For those interested in "Modern Classic" Cars

[Quarryscapes]

4 minutes ago, big jim said:

she had one of these before the rover!

 

 

 

That's more like it! How the hell can you go from that to a Rover? 

[big jim]

She had an MR2 and a RAV4 between them....

 

 

 

[monkeysarefun]

8 minutes ago, big jim said:

she had one of these before the rover!

 

 

 

Is that a Supra? Nice,. It had 2 more cylinders than most Japanese cars and I think they were rear wheel drive which made it worth a look.

[MJI]

MR2s were popular when I had my Sunbeam. And yes I would chase them

[russ p]

23 minutes ago, Quarryscapes said:

 

That's more like it! How the hell can you go from that to a Rover? 

 

Obviously you have never driven a performance rover . This was the attitude that killed the real British car industry 

[big jim]

As I’ve mentioned before my mate had the 220 coupe turbo......Insane car! 
 

 

[Chris M]

This is my 220 GTi before it got bent. I thought it looked very smart in white. Unfortunately not a turbo.

 

[Chris M]

17 hours ago, Hobby said:

I always thought the Mk2 versions of the Rover 200s looked better than the "rounded" versions that followed and ended up as the 25.

 

I had to drop down to a ZR 120 in order to get insurance to teach my daughter to drive. I thought it looked good in blue and dirt colour.

[Quarryscapes]

10 hours ago, russ p said:

 

Obviously you have never driven a performance rover . This was the attitude that killed the real British car industry 

 

Yes I have, it still looked so utterly dull I could fall asleep looking at it. Rover took the Honda Civic/Domani and turned it into something pensioners could be really proud of. 

 

The one thing I'll give them credit for is the gunmetal trims in the ZS instead of the fake wood, that did look a lot better, and the boot spoiler. (both of which I fitted to my Civic MB) 

[Quarryscapes]

10 hours ago, big jim said:

She had an MR2 and a RAV4 between them....

 

 

 

 

Also nice. Those were good days for Toyotas. Mk1 RAV4 was a brilliant concept, sadly ruined from the Mk2 onwards. I still haven't managed to get my hands on an MR2, but several bits of one ended up in one of my Celicas.

[stewartingram]

11 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

 

That's more like it! How the hell can you go from that to a Rover? 

She saw sense!

[big jim]

22 hours ago, Quarryscapes said:

 

That's more like it! How the hell can you go from that to a Rover? 

she started to get quite bad arthritis so struggled to get in and out of low slung sports cars, her last car before she died a couple of years back was a BMW Z3, that hadn’t seen much use for a few years before for the same reason and as she was having chemo she had to be driven to and from the hospital by my stepdad, that trip was from llwyngwril (near towyn) to Bangor almost on a daily or at least twice weekly basis, luckily before she got really ill they invested in a lovely VW T5 that they had converted to a camper so they could travel comfortably and if they wanted to stay over somewhere nearer to the hospital, after she died he got shut soon afterwards as it had too many sad memories for him and he said it felt wrong being out in it on his own

 

as for the Z3 my stepdad still has it as he doesn’t want to sell it as it was my mums car, and is in the process of getting it fettled up for summer, having new trailing arms fitted as well as cosmetic work 

 

sorry to bring the mood down

 

[big jim]

On 02/03/2020 at 12:16, RedgateModels said:

 

Cheers Jim - Bola B1's

@RedgateModelsits taken me a year but finally got the B1s on the mini

 

 

[great central]

On 03/04/2021 at 22:41, Quarryscapes said:

 

That's more like it! How the hell can you go from that to a Rover? 

 

How to connect a Supra to a Rover:

My son had a diesel, non turbo, Rover 218. Scruffy old thing to be honest but he really liked it. 

He came across a black Supra for sale needing some repair work and an MOT. Drove to Norwich in the Rover and towed the Supra back with it on a solid bar having disconnected the prop shaft as it was an automatic.

He said the Rover hardly noticed it had a ton and a half or so of Toyota tin attached and it didn't affect the fuel consumption one bit. Maybe only a ton, there was so much missing due to rot!

The Toyota needed rather a lot of welding around the rear end, in fact almost the entire floor and suspension mounts. Took a while and when finished it was stronger than ever, sold it on to someone from northern Ireland.

[boxbrownie]

12 hours ago, big jim said:

she started to get quite bad arthritis so struggled to get in and out of low slung sports cars, her last car before she died a couple of years back was a BMW Z3,

 

as for the Z3 my stepdad still has it as he doesn’t want to sell it as it was my mums car, and is in the process of getting it fettled up for summer, having new trailing arms fitted as well as cosmetic work 

 

sorry to bring the mood down

 

She sounds like she was a spirited lady........

 

It annoys me when people bash the cross overs/small 4X4 vehicle dismissing them as irrelevant in town or just not needed when there are perfectly capable hatchbacks available, both Mrs BB and I suffer from quite severe arthritis now (actually Mrs BB worse with RA), so a higher riding vehicle is an absolute godsend to us, the ease of access is perfect, even our i3 which some view as a small car rides (the H point) at the same level as an Audi Q3 and not much lower than a Q5 due to the battery pack below the floor.

 

On the Z3.....our neighbour has had her Z3 for 23 years from new, but unfortunately she needs two new knees now and has such great trouble getting in and out, although give her her due she still takes it down to the Chandlery once a week, or did do before the lockdown.....she relies on her staff now to run the place.  
 

Z3 still a brilliant little fun sports car.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Here in France, the magazine Gazoline has just published a special issue on 40 collectible cars of the 1970s. Useful to me as I am definitely looking for something to have a bit of fun with. Too much of my recent life has involved dull cars, none more dull than the one I am sitting in at the moment, a Vauxhall Grandland.

 

Interesting story in the chapter dedicated to the GS (and mentioned again in that for the CX). Citroen were apparently influenced by a prototype for the Austin 1800 created in 1967 by Pininfarina. Does anyone here have a link to what that looked like? And how did Leyland (BMC) then end up with the total pig's a**e that was the 1800 if they had something much better available?

 

Curiously, this story fits in with an episode in my student life (1976). One of the girls in our group had a real loathing for the Rover SD1 on the grounds that Rover (BLMC) had copied the design of the CX. Apparently, Jane had that completely wrong.

[simon b]

6 hours ago, great central said:

 

 

My son had a diesel, non turbo, Rover 218. Scruffy old thing to be honest but he really liked it. 

 

When I was in my late teens I had a 218 sld turbo as a cheap runaround, white with grey plastic everywhere it looked the blandest thing on the road. However on discovering the engine was actually a Peugeot lump I spent a weekend playing about with the fuel pump and a bodging a turbo from an old 605 on to it. It still looked terrible, but the way it used fly past the local boy racers was priceless.

[boxbrownie]

18 minutes ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Here in France, the magazine Gazoline has just published a special issue on 40 collectible cars of the 1970s. Useful to me as I am definitely looking for something to have a bit of fun with. Too much of my recent life has involved dull cars, none more dull than the one I am sitting in at the moment, a Vauxhall Grandland.

 

Interesting story in the chapter dedicated to the GS (and mentioned again in that for the CX). Citroen were apparently influenced by a prototype for the Austin 1800 created in 1967 by Pininfarina. Does anyone here have a link to what that looked like? And how did Leyland (BMC) then end up with the total pig's a**e that was the 1800 if they had something much better available?

 

Curiously, this story fits in with an episode in my student life (1976). One of the girls in our group had a real loathing for the Rover SD1 on the grounds that Rover (BLMC) had copied the design of the CX. Apparently, Jane had that completely wrong.

Like this?

https://www.landcrab.net/mainframes/main_pinafarina1800.htm

[Classsix T]

37 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

Like this?

https://www.landcrab.net/mainframes/main_pinafarina1800.htm

Hah! Stick a six pot version of the Buick V8 in it and you've beaten the Citroën SM to market!

 

C6T. 

[Classsix T]

1 hour ago, Joseph_Pestell said:

Here in France, the magazine Gazoline has just published a special issue on 40 collectible cars of the 1970s. Useful to me as I am definitely looking for something to have a bit of fun with. Too much of my recent life has involved dull cars, none more dull than the one I am sitting in at the moment, a Vauxhall Grandland.

 

Interesting story in the chapter dedicated to the GS (and mentioned again in that for the CX). Citroen were apparently influenced by a prototype for the Austin 1800 created in 1967 by Pininfarina. Does anyone here have a link to what that looked like? And how did Leyland (BMC) then end up with the total pig's a**e that was the 1800 if they had something much better available?

 

Curiously, this story fits in with an episode in my student life (1976). One of the girls in our group had a real loathing for the Rover SD1 on the grounds that Rover (BLMC) had copied the design of the CX. Apparently, Jane had that completely wrong.

Much as I love the SD1, I've never seen CX in its design, Ferrari Daytona on the other hand...

 

C6T. 

[MJI]

I think it was the BX, originally offered to BL but they went with the Allego instead

[boxbrownie]

1 hour ago, Classsix T said:

Hah! Stick a six pot version of the Buick V8 in it and you've beaten the Citroën SM to market!

 

C6T. 

Yes but........Buick or Maserati V8......hmmmm for Europe.......let me think

 

 

But for reliability.....no contest 

 

We almost bought an SM once, we looked for ages and found a lovely injection late model only to find the hydraulic system had been flushed and filled with normal brake fluid, a so called specialised exotic car sales garage!   It took about ten minutes to rise to ride height and on the test drive it all collapsed to “low rider” mode.....the salesman asked us what we had done to it! 

[Joseph_Pestell]

1 hour ago, MJI said:

I think it was the BX, originally offered to BL but they went with the Allego instead

BX is much later than the Allegro.

 

But those Italian design exercises, for both the 1800 and 1100, are far too close to the Citroens to be a pure coincidence. Just think how well BL could have done with the good mechanical engineering of their two cars allied to an attractive bodywork.

[johnlambert]

On 05/04/2021 at 11:59, MJI said:

I think it was the BX, originally offered to BL but they went with the Allego instead

There was a Bertone concept Volvo that looked a lot like the car that eventually emerged as the Citroen BX.

 

The Pininfarina design studies for the BMC 1800 and 1100 I think suffered from "not invented here" syndrome and Leyland's reluctance to pay royalties to outside parties.  Sadly the 1800 was cut up although it's likeness was captured by Matchbox and there are thousands of toy versions out there (I have one somewhere).  I have a feeling that the 1100 design study might still be part of the BMIHT collection although it isn't on display at Gaydon.

 

It sometimes feels like a large part of the British motor industry had an aversion to producing attractive cars.  The Pininfarina designs that BMC used (and Michelotti's work for Triumph) were very nice but what went before and especially what came after, not so much.  Admittedly that's a matter of personal taste, a lot of 1950s Austins and Morrises look like the are a little too narrow for what the stylists were trying to do.  The Marina wasn't actually a bad looking car but somehow lacked the transatlantic glamour of its rivals from Ford and Vauxhall.  The Allegro suffered from the insistence on using existing parts, which fundamentally altered the proportions.

[peanuts]

Well my flabber was well and truely gasted today on a delivery today to a garage thats sells high end cars bentlys rolls etc and there in the corner of the show room is a mini for sale for the sum of £38.995 ! .i asked is that a joke and was told no its a mini GT3 ltd edition with some 380 bhp ! Apprently its an absolout animal to drive madness .working on getting pics next visit .