Sommaire pour October 2022 de Classics World

The world of motorsport lost another of its classic heroes on 21st July, with the passing of Paddy Hopkirk at the age of 89. Belfast-born Paddy started rallying an Austin Seven, then graduated to VW Beetles and later gained Works drives with Standard-Triumph and Rootes, before switching to BMC in 1962. There he started campaigning the Austin-Healey 3000, but it is his exploits in the Mini Cooper S for which he will be forever remembered. With Henry Liddon, he took the feisty little Mini to an improbable victory in the Monte Carlo Rally of 1964, the first of what would have been four successive wins for the BMC car had not the organisers bent over backwards to disqualify it in 1966. Paddy's later career included class wins in prestigious races…

World of Top Gear, home to the cars created for the TV show, has reopened at Beaulieu following a refresh, with new displays and new motors joining old favourites. It has been reworked around three new themes: Destination: Adventure!, Innovation, and Team Top Gear. With the Top Gear team’s passports full of stamps from across the globe, Destination: Adventure! pays homage to Freddie, Chris and Paddy’s truly impressive adventures in far-flung places. The Sinclair C5 which Freddie Flintoff bravely took down a Norwegian bobsleigh course has taken its place alongside the Renault 4 and Peugeot 106 Rallye from the boys’ Nepal adventure, the Maserati Biturbo and Chevrolet Camaro that survived the Cuba road trip, and the bikes from the Vietnam Special. Looking to the future, Innovation explores the changing face…

The Royal Automobile Club has presented the prestigious Segrave Trophy to hillclimb racer Robin Shute for being the first and only British driver to have claimed overall victory at Pikes Peak. The Nominations Committee had chosen Shute to be the latest recipient of the Trophy – which is awarded to a British subject who demonstrates ‘the spirit of adventure’ – even before he added a third Pikes Peak win in June 2022. There are certainly few adventures in the motorsport world that can match the fearsome Colorado hillclimb, which is held on a 12.42-mile course that climbs through 156 dramatic turns to an altitude of 14,115ft at the summit finish line. There must be even fewer events for which the intrepid drivers need an oxygen supply!…

COMMENT IAIN AYRE BIO: Iain Ayre’s automotive enthusiasms span everything from Minis to Bentleys. He has prototyped several car designs without commercial success, and has written 18 books on random motoring subjects. He continues to avoid getting a proper job. In what may be your final picture of my Jeep Cherokee, [I'll believe that when I don't see it – Ed] the windshield top corner bears the logo RUB ME. I don’t remember when, during the decade and a half of my abuse of the poor old Jeep, I got bored enough to dismantle the MR LUBE logo and reconfigure it to say RUB ME, but it is reassuring to know that I made such productive use of my time. Visits to Mr Lube have been a very regular event,…

Paddy: I've always liked old cars. I used to have a Triumph Spitfire, but that was a rust bucket and really it was beyond my capabilities to put right, so it didn't last long before being moved on. Then I was watching a YouTube video about a guy and his Morris Eight, and that piqued my interest in pre-war cars. It was the look of them that grabbed my imagination, that and the idea something so old could still be functional as well as attractive. And while I'm not mechanically minded, I reckoned a car from the pre-war era might be simple enough for even me to get my head around. So I started looking online for a Morris Eight. When I couldn't find one of those for sale, I…

£8000 Citroën’s 2CV is hilarious, ingenious, hugely practical, very comfy, stylish, fashionable and almost free to run once you’ve bought a good one. Unfortunately, that good one is not as cheap as it used to be, though you should still be able to find one with a solid floor/chassis for under £8000. However, if you do plump for a cheaper and rougher example, the chassis are only simple bits of flat tin so they’re very cheap if you’re prepared to take the not outrageous amount of time it takes to fillet the car and fit a one. If you do that, fit a galvanised chassis as the naked ones rust faster than MGB sills. When bimbling in a forwards direction in a 2CV, you need to have patience, as the…

It is no surprise that many cars are good-looking. After all, they are sold into a competitive market where emotions inform buying decisions. But surprisingly few cars are actually so beautiful that they are almost art on wheels. Of these, many are exotica – Jaguar’s E-type and the Lamborghini Miura spring to mind here. The VW Karmann-Ghia Type 14 is that very rare thing – an absolute sculpture of a car that was part of a perfectly ordinary vehicle range. Admittedly it was a halo model, but the Type 14 was very much a Volkswagen, a variant of the Type 1 Beetle. As a platform, the Type 1 was highly adaptable, a fact not lost on Luigi Segre, the enterprising head of Carrozzeria Ghia in Turin. So a project was…

If there’s one part of an engine rebuild that cannot be rushed, it has got to be the cleaning process. The sign of a good engine builder is someone who won’t even think about reassembly until they are satisfied that all of the components are spotlessly clean, even if it means switching on the power washer or parts washer one more time. Wayne Courtenay at The Blue Oval Rescue Centre is clearly no stranger to this rule because while there may only be 35 steps showing the work involved in cleaning and prepping the dismantled CVH engine over the following pages, we spent a full day with him to complete all that’s shown. The engine in our photographs is a lowmileage Ford CVH that’s suffered more from expired oil and…

I expect that many of you will be regular watchers of the BBC comedy news quiz show, Have IGot News For You. For those who have never seen it, they have a missing words round in which headlines are taken from that week’s newspapers, some of the text is blanked out and the contestants – with tongues very firmly in cheeks (and it is not easy to talk like that!) – have to suggest suitable words to fill the gaps. Each episode will also feature a guest publication from which some of the headlines might be taken, and the more obscure that is, the better. How obscure? Well, trade magazines are naturally enough a rich source of material with such enticing titles as Elevator World, Potato Storage International and Drain…

Entries are now being invited for the Lancaster Insurance Pride of Ownership competition, with 20 places available in the autumn 2022 final to be held at the Lancaster Insurance Classic Motor Show, with discovery+ on 11th-13th November at Birmingham's NEC. Open to privately-owned vehicles built before 31st December 2002, entrants are asked to share the story behind their classic with the judges – whilst the standard of the vehicle is considered, it is not a concours competition so not just about which is the shiniest. To enter, owners can submit an entry form (which can be found on the show website) and two images of the vehicle, including one full picture. Only one vehicle can be entered per owner. More details are on the show’s website at www.necclassicmotorshow. com/show-highlights/prideof-ownership. The…

DO YOU HAVE A PRODUCT OR SERVICE YOU’D LIKE FELLOW CLASSIC CAR ENTHUSIASTS TO KNOW ABOUT? GET IN TOUCH BY EMAILING: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK TYPE 2 FRONT AND REAR TINWARE KIT Price: £249.95 Controlling temperatures in the engine bay of a VW Type 2 is critical for keeping the engine alive. One of the reasons for things to get heated at the rear is the incorrect fitment – or complete lack – of tinware that is designed to separate the top and bottom hot/cold zones from each other. Whilst the majority of aircooled models up to 1972 share the same tinware design, the late Bay models have a unique and more complicated design, which was obsolete and unavailable for many years, resulting in vehicles simply going without. This kit includes the front…

Being made of fibreglass, the body on a Reliant Regal does not rust, but that does not mean it is indestructible. There were three main areas of physical damage on our car that needed to be repaired, plus a couple more places that we had inadvertently cracked when removing the body from the chassis and which now needed to be repaired and reinforced. Stripping the paint off also revealed a couple more minor issues, such as on the passenger door whose fibreglass skin was cracked where the front of the door handle attached – we put some fibreglass matting behind any areas such as this to reinforce them. Making the fibreglass repairs was generally very simple in comparison to stripping off the old paint, which is somewhat ironic given how…

UNDER £4000 Ihave owned a couple of MX- 5s, and Pete the Miata Man in Vancouver is a good friend of mine: check out his Youtube channel Miata Man, as he knows whereof he speaks and is a free fountain of useful inside info. MX-5s are excellent cars, and can clock up huge mileages. They are not super fast, but their handling is so good that they comprise a big percentage of cars raced every weekend in North America. The suspension is adjustable and tunable front and back for camber, castor etc as standard, which is remarkable for a production sports car. Very few will ever be adjusted, but it gives a clue to the spirit in which the suspension was designed. MX-5s represent the central concept of a traditional…

£10,000 If there is one thing that Ford got very right in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it was image. While it can be argued that this automotive behemoth rarely pushed the engineering envelope during this period, it was an absolute front-runner when it came to packaging cars for a specific audience and marketing them. The Capri is almost the ultimate expression of this. It deployed the mechanical ingredients of the Cortina, in a product that evoked the company’s American icon the Mustang. Despite being less spacious and practical than its saloon sibling, the Capri sold like hot cakes. Ford even managed to shift reasonable numbers in the USA, where you could buy an actual Mustang! Launched in the UK in 1969, the Capri was neither a Mustang nor an…

I must come clean and say right at the start that I have a real soft spot for Triumphs from the 1960s and 1970s. Over the years I’ve had three Heralds and a Vitesse, a 1300 FWD saloon and three Dolomite 1850s, plus I currently have a TR7. However, I have never had a Stag. I came within a whisker of buying one a couple of years ago, and now that values have rocketed, the fact that I didn’t will always be a source of regret. There really is nothing else quite like it. People always compare the Stag to a Mercedes SL, which is probably about as close as you could get in period in terms of configuration, but really the two cars have very different appeals. Beyond that…

If the Volkswagen Type 1 is anything, it’s an enigma. The story of its gestation is one of fascinating improbability. If you think it all started with Adolf Hitler, you’d be wrong. Ferdinand Porsche, a brilliant engineer of humble origins, had a vision. Although responsible for the design of many magnificent cars for Austro-Daimler and Canstatt-Daimler, not to mention various highly successful racing cars, he wanted to build a car for the masses. Having set up an independent design consultancy in his own name, he designed just such a car, not as a miniaturised version of a full-sized car as with the Austin 7, but as a completely fresh approach. It was to be the first truly modern car. The motorcycle manufacturer Zundapp liked Porsche’s concept and commissioned him to…

Saturday 30th July saw record attendance and hundreds of unexceptional cars on display in glamorous surroundings as Hagerty's Festival of the Unexceptional returned for its eighth airing to celebrate those long-forgotten everyday family cars from 1960s-1990s. Whilst 50 of the most mundane motor cars ever assembled graced the lawns of Grimsthorpe Castle as part of the official concours, the spectator car park boasted an even more impressive collection of cars. Live music, a great selection of food, trade stands and celebrity attendees only added to the spectacle. Hagerty’s esteemed judges debated long and hard, and the 2022 winners were: Concours de l’Ordinaire Samuel Allan 1994 Vauxhall Astra Merit Runner Up Matthew Bareham 1986 Skoda Estelle 120L Junior Choice Chris Joy, 1982 Peugeot 104 GR Repmobile Special Award Chris James 1991…

COWLEYS ARE GREAT! My compliments to Terry Burgess for his realistic and factual article on the Morris Cowley in the August issue. As a Morris Cowley owner I am biased, but I genuinely believe that the Cowley, the accompanying Morris Oxford Series II/III and Morris Isis Series I/II as well as the associated half-ton Series III commercial van and pickup do not get the recognition they deserve. The 1954 Morris model range was conservative, straightforward, reliable and comfortable and deserve its place in motoring history. Let’s not forget: ● Last model produced by the Morris design team at Cowley. ● Maximum interior space for minimal external dimensions, seating six adults in comfort. ● First Morris range released by BMC. ● First Morris range to incorporate the BMC B-series engine (and…

Our MGB GT’s cold-starting problem has had us scratching our heads for a solution. It doesn’t help that it only occurs when trying to start the engine from cold and will not reoccur if the engine is restarted even several hours after managing to run it. Consequently, when we try an idea such as a new set of spark plugs and find the engine still takes several attempts to run, once it has been running, we then have to wait until the next day before we can try something else. As you’ll see from the photos and steps in this issue, we’ve perhaps made some progress with a new battery, an additional earth lead and a replacement coil, but we have yet to find the answer. It’s possible that what…

Last issue, our investigation into why the bonnet did not sit squarely between the front wings got slightly more involved than we had expected, but did at least turn up nothing more serious than a rusty front valance. This issue our story takes a turn for the worse as removing what appeared to be a small patch of lifting body filler revealed a mess of bodgery and rust. Such is life though, and with the help of Alan Denne we can fix it, but it does reinforce the point that you should not buy a classic unless you are prepared to invest time, money, blood and sweat into it. You’d be well advised to also set aside some additional cash well beyond the purchase price, because very few classics won’t…

£6000 It continues to surprise me just how accessible the Morris Minor remains. As values of perfectly ordinary cars from the 1960s and 1970s soar, Minor prices grow reasonably and steadily. In this respect they are a fair representation of the car itself – between 1948 and 1971 it provided perfectly affordable, practical and economical transport for perfectly ordinary people. It still does this today, though I’d hesitate to label any Minor owner as ‘ordinary.’ The Minor represents a unique period in British motoring history, bridging the gap between pre-war motoring and the modern era. Visually, although they are receding into the main bodywork it has discernible wings and inset doors like the 1930s Morris Eight it replaced, but that body is of postwar unitary construction and sits on independent…

A new era of small, shapely four-seater cars emerged during the late 1950s, which proved how a compact design could accommodate a number of people in a tight space. The Mini, introduced in 1959, was one of them with its clever engine and gearbox configuration, but two years earlier, Fiat had made its mark with something that was just as ingenious. The Fiat 500 Nuova (Italian for new because the old 500 model that became known as the Topolino had been in production for several decades) was a compact twodoor saloon which had a small 479cc two-cylinder air-cooled engine concealed inside the boot, leaving space up front for luggage (amongst the petrol tank and spare wheel) and room inside the cabin for four people. It paved the way to a…

In the 1970s, a British Leyland advertisement suggested: ‘Become a five-car family for the price of a Maxi.’ Here, they proposed, was a vehicle capable of becoming a school bus, estate car, family saloon, overnight camper or removal van on demand. A gentleman clad in quite incredible flared trousers loading a washing machine into a blue example demonstrated the last-named role, proving how it was an immensely versatile machine. The Austin Maxi debuted on the 24th of April 1969 as the replacement for the A60 Cambridge, shocking many drivers in the process. The outgoing model belonged to the realm of the BBC Home Service and sensible sports jackets, but its successor was a front-wheel drive, five-door hatchback with a transversely mounted OHC powerplant and five-speed transmission. The Maxi was also…

Imagine this for a scenario. It’s 1985 and your 1968 Austin 1300 has just failed the MoT on a rotten rear subframe. This was such a common problem that it’s a miracle it lasted so long, and the chances are that the car is on its second frame already. But no problem, because your local BL dealer will replace it for free. It’ll take two days or so and it will be returned to you washed, hoovered and the tyres blacked. Total charge: zero. In what universe would this have happened? Absolutely none that are known to man, that’s for sure. Not for the 1100s, not for the Minis, not for Jaguar XJ rear trailing arms or anything else suspension related that used to rot like crazy and where a…