Jaguar

From Wales, 19 posts

My Dad sent me to bid on a Morris Minor in the late 80's when the classic car prices were still strong. An elderly guy opposite my grandparents had died without any relatives and they were holding a house auction. My Dad said he thought he still had a Moggy thou in the garage and I could bid on it if it was decent. When I looked at it, the car was absolutely mint except for a couple of scratches on the wings where he'd scratched the paint on the gateposts, it was 33yrs old and had 30K miles on it. He'd owned the car from new, it was always garaged and the last 3 yrs of his life it had done 3 miles a year which was just to get it MOT'd. I guessed that it was probably worth £3-£4K at the time. I got it for £800, would have been a lot cheaper except one of the neighbours fancied it as well - nobody else was interested. It was 4-dr, looked as though it had never been sat in. My Dad made a few period mechanical tweaks and we had 100mph out of it a few times. He drove it for about 15yrs as his daily runabout without problem and got a good price for it. I borrowed it for a few days and was racing from work tothe pub, when I got there one of my work-mates told me he'd been trying to catch me in his Cavalier 2L (original shape) but I was pulling away from him.



There are a few companies who make very good E-type replicas but the best is, as you say, an upgrade. There are companies who will iron out all the original design flaws and bring the car up to date - you need a big wallet though.



I've had a P5B Coupé, a p6 V8 and the SD1 3.5Litre. I'm not a speed freak but I did try out the SD1 once and hit 135. It was a cracking good drive and the Buick V8 has to rate as one of the all time best engines. Even the elderly Coupé did a very comfortable and virtually silent 100mph.



Today, I'd trade them all for a Snow-cat!!

From London Bridge, 37 posts

Drive away for £10 that is a bargain. My £200 Cavalier was actually free as I did not pay for it as it was given to me by some one whom did not want it. The heater did not work a common problem as they get disconnected rather than replaced some thing about the noise they make. I ran for a few months then scraped it after the fan belt snapped on a trip up the M1 I put a new one one and then noticed the brake pads were non existent down to the metal. The worst by was a Renault 18 from Loot paper which I bought for £50 without driving it myself when I drove it away It would not go above 20mph it was a total wreck I drove it home and never used it again even forgot I owned it untill one day I did notice it was gone. The moral do not buy a car without testing it out from a moron out of Loot.



My dream fleet would start with an E type but one that had been rebuilt to modern standards like they do to AC Cobras the engine would be tuned too. It would be a convertible but also I would have a coupe for cold days a V12 engine for both. As the coupe E Type is an estate car it would do as I travel alone mostly 4 seats are an extravagence. I cheap run around would be a little Fiat Barchetta for when I do not want to be noticed.



I once went on a journey in a Morris Minor it was amazing so slow 55 on the motorway was frightening. Another bad car was a Morris Marina the updated Minor. The Rover 3500 was always a nice car the seats are very stylish and I liked the funny speedo on them it was a red line that increased in length as the car went faster. Worst new car I ever heard of was the Vanden Plas 2200 automatic bought by a neighbour when new it never got out of the garage needing constant repair eventually traded in for a Rover 3500 which never gave any trouble at all.

From Wales, 19 posts

Yeah, the Rover P6 was an innovative and handsome car in its time, I've owned a couple of them, (had all the V8 Rovers). Again, as a quality car, sold in large numbers and there's still a lot of them about. Probably the most numerous car on ebay I'd guess - you can pick up a decent example with MOT & tax exemption for £800-ish and wouldn't need to much to it. A lot of people still use them as daily transport.



I've never heard of a Turner-Climax, presumably a Coventry Climax engined special? My Dad acquired a Climax engine with Lotus provenance which he'd planned to drop into his Lotus VI - but eventually decided against it and kept the Ford sidevalve.



The Elan is very handsome btw going by the pics, my Dad and brother are both big fans of the Elan, my brother bid on one recently but dropped out at just under £11K, he wants a late Elan convertible and the one he was after had the Sprint spec. The Bristol is a nice car, should be worth restoring as they currently seem to go for about £25-£30K, although I'd guess it's going to cost a shedload to restore.



What cars would I want in my stable? How long have you got?! Actually I'd be fairly easy to please, no majorly expensive motors, I don't need a Ferrari or a Silver Ghost or a Phantom. Sorry but the 420G would be there, a Bentley Turbo R, the 2500 estate as a runabout and something nice for the sunshine, a classic hairy-chested british sportster, a TR6 or Austin-Healey 3Litre perhaps. One of my Dad's mates has a stunning XK150dhc in midnight-blue, I will admit that I lust after that a fair bit. A VW splitty bus to escape in for long weekends. But lots of others I'd like to own for just a few months to say that I've had one, an Alfa-Romeo Spyder convertible, an XJ12 s1, an XJ5.3C, an XJRS 6Litre, a Jensen CV8, a Land-Rover s1 and an early sportcar like a model T special or Austin 7 special. I think probably one of the best value-for-money cars about if you're after an eye-catching perfomance convertible is the XJS, the 3.6 isn't a bad engine but the V12 is the one to have and I think they're a steal at about £5-7K. If my lottery numbers come might add a Noble to my list of wants.



And don't knock bangers, I've had a lot of them as well. The tip is to buy them with a full MOT and get rid after 6mths, usually get all your money back. Putting them through the MOT's is always the expensive bit, so leave that for someone else, never had a Vauxhall though. Did advertise once for a cheap runabout when I was skint and a dealer phoned me offering a Cavalier 2Litre that he'd just taken as p/x , he said it's got a long MOT, it drives ok, it's just ugly and I want it off my forecourt - drive it away for £10!! The really good thing about bangers is that you can park them anywhere and don't need to worry about anyone messing about with them, I didn't even use to bother locking the doors on some of mine.



So guys, what would be in your respective stables?

17 posts

Hi, actually, i think they look rather good compared to a lot of their contemporaries, thoough i must admit I rather like their direct competitor, the Rover 2000, especially in the 3.5s version, a quick car even today.

Triumph always managed to turn out stylish cars, even when what was underneath wasn't so good!



Given a free choice, what would you really like to own?

From London Bridge, 37 posts

Those old Triumph's do look funny now and like death traps the pillers are so slim. I am not worried about a owning a car at the moment as in London it is quicker to walk. The last one I had was a Cavalier 2.0i for £200 a £2500 Triumph seems crazy to me.

17 posts

Hi, the one I had was a 3.8 FHC, the first revision 1962, not the flat floor one. That was back in the days when they had descended to "tatty 2nd hand". I couldn't really afford to run it properly because, to be honest, by seven years old those original "E" types were starting to fall apart and I offloaded it for about £550 before it disintegrated. Those early ones were then cheap because everyone wanted the 4.2s with the much better gearbox. I don't regret not having it, they are horribly complicated to restore properly.



Car I most regret selling was a Turner-Climax I had during my student days, Bought for £80 and eventually sold for £150 after putting in a lot of work . You could stick a couple of zeros on that value now as I don't know if a single genuine example still exists!



I do still have my much-loved Elan:



http://www.audiomods.co.uk/elan/

- restored now mainly out of guilt for all my past bodges

and at at my mother's house there's a 408 that we had during the oil crisis when, luckily, it turned into an unsaleable old shed overnight. That's probably a project for retirement.

From Wales, 19 posts

I bet they did sound nice, these Police drivers are jammy when you look at what they get to drive, not quite as jammy as their Italian counterparts who get the occasional Ferrari supplied as a pursuit vehicle.



I've seen quite a few Triumph Spitfires that have had the 2.5 engine shoehorned into them - don't know how well they'd handle the power though?



Did you mention on a previous post that you had or once had an early E-type? I like the early flat floorpan models but only the convertibles, the fhc's are not my cup of tea. Unlike yourself I did also like the later V12 convertibles but not as much as the original - it certainly was an all time classic styling coup. A neighbour of my parents stumbled across a really rough one years ago & set about restoring it with his chequebook, sadly died before it was totally completed after a 20yr resto. He found by chassis number that it was number ?57? off the production line. His daughter got about 40K for it at auction after his death. A mate of my Dad has a 4.2fhc in really nice condition but you don't see many of the early 3.8's about.

17 posts

The rumour going round at the time was that these police Triumphs had the 150bhp version of the engine, like in the original TR5. If that was true, then they would have been pretty quick. They certainly sounded nice when they were actually going.

From Wales, 19 posts

I wasn't aware of the problem with the wheels, it was a huge shame that Triumphs 1st venture into fuel injection was abortive and unfairly tarnished the reputation of what was a pretty decent car. '76 in a Triumph PI, what would Mad Frankie Fraser & the rest of the colourful characters been using to outrun them then? Probably still Mk 2 3.8L Jags, XJ12's & Rover 3.5's - sadly the Triumph wouldn't have stood much of a chance!

17 posts

Hi, iI remember the 2.5pi well fom the very hot summer of 1976.



I was working just off the Edgware Road and we used to sit outside the "Windsor Castle" in Crawford Street, a road used by the police as a short cut back to the station.



At least twice a week, there'd be a nice white police 2.5pi at the side of the road wih the bonnet up, waiting for a tow back the the station with a couple of sheepish plods trying to pretend it wasn't theirs after they had flattened the battery tring to restart when it had conked out. And these were possibly the BEST maintained 2.5pi's in the country!



We loved it.



They looked really nice too, as they all had genuine minilite wheels because the standard steels cracked under police use.