introduced 4/72. The new Riley had a more powerful 1622cc engine and the revised model now featured a slightly longer wheelbase, wider track and front and rear anti-roll bars. These modifications helped improved the big Riley’s handling and for the first time an automatic option was made available. A year later further modifications were made to the 4/72’s rear suspension in a bid to address issues regarding the car’s often criticised ride quality. With a showroom price of £1087, the 4/72 proved a big hit…

When Land Rover plugged the gap between the upmarket Range Rover and the agricultural Defender with the introduction of the Discovery in October 1989, little did the motoring world realise that the first two generations of this go-anywhere 4x4 would go on to be described as a design icon. The Discovery’s squared-off but attractive all alloy bodywork made the new Land Rover a popular choice for those buyers who found the Range Rover too expensive or were put off by the Defender’s austere cabin layout. As well as its business-like looks, Land Rover’s new SUV proved itself just as capable off-road when the going got tough as its two long-established siblings. Although the MkI was only available at first with three-doors, it wasn’t too long before buyers could order the…

LET’S GO FOR A DRIVE Everett recalls the days when driving was far more enjoyable IT’S OFFICIAL. I HATE DRIVING. I really do. Like many of you, I started driving in the mid ‘Eighties and back then there was about 14 million cars on the road from a population of around 55 million. Speed cameras didn’t exist and so you were at the mercy of the bobbies with mobile ‘hairdryer’ speed cameras. Not that you saw that many – but plenty of police patrol cars though. Driving was actually a pleasure as well. Back then I lived either in Newbury or Oxford and a good Sunday would be a drive out somewhere quite far away like Somerset or North Devon where I grew up. My first trip would have been…

It’s now 30 years since the first Land Rover Discovery rolled off the assembly line and a group of enthusiasts is determined that the first few hundred examples of this pioneering SUV aren’t forgotten. With number one stored at the British Motor Museum at Gaydon, members of the Project Jay Preservation Group (project Jay was the code name used for the Disco’s development programme) are keen to locate as many of the early G registered Discoverys that were used at the press and dealer launch in Plymouth in 1989. There were 86 Discoverys, all with consecutive registration numbers from G451WAC to G537WAC used at the launch – enthusiasts now call these vehicles ‘Gee-Wacks’. So far 23 launch vehicles have been found that are still alive; together with several factory registered…

CLASSIC JAGUAR IN WAITING In early 2017, I bought a 2006 Jaguar XJ – the all aluminium X350 in Sovereign trim with the 4.2 litre V8 petrol engine. From that moment I have been delighted with every aspect of the car. However, what some of your readers may find difficult to understand is how I did this in relative ignorance. At the time, it seemed to be just another XJ, albeit in mint condition with low mileage etc. How wrong could I have been? Ask any Jaguar aficionado for their opinion of this model and prepare yourself for a plethora of superlatives, the like of which are seldom heard within automotive circles. The praise is almost endless. Sublime bodylines, without a single awkward viewing angle is certainly a popular one,…

HOW MUCH OF A SURPRISE WAS IT WHEN DAVID GOT IN TOUCH WITH NEWS ABOUT YOUR GRANDFATHER’S CAR? I actually initially contacted David (pictured above) about two years ago with no idea the car might still exist until I found some old articles and photos about my grandfather’s driving days in a box in my father’s attic. I’d heard exciting stories about his Morgan racing when I was a child, but had never seen it, as the car had been sold long before I was born. I hadn’t thought much about it for years, so it was exciting to find the box, which I hadn’t seen before. It included a letter from David with photos of the car that he had sent to my Grandfather in the “Eighties when he…

Last month we left off having dropped the E-Type off at the acid dippers and being fearful of what maybe returned. As I suspected, there was a quite a bit of filler covering the previous rear arch repairs and the floors had been fabricated from poorly cut and shaped sheets of thick steel, some of which had been pop riveted in place. One good point was that the rear suspension mounts looked sound and the only area of concern was around the box section where the anti-roll bar mounts. The sills looked pretty terrible though, as did some of the toe board areas where they attach to the floor. In the past someone had fitted some quite reasonable pattern rear wings, but the welding was not particularly good. The boot…

It’s hard to believe I’ve owned my Alfa 145 for a year now; a point I realised when I saw the fresh MoT that came with the car was about to run out. Worse was the realisation I’d only done less than 1000 miles in a car I’ve wanted for years. Running through my pre-MoT checklist I gave the car a good once over. Everything was in order other then the air-con pump and interior fan switch not working, neither of which is a fail, but I was reminded that the Alfa’s exhaust is hanging from cable ties, something that I’d managed to forget about. Not a big deal, so I ordered some new hangers and went to lift the car up using the correct jacking point. All good when…

We have made steady progress on the Morris van. My dad has repaired it many times before, so there haven’t been any major surprises. As always, there’s more rust than we’d expected, often next to previously welded areas. The major focus has been getting the cab solid once more, including fabricating much of the lower B-post area and the rear part of the floor. With this done, we will turn our attention to the front of the van body, enabling this to be reunited – once the chassis has been thoroughly inspected, cleaned and painted. I must confess that dad has been taking the lead on this, as I’ve had my hands full keeping the daily driver, now the Minor Lowlight, in running order. Having been on some long journeys…

The transition from the old two-stroke and V4 powered Saabs of the ‘Fifties and ‘Sixties was not an easy one for Saab, a company not yet big enough to design, develop and build it’s own four-cylinder petrol engine. It is now fifty years since the first 99’s went down the Trollhättan assembly line to cement Saab’s reputation for building high quality robust cars with a distinct character. The 99 brought with it the first credible turbocharged road car in Europe. It was reliable, good on fuel and easy to drive as well as being fast. It was vastly better than BMW’s early efforts with its 1973 2002 Turbo and the 99 proved popular and became a cult car in the making. The 99 ended production officially in 1984, yet it…

The formidable range of classics featured in this reader’s collection spans more than half a century of automotive progress. These eight vehicles originated from Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan, four nations offering some of the greatest motoring pedigree on the planet. With a combined weight of nearly ten tonnes and a total power output of more than 1500 brake horsepower, this truly eclectic group of vehicles offers almost unlimited petrol head pleasure. The man responsible for combining classic British sportsters with Italian supercar flair, German autobahn stormers and even a classic tractor is Chris Bidgood, a retired bank manager living in an idyllic corner of rural England. He’s obviously got a particularly serious case of the classic car bug that afflicts us all and it started early in life.…

The origins of the now defunct Riley marque go back to 1896 when William Riley Jr changed the name of the recently purchased Bonnick Cycle Company to the Riley Cycle Company. Riley’s engineering background had been gained in the production of textile machinery and in 1898 William’s middle son Percy, much to his father’s displeasure, started to secretly build a series of experimental automobiles. By the end of the decade Percy Riley had produced a prototype four-wheeled quadricycle powered by an engine featuring mechanically operated valves. Although Percy went on to sell his first three-wheeled cyclecar in 1900 his father still refused to fund the production of motorcars, so Percy, along with his brothers, borrowed money from their mother and in 1903 established the Coventry-based Riley Engine Company. As well…

This Riley badged version of the Wolseley Hornet was basically a Mini with a larger, fin decorated boot overhanging the rear wheels. A Mini-style 848cc transversally located A-series engine with a four-speed gearbox in the sump drove the front wheels on early versions and interior features included a full width veneered dashboard. This little touch of luxury helped put the Elf above the Hornet in the hierarchy of these two little Dick Burzi styled cars – apparently Issigonis, the father of the original Mini, wanted nothing to do with what was often referred to as ‘only a booted Mini’. In 1963 the MkII Elf arrived on the scene powered by a 998cc engine; Hydrolastic suspension was added from 1964 and two years later BMC unveiled the MkIII Elf featuring wind-up…