For those interested in old cars.

[Northmoor]

3 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

The only Allegro I rode in was a 1500 and it seemed quite nice once one got used to the steering wheel.

 

Certainly no worse than the rest of the common herd. Escorts (for instance) were pretty grim until you got to the hot versions of 1600cc and above.

Everyone (who's never driven one) slates Allegros for being awful, but they were little more than a rebodied 1100/1300 which was Britain's best-selling car, for understandable reasons.  The restyle reduced sales of the replacement model by two-thirds.

[Danemouth]

Allegros - tell me about them. I bought one brand new in January 1979 - YKG27T. I had a fair few moments of interest with it. 

 

I had enough of it be the following September and part-exed it with just over 6,000 miles on the clock for a brand new Cortina - talk about chalk and cheese.

 

Dave

[Oldddudders]

While the design was sound in most areas, the Quartic steering wheel not being among them, build quality was at times iffy, and industrial relations within BL atrocious, which affected the build, no doubt. Hence the nickname "All-aggro"!

[PhilJ W]

I had an Allegro estate series II with the 1275 cc engine. I had it for four years doing c. 25,000 miles per year with little trouble. It was very roomy for a car of it's size and its performance was adequate for what I used it for (including towing a trailer). The high mileage took its toll and the diff carrier developed a crack* and then collapsed locking the front wheels in the middle of a busy road junction during the rush hour.

* The workshop reckoned it was something thrown up by the tyres hitting the diff casing.

Edited Sunday at 15:05 by PhilJ W

[45655]

My father had one of those.  A very practical load carrier.  I believe that, at the time, the Allegro estate had the tallest tailgate opening of anything bar a Volvo estate, combined with a very low floor.

 

Keith

Alton.

[Metr0Land]

Saw this 1964 Cortina beside Llanwrda station today (near Llandovery)

 

 

[MJI]

15 minutes ago, Metr0Land said:

Saw this 1964 Cortina beside Llanwrda station today (near Llandovery)

 

 

I drove through Llanwrda last Friday, stopped at Ystrad for an early dinner.

 

 

[Erichill16]

Saw this at Doncaster racecourse on Sunday. There is an obvious mismatch with the paint but it’s not as bad as the photo suggests.

It’s actually a Vauxhall Ventora. Can’t think I’ve seen one before.

[doilum]

They were the Victor with a straight six 3.3 litre engine. Only top of the range spec.

[BernardTPM]

Looks more like the VX4/90 version with the Rostyle wheels and the cross motif, but the grille itself is actually from a later VX2300GLS. The Ventora and VX4/90 grilles* had squares, not rectangles in the grille pattern. Overall it's hard to be sure what it is from the outside. Ventoras had the 3.3 straight six under the bonnet.

 

* There was a VX490 in the later VX series too, but without the / in the name.

Edited Thursday at 20:05 by BernardTPM

[Erichill16]

46 minutes ago, BernardTPM said:

Looks more like the VX4/90 version with the Rostyle wheels and the cross motif, but the grille itself is actually from a later VX2300GLS. The Ventora and VX4/90 grilles* had squares, not rectangles in the grille pattern. Overall it's hard to be sure what it is from the outside. Ventoras had the 3.3 straight six under the bonnet.

 

* There was a VX490 in the later VX series too, but without the / in the name.

I was going by the badge on the back rather than anything else!

Having looked it up on Wikipedia the naming/numbering does look quite complex.

Having said that my car has an ‘S130’ badge on it but it isn’t!

Edited Thursday at 20:51 by Erichill16
Add comment

[PatB]

3 hours ago, Erichill16 said:

I was going by the badge on the back rather than anything else!

Having looked it up on Wikipedia the naming/numbering does look quite complex.

Having said that my car has an ‘S130’ badge on it but it isn’t!

At the time, Vauxhall were in financial dire straits (along with the rest of British industry). It's entirely possible that the factory were desperately trying to get cars out of the door with whatever was in the parts bins on the day because they'd exhausted their credit with sub-suppliers.

 

OTOH, any Victor variant is now 50-odd years old, and a lot can happen to a vehicle in that time.

 

Regarding the Ventora concept, I've always thought it was unfortunate that Vauxhall stuck with the old 4-bearing engine, rather than using the 7-bearing unit that GM had been using in Holdens since the early 60s.

[Dunsignalling]

On balance, there's more VX 4/90 than Ventora about it, but the quarter bumpers are wrong for either, I think.

 

Chances are it's received odd bits from various scrappers over the decades, though, and it's had a lot of paint that doesn't all match.

 

I knew somebody who owned several Ventoras, and IIRC, all his had leathercloth roofs. 

 

[phil_sutters]

Parked outside a local hotel, the owner was topping up a leaky radiator, before taking the ferry over to Dieppe and making a short journey into France.

Registered in 1930 and originally owned by a resident of Evercreech, this would make a nice companion to Ivo Peters' Bentley.

DVLA shows this as an Austin 6TT, which I have found hard to tally with photos on the 'net.

Edited 22 hours ago by phil_sutters

[Jol Wilkinson]

12 hours ago, Metr0Land said:

Saw this 1964 Cortina beside Llanwrda station today (near Llandovery)

 

 

DVLA shows it as a 1964 Cortina 1200, so someone has made a (poor) attempt of making it look like a Lotus Cortina. As a restored Mk1 2 door 1200 it could be quite rare.

[PhilJ W]

13 hours ago, PatB said:

At the time, Vauxhall were in financial dire straits (along with the rest of British industry). It's entirely possible that the factory were desperately trying to get cars out of the door with whatever was in the parts bins on the day because they'd exhausted their credit with sub-suppliers.

 

OTOH, any Victor variant is now 50-odd years old, and a lot can happen to a vehicle in that time.

 

Regarding the Ventora concept, I've always thought it was unfortunate that Vauxhall stuck with the old 4-bearing engine, rather than using the 7-bearing unit that GM had been using in Holdens since the early 60s.

It might be that the seven bearing engine was too long for some applications. The original Ford Cortina engines had three bearing engines but when the crossflow engines were introduced they had five bearings which required a longer engine block. However when the Fiesta was introduced so as to fit the traverse engine/gearbox unit in they reverted to three bearings and a shorter engine.

[PatB]

8 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

It might be that the seven bearing engine was too long for some applications. The original Ford Cortina engines had three bearing engines but when the crossflow engines were introduced they had five bearings which required a longer engine block. However when the Fiesta was introduced so as to fit the traverse engine/gearbox unit in they reverted to three bearings and a shorter engine.

Possibly. I confess that I'm not sufficiently familiar with the Vauxhall 3.3 to know how closely, in terms of dimensions, it resembles the GM Holden units. I do know that the 7-bearing Holden "Red" motor is a more or less drop in replacement for the earlier 4-bearing "Grey" unit (which I believe shares a common ancestry with Vauxhall's 6), which suggests that the two are dimensionally similar. Mind you, there is bags of room in most Holden engine bays, and Australians don't seem to mind extending big, heavy engines well forward of the front axle, so it's possible that, if the later engine is a bit longer, it doesn't matter. The Victor shell may have been a bit more restrictive.

[monkeysarefun]

26 minutes ago, PhilJ W said:

It might be that the seven bearing engine was too long for some applications.

 

 

The Holden red motor that  @PatB mentioned was used in a wide range of Holdens of all shapes and sizes, including the Cortina sized  Torana, (which that Ventora kind of resembles from the centre pillar back), so it'd fit , I'm thinking.

 

 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by monkeysarefun

[BernardTPM]

12 hours ago, Dunsignalling said:

On balance, there's more VX 4/90 than Ventora about it, but the quarter bumpers are wrong for either, I think. Chances are it's received odd bits from various scrappers over the decades, though, and it's had a lot of paint that doesn't all match.

I agree. It's got to be a mish-mash of assorted FE/VX parts.

 

A registration check says it's a 1973 Victor but can't agree whether whether has the original 2279cc (2300) or a 3297cc (3.3) engine!

[phil_sutters]

How old this one is is not clear. I have tracked down an article about a twin of this car - I think - I won't put in a link - but if you search for modern-meets-traditional-32-ford-deluxe-coupe I think you should find it. DVLA doesn't recognise 32 ROD and there was no plate on the front. I am not sure what was going on there. No sign of a film crew.??? As it is a left-hooker it could be a visitor from abroad.

Edited 9 hours ago by phil_sutters

[monkeysarefun]

This old thing has been parked up outside a mechanic shop down town for donkeys years. 

 

 

Except for a bit of rot in the front guard it doesn't  look to be in too bad nick.