Jaguar

From Wales,

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?

From London Bridge,

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,

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,

Some cars really have a high top speed a Vauxhall Senator would reach 137 mph a Granada 127 mph but 100 mph out of a moggie minor with a 40hp engine out dragging a 2.0 Cavalier that is amazing. It must have been like Harry Potters Anglia as it could fly. I had 100 out of a Ford Escort 1.1 and was amazed. 40hp is just about enough to get a motorcycle to 100 I have found. Although a Suzuki X7 would hit it with a claimed 30hp but a Honda 250 would not get near it with 27hp wierd.



Morris Minors are favourites with hot roders whom also like Ford Populars but they have died out now when production cars are so powerful like my brothers M3 a race car on the road. The fastest machine I have driven was a Yamaha FJ1200 its acceleration was mind warping a real adrenalin pump.



I have seen tuned up Jag E types on the internet they are expensive nowadays once they were real bargains.

From Wales,

Motorbikes frighten me to death I'm afraid. I've seen too many biker being scraped up after accidents with their heads facing the wrong way - and it doesn't have to be the bikers fault, they're still going to come off worst! My Dad used to race in the 60's, he about 17 bikes before he had an accident & spent 18mths on crutches. As a teenager I had a Honda FF50 moped which was pretty decent, did 40+mph downhill with the wind behind you. My brother had a Honda SS50 moped, which looked just like a light motorbike, with 5 gears it did 70mph which is pretty good for a 50cc bike particularly when you think that it was secondhand and that was 24yrs ago..



It is surprising what a little engine will do, years ago my Dad had a VW Derby 1.2 (like the Polo but with a boot). When most cars just had the 4 forward gears. We went down to the South of England one day for a run, early, nothing else on the Motorways and it did 95 uphill and 105 downhill all the way there.



I do like the looks on the old 'sit up & beg' type Ford Pop's, we had one in the drive for a year which we dismantled for parts - my Dad's Lotus VI has a lot of Ford components. It was a shame as it was a complete car without any rust. He found it in a garage in the South Wales valleys, the garage owner said someone put it in for repairs years earlier & it was never collected and he didn't have any contact details - so we had it for a song. The Lotus is a horrid car to drive actually because of the Ford mechanicals, I just can't drive it as the footwell is so narrow I press all 3 pedals down at once. Reverse gear is where 1st gear usually is so you've got to be really careful, just 3 forward gears without synchromesh so double declutching needed, drum brakes all round so you stop with a prayer and with the Ford 1172 sidevalve 8hp engine even in tweaked form you're lucky to reach 80mph downhill! Still she's pretty.



The fastest carI've ever been in may sound mundane - mk 3 VW Golf GTI. My Landlord was a salesman with Paramount Jaguar and the GTI was the 'incentive car' for the months top sales. Sizzling acceleration and power!

I loved the VW Golf s1, had a 1500 and it was a stunning little engine. Bought a s2 1800 and hated it. Wouldn't mind getting a s1 GTI if I could find a nice one sometime. So many cars, so little time....

Hi, do you have any pictures of the VI? They're very scarce and really quite valuable - especially prized by Japanese collectors who love a genuine Hornsey Lotus. Actually, you could probably swop it for just about anything you fancied.



Yes, I know the Ford sidevalves well, they're really budget engines with pre-war roots, basic even then compared, say to the Morris 8 and that 3-speed gearbox is a real cheapo throwback. I suspect yours is the E93A, where you had to grind the valve stems to adjust the clearances!



But it's in the Lotus because of the 750 motor club, Chapman's roots, where you could then race in either the Austin Seven or Ford 10 engined classes. I raced with them nearly 20 years after Chapman did and the Austin sidevalve had been replaced by the little Aluminium Reliant OHV, but you could then still choose the 1172 Ford if you wanted, but by then you could supercharge it. Actually, if you had a Reliant-engined car, racing with at most 50bhp in a six hundredweight-ish car was quite fun!



Now, for a real fantasy motor, i think I'd like to go way back. Not too big, definitely not luxury saloon, Seriously sporting, but a road car.



K3 Magnette would do nicely. If you can't find the Birkin car, the old Nuvolari Mille Miglia one will do. I'll even pay the full original price - £795, i think

From Wales,

Hi



I liked the MG Magnette a bit, (which is unusual for me because I don't like much that wore the MG badge - the classic car equivalent of beans on toast). One of my Dad's mates had about 30 of them at the same time, mostly beyond repair - I don't know what he wanted them for.



My Dad's Mk VI is pretty well known, although it doesn't have any competition provenence that we're aware of, it was featured in 'Restoring Classic Cars' Feb '89 and the pictures from that article have been regurgitated in several classic car books since. It was a total rebuild from a 'field find', it had literally been rotting into a field for a decade or so and only the spaceframe and 1 or 2 panels were useable - but importantly he got the logbook. He has won concours competitions with the car. We were told that there were 130-150 of these manufactured and when my Dad got his back on the road after a 10yr resto we were told that there were 30 roadworthy examples at the time, quite a few in Japan and a few in the US. Technically this car isn't a Mk VI it's a Mk VI½. Lotus was well into the production run of the Mk VII s1 when they found they had about 20 spaceframes for the Mk VI which hadn't been made up into cars so they completed these with some Mk VII panels - they looked more like the Mk VI as they used the longer nosecone. I may have been wrong about the hp, it is 1172, was that the 10hp?



By a quirk of fate, 3 Lotus Mk VI ended up in Porthcawl which is a small Welsh seaside town about 25 miles West of Cardiff, (my parents hometown), a chap my father knew bought 2 to restore and I think is still working on them about 30 yrs later...



I can email pic of the Mk VI if you let me have an email addy, (I don't have the luxury of a website to refer you to I'm afraid).



Do you ever go up to the Castle Combe Classic & Sports-car race day, we generally go up en-mass and usually take the Lotus if it's dry.



There's a cracking s1 E-type 4.2 on ebay today (dealer) - top $ though.

From Wales,

My apologies, thought you were referring to the later Magnette saloon. Just looked up the K3.



Have you seen this painting?

K3 Magnette - race painting

From London Bridge,

I had a SS50 moped as well mine was a four speed it once it 53 mph I have also had a CB200 that once hit 70mph. The fastest moped was the Fantic GT it was capable it was said of hitting 70mph.



I have been watching a Robin Reliant on U tube doing a quarter mile in 14.5 seconds hitting 100mph and Morris MInors are well represented as well. In India a Robin was made with its engine in the boot it was not a success as two door cars are illegal in India.



The MG is making a come back as it is now a Chinese car at least it should be cheap.

From Wales,

MG Rover was pretty dire anyway, so I'm not going to have a celebration if they start pumping out awful cars again. The only one I was remotely interested in was the Rover 75, I thought it was quite a handsome car when it was released, nice interior detailing as well. Also liked the estate version. I've heard a lot of horror stories about the 75 engines though, a guy I know had a brand new 75 as a company car and got through about 3 or 4 engines in the 1st year, one replacement engine only lasted 500 miles.



Your Fiat sportscar has a very high insurance group and is only available in lhd. It's pretty but all Fiats are rotboxes and the engineering quality was never hot. I liked the old 500, amazing little cars.



I'd buy a Reliant Scimitar, they're pretty cheap for a nippy, useable classic - same engine as my Dad's Gilbern. The Robin & the Kitten are affronts to my automotive sensibilities! My Mum did once have a Bond Bug, my Dad resprayed it in JPS colours, it was fun but she span on ice and wouldn't drive it after that. A few years after we sold it we discovered it was number 1 off the production line/ possibly even the prototype.



I can remember being told years ago that the Japanese had a 50cc event where bikes were exceeding 100mph, the engines were so highly tuned and stressed that they only lasted 1 race.

I wonder if there are any of those SS50's still in use?