Indice dei contenuti per Spring 2020 in Classics World

As you can read in this issue from p34, I have now bought that Volvo 340 which I mentioned wanting a couple of issues back. The impetus for this was simply to see if it would waft me back nearly 40 years to when I passed my driving test and a Volvo 343 was our family car. The answer is that it doesn’t make me feel 17 years old again, but it is a very enjoyable trip down memory lane – you can’t live in the past (however much you may want to!), but it is a great place to visit and a classic car makes that possible. That is probably why I love trawling through old photographs for our Press Pictures series. The latest instalment of that is on…

British Motor Heritage and the MG Car Club have announced an all-new 58-car race for MG Live! at Silverstone on 13th-14th June. It will be for pre-‘66 classic saloons, and it is being staged on the Grand Prix circuit – the track on which F1 was born 70 years ago this year. The regulations are basically the same as those for the Goodwood St Mary’s Trophy, the only other stipulations being a requirement for the cars to run on Dunlop Historic Race tyres and pump fuel. The event will be of 40 minutes duration, allow entries from either one or a pair of drivers, and will be preceded by a 20-minute qualifying session. Said BMH’s Managing Director John Yea: 'The criteria have been specifically chosen to ensure a truly mixed…

General Motors has announced that it is shutting down its Holden operations next year, finally killing off an Australian brand that produced its first car in 1948 (the FJ 48-12) and its last – a VFII Commodore – in October 2017. Since then, the marque has survived as a badge put on a confusing range of imported cars from the likes of Chevrolet and Vauxhall-Opel. The marque had suffered in recent years from a lack of government support for the domestic motor industry following a general election in 2013, and changing consumer tastes in recent years simply delivered the final blow. It is all a far cry from the glory days when Holden was Australia's national car company and a source of great national pride.…

HI-SPEC FOUR-POT ROAD BRAKE KIT Price: £450 Burton Power is now stocking the HiSpec four-pot road brake kit for Ford Escort Mk1/Mk2 RS and Capri Mk1/Mk2/Mk3. The 245mm diameter discs require a minimum wheel diameter of just 13in. The calipers are made from hard anodised billet aluminium and come in anodised black as standard or anodised silver as a no cost option, with powder coated black, blue, yellow, silver or red as options by special order for an additional £74.40. Burton can also supply appropriate performance brake pads to suit the intended use of this kit. Available from Burton's Performance Centre in Essex, or by ordering from the Burton Power website at www.burtonpower.com MINI ALLOY FRONT SUSPENSION TRUMPET Price: £75.60 per pair If your Mini’s front suspension trumpets have broken,…

My first car was a ten-year-old Ford Anglia from the 1961 vintage, with fresh cream paint over filler, bought from a low-rent suburban London car dealer for peanuts after much haggling. In 1971, a ten-year-old car with 60,000 miles was generally finished – rusty and worn out. Virtually no paint had been applied underneath, and normally no underseal – new cars were rusting as they left the factory. My Anglia wasn’t too bad underneath, but the front wings and the strut tops were P38 over rust holes. The steering wheel was changed for a nice alloy-and-leather one from a 1600E, and Ford Classic front suspension was sourced for the standard Anglebox conversion. This was best combined with a big steering wheel because the home-brewed geometry was imperfect, but it got…

I guess this feature should be labelled up as Our Cars rather than Readers' Cars, but I do read the magazine from cover to cover so reckon I qualify for the slot. Besides, I wanted the chance to introduce this car properly before moving it across to the Driver Diaries for regular updates. After all, despite being a good seller in the UK and once a regular part of the street furniture, the baby Volvo has since dropped off most people's radar, an unremarkable product whose demise was barely noticed and rarely mourned. In fairness, that description could be applied to most family cars whose role was to provide sensible transport on a daily basis rather than get pulses racing. It is only when numbers have been decimated by time,…

If you are running any kind of Rolls-Royce or Bentley, then Flying Spares is a name you'll want to remember. The firm can supply everything from recycled used parts to brand new spares for the whole range of Rolls-Royce and Bentley-badged cars, which can make a big difference to the cost of running them, especially if you're prepared to get stuck in with the spanners for the smaller jobs. Having made its name with the older cars, Flying Spares now covers the modern generation too, and can supply everything you might need to bring something like a tired Continental GT back to life.…

The Dodge van that was the recipient of so much expensive largesse last month is still being uncooperative. It still drove like a pig after new timing gear, assorted engine bay sort outs and a new radiator, but at least it was more or less drivable. In fact I drove it five miles to the beach, taking fat dog and smelly dog for a stroll and a sniff at the dead crabs and some futile chasing of seagulls. “The van runs, but like a pig. It starts up, but at any attempt to put it in gear, the engine stalls” On the way back home, the van made it halfway and then sagged to a roadside halt, with the electrics completely dead. My phone battery was also almost moribund, but…

1965 E-TYPE JAGUAR ENGINE: 4235cc inline-six OWNED SINCE: September 1986 TRIUMPH STAG ENGINE: 2997cc V8 OWNED SINCE: 2004 THOUGHT OF THE MONTH When restoring a car, one of the major time consuming tasks is releasing old rusted and seized fastenings, which at times requires destructive measures. It is easy to ensure that any future need to undo fasteners does not meet with the same degree of difficulty by coating all threads with anti-seize. All threads on the window frames and regulators were easily undone thanks to being coated during the door assembly over 20 years ago.…

VAUXHALL VIVA REPLACEMENT AXLE QI have a 1965 Vauxhall Viva HA and over the past few summers when taking it out, I have noticed that the rear axle has become increasingly noisy. Checking the oil, I found this to be silvery in colour and I believe that I need to take major action to remedy the problem. I have found an axle in apparently good condition from a slightly later 1968 HB Viva. Do you know if this will fit in OK, or do I need to have my diff repaired? James Christie A From the information I have it would appear that the external measurements of the HB axle are the same as those used in the Viva by the end of the HA series (though different to…

Eyebrows were undoubtedly raised in some circles when the MGF was replaced by the TF in 2002. A very different car with the same name launched almost 50 years earlier had long been established as an iconic British classic. Whether Rover was playing the nostalgia card or just being provocative is uncertain. One theory is that they just didn’t want a model forever referred to as the Emm Gee-Gee! We may never know the truth, because the company was at death’s door when the TF appeared, and production came to an abrupt end when the Phoenix Consortium collapsed in April 2005. Now, 15 years on and after the MG rebirth in Chinese hands, the mid-engined F and TF are already generally accepted as classics, proving that cars don’t have to…

The MG and Triumph Spares Day at Stoneleigh on Sunday 9th February was battered by Storm Ciara, and attendance was inevitably affected as a result, but not by anywhere near as much as you might have expected given the weather warnings – MG and Triumph owners are clearly a hardy bunch! As the name suggests, this show majors on spare parts, both new and secondhand, plus all the usual automobilia and autojumble. It is, however, well supported by the clubs as well, and their members braved the elements with some particularly fine display cars to add interest for the visitors. The Best Triumph award went to Matt Field with a fine 2000 Mk1 he inherited from his dad, while the Best MG went to Ray Cotter's YB, which was being…

Some of the most popular cars of the 1980s and 1990s are in almost terminal decline according to the latest DVLA data collated by Retro Cars, the magazine dedicated to accessible modern classic cars from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. According to the figures, the most endangered car of the 1980s and 1990s is the Lada Riva, once the butt of many a Blackpool comedian’s joke, but now rarer than a Pagani Zonda. If you want exclusivity and prestige, perhaps now’s the time to hunt down a Riva 1500 SLX? After all, just 49 Rivas are known to survive. Slightly more upmarket but no less at risk, the Alfa Romeo 146 is on the danger list. Once described by Jeremy Clarkson as ‘the only small hatchback I’d be seen dead…

GETTING THE FIGARO IS A GREAT CHOICE Just a note to say you were indeed absolutely right to hold out for your Figaro project car. I am, however, slightly biased having owned my green example since 2011 and being the Figaro Owners Club Coordinator for Scotland! I have, since reading the article, circulated the car’s details to our Scottish members to see if anyone has any of the background info you may be looking for. I’m really looking forward to the upcoming issues. I have been really fortunate with my Figaro since import, having had nine MoTs with no advisories at all. I’ve just put mine (Fergus – you’ll find most folk have named their Figs!) in to have his rear wheelarches replaced as he has the tell tale rust…

Last issue I dredged the memory banks to recount what happened when my tatty Reliant Scimitar automatic took a wrong turn and stumbled onto a racetrack. A fibreglass fish out of water, you might say, but not as much as you might imagine. Remembering that warm, sunny day at Curborough Sprint Course nudged my thoughts in the direction of an earlier journalistic escapade, driving a Formula 1 car, on a day that was neither warm nor sunny. Yes, a genuine F1 car. And it really happened – I have the proof in a framed picture of the event. ‘All Driven by Rod Ker, October 2001’ it proclaims, alluding to the four sporty cars featured. The line-up comprised a contemporary MG ZR160, a Formula Ford single seater, a Ralt F3 car,…

First impression of Odette Benatar is of a vivacious, energetic Gibraltarian businesswoman, but there is more to her than meets the eye. Odette, who is rather well known in these parts as one of the attractive James Bond girls starring with Timothy Dalton in The Living Daylights, is also a total classic petrolhead. When she is not out driving her Triumph Stag, she is out in the other treasured classic – her 1978 VW Westfalia T2 Camper. Odette says: 'I love the Camper. It makes a good stablemate for the family's other two classics, the Triumph Stag (a car which my father loaned to the authorities to transport Prince Charles and Lady Diana when they stopped at Gibraltar on their honeymoon) and the 1986 Cadillac Seville. Like so many people,…

When World War Two ended, Rover found itself with a large shadow factory in Solihull which had been erected to build aero-engines for the war effort. It must have surprised everyone when Rover turned this into a production facility for a commercial vehicle inspired by the Jeep. After all, Rover had started out producing bicycles in 1878, then motorbikes in 1902 before turning to cars in 1904. There were plenty of ups and downs in those early years (probably more downs than ups if truth be told!), with a move upmarket under the leadership of Frank Searle and Spencer Wilks at the start of the 1930s being rather unfortunate on the timing front given the economic woes which then hit the world. Rover survived though, and with Spencer’s brother Maurice…

Ever since I bought the Acclaim, it has very, very occasionally been reluctant to start. The symptoms are that you can turn it over for as long as you like, but it never even attempts to fire. If you leave it and come back 20 minutes later then it will usually fire up fine, or if you spray a generous dose of EasyStart into the air cleaner, this will get it going right away. This has only happened very occasionally, probably no more than half a dozen times in the five years I have owned the car, which makes it difficult to establish any kind of pattern that could give a clue as to what is going wrong. The last but one owner did tell me about this problem. He…

This Figaro was something of a gamble, bought sight-unseen from Morris Leslie’s auction up in Perth. As it turned out, we got lucky and when it arrived down south, our Figaro proved to be in much better shape than we had anticipated. Not that it was perfect of course, but it was very tidy, ran well and appeared to drive very nicely. I say ‘appeared’ to drive nicely because our initial testing was severely limited. Whenever I get a new project car, I quickly compile a list of work to be done. This is generally separated into three categories: jobs that are essential before I feel happy that the car is safe to drive any appreciable distance, jobs which will make it more reliable or better to drive, and jobs…

The proper go faster stuff needs a buyers guide in itself, so we have restricted this guide to basically the non-AVO (Mk1 1970-75) and RS (76-80) Escorts. For the sake of completeness though, we should explain that AVO stuff was hand built at Aveley, later RS stuff was built on the regular line in Saarlouis. Launched at the same times as the regular Escort, the Twin Cam was based on a reinforced two door shell and featured a 1558cc Lotus Twin Cam 115bhp engine, Corsair 2000E V4 gearbox, Capri type struts and brakes, a narrowed Lotus Cortina axle and 2.2 degrees of negative camber on the front. It was a winner, but it was very costly and difficult to build at Halewood. From January 1970, an RS1600 was built, a…

QUANTUM Bet you thought we'd struggle when it came to the Qs, didn't you? Well, maybe next time around, but this issue we are golden! These beauties are Quantums, a four-seater sports saloon and a 2+2 soft top, both based on Ford Fiesta Mk2 running gear. The glassfibre monocoque bodies featured integral steel sills and were stylish, practical and strong. At the time the company was based in Stourbridge in the West Midlands. It has had a few owners since then, but Quantum Sportscars is still alive – now it is based in Devon and making its Lotus Seven-inspired Xtreme. QVALE This is the Qvale Mangusta, a car which started life as the De Tomaso Bigua and ended up as the X-Power SV. The Bigua had been shown in 1996…

The 58th National Austin 7 Rally will be held on Sunday 5th July at Beaulieu in Hampshire. For those who own these iconic little cars, those who would like to own one and those who just love looking at them, the national rally is the most anticipated annual event on the calendar. Hundreds of cars will take part, and there will be much to see and do over the weekend – all of it centred around the diminutive ‘Motor for the Millions’ created by Sir Herbert Austin in 1922 and produced up until the outbreak of war in 1939. This year’s special theme is ‘Coachbuilt and Fabric-bodied Austin Sevens’ and many fascinating examples will be on display around the arena, in the grounds of the National Motor Museum. In 2019,…

This June, Alfa Romeo will have been in business for 110 years, and to mark its 110th birthday, the company will pay tribute to one of its most emblematic vehicles – the Giulia GTA. The acronym GTA stands for ‘Gran Turismo Alleggerita’ (alleggerita being the Italian term for lightened), and it originated in 1965 with the Giulia Sprint GTA, a specific version derived from the Sprint GT. The body of the Giulia Sprint GT was replaced with an identical version in aluminium, giving a total weight of 745kg compared to the 950kg of the road version. The new interpretation of this GTA theme will be available in two versions, the Giulia GTA with four seats and the Giulia GTAm with two race seats, roll-bar and six-point harnesses. They will both…

The Motoring Picture Library at the home of the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu has opened its digital doors to one of the largest motoring picture collections in the world as a new and improved website is making access easier to over a million historic motoring images which span from the 1880s to the present day. MPL has over 120,000 colour images and nearly a million black and white photographs filed and catalogued, with thousands of digital originals. Its subject matter includes cars, motorcycles and commercial vehicles, covering the motor industry, motorsport, the social history of motoring and a huge range of motoring and motorsport personalities. It also includes spectacular motoring art in the form of sales brochures, posters and paintings. Celebrated highlights include the Bill Brunell collection depicting motorsport…

GE Classic Motor Events, organisers of the popular London to Brighton Classic Car Run and Kit & Sports Car Run, have added a Modern Classics Run to its 2020 events held on Sunday 31st May. Stephen Smith from the organisation said: 'As the classic car scene has expanded, so have the existing runs. With more owners of cars from the 1980s and 1990s wanting to join the fun, this seemed the natural progression. Our event is about celebrating vehicles on the road, so it’s very much more the merrier!' The new Modern Classic Run is open to all vehicles manufactured between February 1979 and 31st December 1999. Starting at the beautiful Greenwich Park alongside the Classic Car Run and the Kit & Sports Car Run, the Modern Classics Run will…

From time to time I talk to club meetings about the happy highlights of my time in rallying in the 1960s and 1970s, but I rarely get the chance to mention the lowlights which seemed to get in the way every so often. So if I mention the word ‘Amphicar,’ you will see that Robson bumbling on about a lowlight is coming. Robson and an Amphicar? Yes, in engineering terms, but never in terms of a trip I might have had (but turned down) on a local reservoir. It all happened like this. After Harry Webster hired me to join him at Standard-Triumph in 1961, I spent several months working as a humble experimental development engineer before his master plan (for re-opening the Works competitions department) could mature. Was this…

Preben Bograd lives on the tiny Danish island of Samsø, which is an unlikely place to find a museum dedicated to Morgan. But Preben bought his first one – a Plus 8 – eight years ago and instantly fell in love with the car. That soon developed into a huge enthusiasm for everything Morgan. 'I had liked Morgans since I was a small boy,' he explained, 'so once I reached my 40s and my own kids were growing up, I thought it was about time I bought one to use as a fun car for the summer.' So Preben went along to the Danish Morgan agent and, after a brief test drive, found himself grinning from ear to ear – he was hooked. A short while later, he saw a…

Aesthetic design was a latecomer to the company created by engineer Royce and salesman Rolls, who later acquired Bentley and added this great name to their portfolio. Rolls-Royce's legendary status was based on chassis and running gear dressed by independent coachbuilders, so the aesthetic component was a kind of 'bolt-on' firstly to engineering, then to marketing. Although maintained as a core requirement, the styling department was a tiny team compared to the others. That was perhaps understandable when designs remained little changed for many years, but the period 1970-2000 saw a doubling of the aesthetic requirement as Bentley was reborn, then it doubled again when marketing realised that one-offs and limited runs were attractive to special customers. It was an extraordinary period, and despite the challenges and changes, a privilege…

Whenever I buy a new old car, I am always wary of filling the petrol tank to the brim. That’s partly because you never know if it is going to last the journey home, but also because you don’t want to put in £40 worth of petrol and then watch it all pour back out of a rusty hole in the fuel tank. I remember my dad buying an Austin 1800 once, only to find that it leaked from a rusty seam if you put more than three gallons in. The Minor came with a recently fitted new tank, but old habits die hard and so I only topped it up with £15 worth of petrol – enough to get me home with a little to spare. All was well…

After threatening to investigate the tight window operation on the Jaguar for months (if not years!), I finally made a start. The passenger side was the hardest to operate and had gradually been getting tighter until it became a two-handed operation to raise or lower the glass – one to pull the glass upwards or downwards and the other to wind the regulator handle. I was also concerned that the tight operation may break the regulator handle or damage the internal mechanism, so the passenger side was attacked first. It was going to require a complete strip down of the door including removal of the chrome frame, glass and winder mechanism. Prior to removing the internal door trim, the door and window regulator handles had to be disconnected which involves…

I’d brought our Ford Escort Mk3 into Tiger Racing for repairs after an unfortunate meeting with an Audi driver who was disinterested in the road. Unfortunately my rear bumper interrupted her daydream, but the damage wasn’t too bad. The prognosis was that we needed a replacement back panel, bumper and tail lights, but the rest could be repaired. Paul, who was behind all the great bodywork done recently, set to work carefully removing the back panel from the car while leaving all the original seam weld locations relatively untouched so that we could have it back to standard when finished. This is where we were. We had a new back panel and bumper ready to be fitted, but first the boot floor and tailgate had to be looked at. The…

When we recently stumbled across a sorry-looking Triumph Stag at one of our local garages, MJ Motors of Birstall in West Yorkshire, we were naturally intrigued as to why it was there. The car's owner had recently acquired it and was confident it had been meticulously restored several years ago, but then it had not been used. Instead, it had been stored in a damp barn to slowly deteriorate. Fortunately, its neglect and lack of use hadn’t returned it to a restoration project, so the instructions were to get the engine up and running first, then see what else may need fixing. We followed the work involved to produce this hopefully useful guide to getting an engine running, especially one that hasn’t been used for several years. The following pages…

The history of Italian automobiles is peppered with superminis. Alongside the supercar scions of Modena and Sant’ Agata Bolognese, it is these tiny icons which people associate most strongly with the Latin motor industry. No Italian cookbook or tourist brochure would be complete without a cute, dumpy Fiat 500 puttering smokily through its sun-soaked pages. The 1957 Cinq’ is so emblematic that 50 years later Fiat created a modern version, with instant and enormous success. But not all the great Italian micro cars look as though Noddy was the target customer. The Autobianchi A112 of 1969, 1974’s Innocenti Mini and, from 1985 to 1995, the Lancia Y10 all modelled distinctly box-like shapes. The latter’s snub nose and near-vertical tailgate arrangement made remarkably spacious use of a short wheelbase, and in…

TRIUMPH’S STAG TURNS 50 YEARS OLD What’s the best thing since sliced bread? For me, it’s Youtube. Where else will you find videos of 1970s Doctor Who, a 1973 Genesis concert and Michael Schumacher’s astounding drive at Imola in 1993? There’s lots of other car stuff as well, and one item that took my fancy was a documentary from June 1970 called A Dream Car – the Triumph Stag that after many holdups was finally launched on 9th June 1970. The film started production in 1968 and interviewed many people, from Canley factory workers to Spen King and George Turnbull amongst others. The Stag of course began life as a Michelotti styling exercise on a Mk1 Triumph 2000 floorpan and ended up as a production reality years later as one…