Classics Worldの January 2022 の目次

I received an email from a reader this month that raised an interesting question, if not a new one. It came from Robert Lightfoot, who wrote: ‘Before COVID19, a lot of show organisers were taking the attitude that anything built after the late 1960s was too new and so you could not take your car to these shows. Now with the country getting back to normal and with the 2022 show season starting to get planned, perhaps it is time to ask what is and what isn’t a classic. I drive a 21-year old car daily, a Vauxhall Vectra from 2000, and would not touch a new car. There are thousands of people with 20+ year old cars who would love to go to shows without being told it’s too…

Back in 2015, The Rootes Archive Centre Trust (RACT) launched a building fund for the purchase of a freehold building to house their Rootes collection. The background to this was that the RACT had been formed in 2004 by the Association of Rootes Car Clubs to save the Rootes engineering archive, but after 10 years was struggling to afford rented premises. They were faced with four options: 1. To close the Trust and hand the material over to another museum for safekeeping. 2. To pack the archive material into a shipping container. 3. Reduce the rented space meaning limited or no access to the material. 4. Buy a freehold property. The fourth option was chosen, and a building fund to raise £185,000 was launched by Sir Stirling Moss at the…

I was looking through my parents' photo album, Eric and Connie, who would have been respectively aged 105 and 103 if they were alive today. I was interested in their cars in the years 1936 to 1985, when they had various Standard Swallow and Jaguar saloons. Eric was busy with his business as a small local house building contractor, and during the last World War his firm was licensed by the War Office for the building of public air raid shelters and for repairing damage to local council buildings caused by German aircraft bombings. However, his passionate hobby was the game of golf, (his handicap was +2 in 1940,) and he was Captain of the second team for the Staffordshire Union of Golf Clubs for twelve years after WW2. He…

Sponsored by Flying Spares Parts for Rolls-Royce & Bentley Motor Cars ● Tel: +44 (0) 1455 292949 ● www.flyingspares.com The four-piston calipers on the rear of our Bentley aren’t particularly sophisticated in their design. There’s a mechanical handbrake mechanism that operates a pair of small, dedicated handbrake pads, so the pads for the foot brake are separate, and there’s nothing difficult about extracting any of these brake pads. What can often be complicated is detaching the numerous brake pipe connections at each caliper and removing it. Mark Worth at Prestige Services, the Rolls-Royce and Bentley specialist where our project is being worked on, did warn me in advance that undoing the brake pipes at the rear calipers can be finger-crunching and difficult. He explained that at least one pipe connection…

Having carried out all of the welding needed on our Montego, we now had some major decisions to make regarding how far to go with the paint. On the nearside rear quarter we needed to sand back some imperfections on the flared section of the wheelarch, and this brought the area to be painted very close to the crease line where the wheelarch met the rear wing, where it would have been an obvious place to lose the join between old and new paint. We could also have tried losing this join a little higher up where the panel turned into the concave swage line, putting masking tape across the line and then folding the lower section of tape back so we didn’t get a hard edge. The problem with…

When I was idly browsing through the Copart salvage website last week, there in amongst the really old stuff were not one, but two 2.9-litre XJ40s. One was so incredibly rusty it looked as though it had been in a river for a few years. It was a metallic red 1989 base model with the tweed trim and whilst it was completely knackered, it took me back. I’d been talking to someone about the motor shows we’d been to. My first was the 1982 show at the NEC with the Sierra launch, and the second was 1986 with Jaguar’s new hope, the dear old XJ40. I remember looking at these in detail, sitting in one and thinking that I preferred the Series 3, at least from the styling point of…

GOT A STORY TO SHARE? EMAIL IT TO CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK OR POST IT TO CLASSICS MONTHLY NEWSDESK, KELSEY MEDIA, THE GRANARY, DOWNS COURT, YALDING HILL, YALDING ME18 6AL After the disappointment of 2020 and the cancellation of that year’s Classic Motor Show (along with so many other events), it was great to be back at the NEC over the weekend of 12th-14th November for this year’s event. We did feel that there was more room to move about the venue than there had been in previous years, but there was still more to see and do than could comfortably be covered in a day. Certainly, despite thinking that we'd seen everything on the Saturday, a return visit on the Sunday still turned up a number of automotive gems that we had…

The subject of fire engines doesn’t come up very often in my life. The first time was as a small child, when a teacher asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. 'A fire engine,' I replied. 'You mean you want to drive a fire engine?' she asked, pretty sure of herself. 'No, I want to be one,' I insisted. I now accept that I can’t be a fire engine, but in any case it would be very boring nearly all the time, and then rather exhausting when charging around, hooting and pumping were required. The subject of fire engines rarely arises in automotive chat either, although you can make a spectacular monster vintage car out of an American La France fire engine. And the availability of…

Music teacher and notable Mini racing driver of the 1960s Christabel Carlisle once told me that learning bars of a piece of music as they lead from one phrase to another was similar to competing somewhere like the Nurburgring as the circuit unfolds ahead of you. Fellow musician and classic car enthusiast Mary Mitchell-Gogay may not have raced on the Nurburgring, but her merging of musical and motoring interests has been based around a lifetime spent having to find space in her cars to accommodate her plethora of instruments. 'My parents never owned a motor car, so I have no idea where my interest in them came from at the outset,' says Mary. 'However, when I left school and before I went on to music college, my parents took me…

The Transporter was unveiled to the press in November 1949, although the Transporter name was only adopted later and the first vehicles were simply called by their role – the Volkswagen Delivery Van. This was followed in May 1950 by the eight-seater Kombi that featured side windows and removable seating which meant it could be quickly converted from carrying loads to carrying people. A few days later came the much better appointed Microbus. The Microbus De Luxe appeared in June 1951, often known as the Samba today and highly desirable with its canvas sunroof and eight Plexiglas skylights, not to mention curved Plexiglas windows in the rear corners too. The pick-up didn’t arrive until August 1952, although it had been in the original prototype plans from the outset. This required…

After collecting my new 1951 Allard P1, aka The Blue Lady, and battling the dreadful traffic down to Dorset and back, I was exhausted when we got home. I was still not certain that I’d done the right thing in selling my 1949 P1 and buying this one, but the new car performed well. However, in reverse the brakes felt as though they weren’t working. I asked my ever helpful friend, Colin Anton from Burgess Engineering, if he could call in and press the brake pedal, explaining about the brake situation. At 10pm two days later, he turned up for our late evening session. After jacking the car up (which isn’t straightforward on an Allard) and with the brake pedal down – nothing! We then bled the brakes – still…

SUPPORTED BY CAAR As we approached the new millennium, the world was awakening to the global danger of burning fossil fuels. We were also aware that eco-friendly mass transport was still a largely impractical proposition. The late 1990s was a period of speculation, innovation and technological cross-fertilisation. Manufacturers were dreaming of hydrogen fuel cells, BMW was feeling hopeful about injecting hydrogen into internal-combustion engines, and all-electric city cars whizzed around many car designers’ imaginations. None of these was truly workable in the short-term, but two Japanese car makers had the idea that marrying an electric and a petrol motor might just get us somewhere. Honda was putting together a concept that would soon become 1999’s Insight. It was slippery, with sci-fi looks, faired-in rear wheels and a low profile. ‘I…

Breakthroughs of any kind tend to be rare and often only recognized with hindsight. The British motor industry produced two scorching design exercises in 1969 and 1970 which deserve a place in any motoring hall of fame, Vauxhall’s Styling Research Vehicle (SRV) and the car pictured here – British Leyland’s Zanda. Background The 1960s’ trigger for cultural change was focused on lifestyle, with music supplying the back-beat as an understandable reaction to the somewhat low-key 1950s. The design world in general was also at the centre of the revolution, but the car industry was practically a bystander. Pop stars and the like were cheerfully ‘souping up’ Minis and even painting Rolls-Royce motor cars psychedelic, but the production presses were still stamping out a previous generation’s motoring solutions. The energy of…

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Anyone who was born more than 40 years ago will have had direct experience of the Mini at some stage. Yes, that’s right, I’m referring to Alec Issigonis’s compact marvel as released at the 1959 Motor Show, not the upper case MINI launched many moons later. Although I don’t doubt the BMW MINI’s credentials as a hugely popular current car, as a classic I do feel it needs a bit of ripening to qualify. Luckily, this monthly dollop of nonsense will be avoiding the modern version from now on. Thinking about history while puffing on an imaginary briar, It should not be forgotten that the Mini had a somewhat less than sterling early career before sales improved, but as a small boy car spotter of the mid-60s I could, of…

The Avenger was the last Rootes Group design, with work commencing as early as 1963. Ryton intended it as a B-segment car to bridge the gap between the Hillman Imp and the forthcoming Arrow (Hillman Hunter) saloon range. The projected launch date was 1969, but this was delayed until February 1970. In that same year, Rootes was renamed Chrysler UK. The Avenger’s initial engine choices were 1248cc or 1489cc units, and the trim levels commenced at the entry-level De Luxe. The Super offered reversing lamps, a carpeted floor and door armrests, while the flagship GL featured quad headlamps and even the decadence of an internal bonnet release. Bill Boddy of Motor Sport thought the new Hillman was a useful addition to the family car market. He also mused that it…

This issue, I will be detailing some of the jobs I’ve done on the Cortina at home while waiting for its UK registration papers to be processed. As some of you will have read over recent months, the DVLA at Swansea has been struggling to cope with a huge backlog of paperwork, caused by a variety of problems including the usual suspects of COVID and strike action. In some ways this has been a little frustrating, but nowhere near as bad for us as it has been for some people who were desperately waiting for paperwork to be processed before buying, selling or using a car. At least we had plenty of work to be getting on with. As you will see on the following pages, the first of those…

As mentioned earlier, we had sent off the relevant paperwork to the DVLA to register our Cortina in the UK, but there was a delay before we heard anything back. After eight weeks we got a letter asking for a number of photographs, seemingly chosen at random and some of them very obscure. Clearly these were intended to make sure that the car we were trying to register did exist and was a complete vehicle rather than a notional collection of parts. None of the pictures were a problem, except for one that asked for a picture of the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) stamped on the body. The problem here was that there simply wasn’t one. I looked in all the usual places, and somebody had evidently been there before…

Work continues apace on the reassembly of the Lowlight Tourer, and this month I’ve spent time on the running gear to make it more mobile. The steering rack was the first item I decided to tackle, as it’s more easily refitted at an early stage before putting the engine and gearbox in place. I first needed a suitable rack, because the one that came with the car was for left-hand drive. Morris Minor racks last a long time if lubricated regularly, and this meant there were several in dad’s collection of spares. I selected the one that seemed in the best condition and dismantled it to check for wear. Unfortunately, the reason it had no play was because it was quite dry and rusty inside with a pitted pinion, so…

Last issue, I detailed the overhaul of the rear suspension and brakes on our 1992 project Panda 900 Dance. At the end of the instalment I had refitted everything to the car, but there was another job that I had slotted in between removal and refitting of the back axle. That’s because with the rear suspension out of the way, I had unfettered access to the underside of the car at that end and to the fuel tank, so it made sense to check these areas over at the same time. This car has the later plastic tank, with a feed and return pipe as needed on the injection models, even though this one has a humble carburettor-fed 903cc unit that can trace its roots back to the Fiat 600D…

This series is aimed primarily at the novice who is thinking of taking on a full restoration for the first time, but hopefully it will also be of interest to more experienced DIYers. Indeed, anybody who has tackled a restoration of their own can contribute to the series – we would welcome your additional thoughts each issue, and running those in the Letters pages or in subsequent instalments of this series can only help to build up a more complete picture of what is involved. And that is our goal – we can’t hope to cover all bases in features such as this, but by highlighting potential pitfalls we can hopefully help newbies to make informed choices. After all, it is always sad to see cars advertised for sale as…

Throughout the 1980s, the motoring world was crying out for a cheap open-top two-seater sports car to help fill the gap left by the likes of the MGB and Triumph Spitfire. Mazda answered their call in 1989 when it released a car that stuck to the established sports car formula, having as it did a front-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive. It was an instant success and by the time the next version was released in 1997, over 400,000 of them had been produced. Known as the Mazda MX-5 in the UK, the Eunos in Japan and the Miata in North America (we’ll call it the MX-5 for simplicity), production continues to date in the fourth series of what, in sales terms at least, has become the world’s most popular sports…

Alfa Romeo is a company with a long and rich history, so we will need to skim very quickly over the background to get to the 105/115 Series Spiders which are the subject of this feature. The company can trace its roots back to 1906, when the Societa Anonima Italia Darracq was founded to assemble and sell French Darracq cars in Italy. The new company struggled to sell products that were old-fashioned and not robust enough for the market, but was reshaped as the Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili in 1910 to create its own cars – the Alfa name was born. In 1915 Nicola Romeo invested in the company, buying it outright in 1918 and renaming it Alfa Romeo in 1920. Alfa Romeo was a major force in racing during…