Show me a nice old car

Plymouth Suburban (1949 to `55 )

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Bendix made all sorts of strange things; from memory they made all or parts of the air/sea rescue kit for the RAF in WW2. It was a clone of the Luftwaffe kit...


Regards, David
 
Doug said:
Looks like a Fiat 124 Spyder... very nice. My dad had one of those.
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I had one of those. Lovely car, lovely DOHC engine, lovely tranny, sweet handling, poor man’s Alfa GTA.
Fix It Again, Tony. But in my case the bent valves were due to my not following the recommended service interval for timing belt replacement. The 10 hour drive in sub zero temperatures with no heater though, that wasn’t my fault. Still, have often thought about getting another, but most are too suspect at this point.
 
Regarding the P1800 Volvo. There was a story (maybe a fairy tale!) that the producers of the Saint tv series approached Jaguar for an E type but were rebuffed so the Volvo was used instead.
 
Larry Cloetta said:
I had one of those. Lovely car, lovely DOHC engine, lovely tranny, sweet handling, poor man’s Alfa GTA.
Fix It Again, Tony. But in my case the bent valves were due to my not following the recommended service interval for timing belt replacement. The 10 hour drive in sub zero temperatures with no heater though, that wasn’t my fault. Still, have often thought about getting another, but most are too suspect at this point.
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The Lampredi twin cam is such a charismatic engine (and so much easier to work on than earlier Italian engines). I gave up wanting one years ago, especially after having one of the most unreliable Alfa Busso V6s that left the factory!
 
Larry Cloetta said:
I had one of those. Lovely car, lovely DOHC engine, lovely tranny, sweet handling, poor man’s Alfa GTA.
Fix It Again, Tony. But in my case the bent valves were due to my not following the recommended service interval for timing belt replacement. The 10 hour drive in sub zero temperatures with no heater though, that wasn’t my fault. Still, have often thought about getting another, but most are too suspect at this point.
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I was hoping the new Fiat Spyder would be more than a Mazda Miata made ugly (and with a smaller turbo motor.)
 
A friend rang me yesterday about some photos I took of a late, mutual, friend and his car when we went on a trip to Burgundy together. Sadly most are stored on an external hard drive, somewhere in a box in my garage of my old house. Richard, the one in the lime green shirt in the centre, went on to develop pancreatic cancer two weeks after returning from this trip.

But I found a couple on the hard drive of this computer. Taken (shuffles in a slightly undignified manner) on my then Nikon D70...

An easy one if you know, but what is the car?

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Indeed Doug, a Bristol 405 drophead from 1956 (amazingly made on the production line that my father had to walk by in his first job after leaving school - sadly Richard's cancer prevented him from taking Dad out).

And indeed, that is where the spare is to be found.

I drove it twice. It had a straight six 2 litre derived from the pre-war BMW hemi six (which origins were the humble Austin 7 engine). It was refined, with excellent handling, a gear change as precise as a rifle bolt, but unsatisfactory brakes.

He had two Bristols, his wife hated them for the expense, but as he said to her - he could never afford a mistress! His advice to me on running classics, was expect only one communication from your specialist - please send more money - and to have a large and varied collection of books in the car, for when you have to await the recovery truck.

Here's our cars at Vezelay - my 2002 tii (boy racer he called it) and his Bristol. He loved going on about his beautiful car, and that day a van with two young lads in it came up with both of them popping their eyes. They came up, he was about to launch into "c'est un Bristol 405" when the older of the two launched into "un deux mille deux T ii Monsieur - c'est magnifique!" I exhausted all reading material in that one on the 7 separate occasions I found myself by the side of the road awaiting a tow...

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