Innehållsförteckning för September 2021 från Classics World

Do you ever stop and take a good look at the classic(s) in your garage and catch yourself feeling faintly surprised by what you find there? Or maybe that only happens to me! I certainly did just that last year, and the roll call of Morris Minor, MG Midget, Volvo 340, Mini Clubman and Triumph Acclaim seemed a little out of character. Now please don’t get me wrong because I really liked each of them, but as a group they really were all very conventional cars, and mostly straight out of the classic mainstream. This surprised me because I have always been drawn towards the more unusual cars, particularly when it comes to engines. Rear -mounted engines, air-cooled motors, two-stroke twins and triples – I’ve had them all. The radial…

Thirteen-year-old Natasha Lomas has become the youngest ever navigator to finish an official HERO-ERA regularity rally. Navigating her father, John, in a 1936 Riley Sprite – the oldest car on the event – Natasha’s record-setting achievement also marked her endurance rallying debut. 'I was very nervous at the start, but I think everyone was,' says Natasha, who took part in HERO-ERA’s three-day Novice Trial. Designed as an introduction to classic and historic car rallying, the event gave her the opportunity to learn and refine navigation skills with a combination of classroom and on the road training sessions before tackling her first competitive trial. Natasha adds: 'Being the youngest navigator made it a bit more challenging, but everyone was so nice, it made the experience a lot more fun and enjoyable…

It is not a marque that features too often in Classics Monthly, but this month Kia celebrated 30 years of UK sales, having grown from a single-model debut in 1991 with the Kia Pride, a car based on the Mazda 121. Imported by MCL Group, the Pride managed just 1786 sales that year, but Kia has now sold a total of more than 1.2 million cars in the UK, and two thirds of these have been sold in only the last 10 years. To celebrate the anniversary, Kia held a photoshoot of its most important models on the banking at the historic Brooklands motor racing circuit. The banking is less than 300 metres from Kia UK’s previous headquarters, first established when the business became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kia Corporation…

THAT WAS MY CAR! I thought I'd drop you a line about your Montego Estate and its history. I bought that car from its first owner, who had it supplied new on the island of Guernsey. By the time I bought it about five or six years ago, it had remained unused in his garage for some 15 years after he gave up driving. I extracted it and spent a couple of days getting it running (badly), then shipped it over to my UK office with great intentions to restore it for advertising my business back on Guernsey. After a couple of years I was made an offer by an enthusiast and let it go as I thought I'd never get around to it. If you ever want to sell…

Given its ubiquitous presence on our roads today, it can come as something of a surprise to remember just what a step into the unknown for its parent company the Range Rover was when launched in 1970. That was some five years after it had originally been conceived as a long wheelbase station wagon version of the Land Rover, but riding on coil springs rather than leaves to give a more comfortable ride. With a wheelbase of 100in (rounded up from the initial 99.9in!) Land Rover still saw this new variant as essentially a commercial vehicle, even though the 4x4 market had already started shifting towards the leisure and lifestyle end of the motoring spectrum. As a result, the chassis was beefed up so that it would be strong enough…

In Australia and Queensland in particular we have been extremely lucky with the number of local cases of COVID. As a result, the earlier local restrictions that cancelled last year’s Triumph Sports Owners Association Queensland annual Car Festival are now relaxed, allowing the club to operate their show in May of this year. I was heavily involved in the organisation, so please excuse the different style of diary this month, but I thought it would be good to give readers an idea of the efforts that go in behind the scenes from all the volunteer club members to organise any major car event. We chose to once again run it on a shooting range close to central Brisbane that provides good road links with the area, but this year was…

I’ll never forget the time I was driving a Beetle-based kit car on the M62 when the dreaded rattle from the engine emerged from nowhere. Back home, the cylinder heads were removed and the pistons waggled to discover the big end bearings had failed. As you can imagine, my current VW camper’s air-cooled engine has quite a mass of metal, people and camping gear to move, so I’m determined to avoid another catastrophic engine failure. With only oil and air to lubricate and cool the motor, I wondered whether a larger quantity of oil would help. An extended sump can be fitted to the bottom of the existing sump by using longer studs for the original gauze filter plate. This helps to increase the volume of oil from the standard…

AUSTIN MINI HORROR HANDBRAKE Q I seem to be having a constant battle with the handbrake on my 1967 Austin Mini (MkII). It will stick no matter whether I leave it applied or disengaged. I have tried not applying it whilst the Mini is parked in my garage, but as soon as I use it, then it will stick and cause the brakes to bind. The problem is the rear quadrants, but however much I spray them with lubricant and free them off, after a few months they stick in place again. Jim Marchant A The handbrake quadrants are a perpetual problem on the Mini and the answer is to replace them, along with the cotter pins, ensuring that the new parts are thoroughly greased before fitting. If the cotter…

1 With the Bentley raised on Prestige Services’ two-post lift, Rob volunteered to get stuck into servicing, so long as the mechanics kept an eye on him. Armed with the official drain plug tool, he slackened the sump drain plug for the engine oil. 2 The Bentley’s all-aluminium 6.8-litre V8 engine holds up to 10 litres of oil, so a suitably sized drain bowl was positioned underneath the drain plug and sump. Whilst the old oil was draining, the aluminium washer for the drain plug was replaced. 3 The oil filter is accessed from underneath the front area of the engine bay. Rob tried using a filter strap, but needed more grip, so he switched to a pair of water pump pliers. Gripping the base of the filter avoided crushing…

If you are running any kind of Rolls-Royce or Bentley, then Flying Spares is a name you’ll want to remember. The firm can supply everything from recycled used parts to brand new spares for the whole range of Rolls-Royce and Bentley-badged cars, which can make a big difference to the cost of running them, especially if you’re prepared to get stuck in with the spanners for the smaller jobs. Having made its name with the older cars, Flying Spares now covers the modern generation too, and can supply everything you might need to bring something like a tired Continental GT back to life.…

The first rally in my 411 s3 was with my oldest friend and brother-in-arms, John. It was on the Historic Endurance Rallying Organisation’s crown jewel event, the daunting LeJog (Land’s End to John O’Groats). LeJog and my now nine years as a Bristol owner are intrinsically linked as it was the idea of the former which led me to purchase the latter. You might be thinking: ‘Hold on, are you saying you bought a Bristol specifically to compete in one of the most demanding amateur rallying events on the globe?’ I admit that if you put it like that it is hard to reconcile, but yes, this is in fact exactly how it happened! I’ve always had a passion for engineering, nurtured by a childhood spent in the garage where…

Specialist vehicle insurance provider, Footman James, has announced Lee Sunderland and his family as the outright winners in its Show Us Your Shed competition to find the best garage or work space where enthusiasts can indulge in their automotive passions. Launched in March, the social media competition called on motoring nuts, engineering fans and garagistas to share their places of solitude – the spaces where they felt free to tinker, learn a new skill, or simply chill out. From the tiny to the tremendous and the clinical to the chaotic, sheds of all conceivable type were submitted for consideration. With a space inspired by Hot Wheels, Lee’s family entry wowed the judges with its simple yet creative approach to a special motoring space. Conceived and then executed during the first…

The Audi slogan Vorsprung durch Technik is marking its 50 year anniversary this year. It all started in 1969 with the merger of Auto Union GmbH, headquartered in Ingolstadt, and Neckarsulmer NSU Motorenwerke to form Audi NSU Auto Union AG at the Neckarsulm location. The new company’s range of models spanned from the air-cooled engines of the rear-wheel drive NSU Prinz series and the water-cooled four-cylinder engines of the front-wheel drive Audi 60 and Audi 100 to the rotary engine of the futuristic-looking NSU Ro 80. The idea to communicate this technological diversity as a competitive advantage came in 1970 from Hans Bauer, the employee in the Audi NSI advertising department who devised the Vorsprung durch Technik slogan. This duly made its first appearance in a large-sized ad in January…

Recently I received an invitation to a virtual symposium called the Small Cells World Summit. This turned out not to be about the molecules of Little People, but about how 5G mobile phones relate to driverless cars. It was organised by somebody who refers to himself as a motoring journalist. Without casting aspersions or being snarky, I’d say if he’s about driverless cars, then he’s a transport journalist rather than a motoring journalist. There's a distinction. Driving is motoring, and being moved about by automatic machines is not. That’s transport, not motoring. I don’t have a problem with driverlessness in train-type people-moving machines, apart from a general reluctance to see jobs lost – after all, even what might be regarded as a low-grade job is better than no job, which…

It’s easy to find old British sports cars to restore on the west coast of North America, because that’s where most of them were exported. Larry Spouler has restored several of them and his restorations have generally been completed on his own, but this one was a father-and-son project with his son Aaron, who is the owner of the Spitfire. However, Aaron is busy building himself a garage right now, so the Spitfire remains with dad for the moment. There’s one key picture of the restoration that Larry showed me, and it is one any of us involved with – or considering – a restoration should take to heart. It showed the front suspension before restoration. Larry had taken a picture and annotated it with a note that says: 'radiator…

We had hoped to wrap up this project with the Midget driving off merrily into the sunset, everything working perfectly and the little MG set fair for the next 50 years of motoring. However, living in the real world as we do rather than some TV utopia, that was always going to be unlikely. In the end we have taken it out for one very brief run, but there is still work to be done. We’ll get to that in a moment, but first let’s explain some of the final steps to turn the Midget from a project into a functioning car. Obviously, for that to happen it needed an engine and gearbox. Between these, we sandwiched a new clutch. I have never understood the idea of lining a clutch…

Last month saw us sign off having fitted most of a new ignition system to the Lancaster Insurance XR3i. Having ticked off the misfire as being fixed, we were able to turn our attention to the inside. Ford’s woeful lack of interest in its older models means that trim for the 1980s Escorts is hard to source, especially for the Mk3 cars, and good used parts are generally your only hope. In fact, probably the worst part of the interior on this car was the boot area, with the parcel shelf no longer being supported properly and half falling into the boot. That may not sound serious, but the size of the shelf meant it was visible through the glass and really was letting the side down. Investigation soon revealed…

Following a well earned ‘break’ on other projects, such as assisting dad on the 1970 Morris Minor van repaint, it’s now time to restart on the 1950 Lowlight Tourer restoration. Looking back, it’s still astounding to think about the incredible progress that was made during the lockdown. There’s still a lot of work to do and welds to tidy up, but it certainly feels like I’m approaching the home straight. The first job towards getting the car ready to paint was to get it back onto its suspension. This would enable me to finish the outstanding work on the bodyshell around the engine bay and front bumper mounts, which I could not do easily with the shell in the roll-over jig. Secondly, by getting the car back into a wheelable…

When I willingly volunteered to take on the Bentley Turbo R project and tackle the servicing and any problems it may have, I realised that my single garage at home wasn’t quite large enough to work around the car and that I needed expert help to tackle the jobs properly. Thankfully, local specialist Prestige Services came to the rescue and were happy to not only allocate me a ramp, but also to let me loose inside their workshop. We had a little over three weeks to complete all the planned work on the Bentley, which ranged from routine servicing to tackling the numerous problems that had been identified by Nigel Sandell. Such a tight deadline meant that we wouldn’t be able to address the bodywork corrosion and paint issues, but…

1 Feeling confident he could now service Bentleys all day long, Rob volunteered to drain and replenish the diff oil. Using the same Hex adaptor as for the engine oil drain plug (a 13mm hex will fit), he slackened the one for the diff and left it to drain. Notice that the spare wheel is missing – more on that another time. 2 Whilst the oil was draining, Rob replaced the drain plug’s washer and also removed the refill plug, realising he should have done this first – it’s no good draining the oil if you can’t refill it. The drain plug was refitted. 3 Armed with a squeezy bottle, the diff was refilled with EP90 gear oil, requiring nearly two litres. Shining a torch through the filler hole, Rob…

The Volkswagen Beetle was arguably the bestselling family car of all time – Toyota may claim that title for its Corolla, but that nameplate has been applied to 13 generations since 1966 and the car itself has changed beyond all recognition. In contrast, despite undergoing a continuous programme of development itself, the first and last Beetles quite clearly share the same DNA. Developed in the 1930s, production of what became the Beetle actually began in 1938 as the KdF-Wagen (KdF stands for Kraft durch Freude, which translates as Strength through Joy), but the second world war saw manufacturing put on hold in favour of military vehicles. After the war had ended, the Beetle was initially offered to existing car manufacturers from the Allied countries, including Ford and Rootes, none of…

I have to admit that I approached the Museo Storico Alfa Romeo (Alfa Romeo Historical Museum) in Arese, Italy with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia. Years ago, my wife Larissa and I owned a 1988 Spider Quadrifoglio, naturally in Alfa Red. With its sleek lines, the car looked like it would get a speeding ticket while standing still. Ironically, the 115bhp engine was more suited to ambling along country lanes, unlikely to outpace a bog-standard Ford or Vauxhall from a stop light. But Alfie was a still a beauty, and soon we were spending many a weekend attending Alfa club road rallies. Alas, the honeymoon was not to last. Despite a racy wooden steering wheel and those Italian good looks, our Alfa lacked power steering, which was tortuous to our…

The J40 Motor Company (www. j40motorco.com) has purchased a number of J40 and Pathfinder pedal cars since it opened in April 2020, some of which will be restored while others will be kept for historical documentation and to be used at shows and events. This month, company director Jamie Burnett purchased a very special J40, a car that will remain a permanent part of the company fleet. The latest acquisition was originally found covered in rubbish at the back of a garage before undergoing a full restoration by George Rowbotham from Diddlebury in Shropshire. George is a retired automotive bodyshop professional, as is his friend Ken Gwillam who also worked on the two-month restoration project. George is also a long-term supporter of the Lingen Davies cancer charity, which funds treatment…

Eastern Bloc classic car fans met in Staffordshire at the end of June for the Wartburg Trabant IFA Club’s first event since lockdown. The club is a home for all eastern bloc classics, and its 250 members have vehicles covering a remarkable 41 makes. Among the stars on this event were a Yugo 513, Barkas B1000 van, Ladas, Wartburgs, Trabants and the biggest crowd-pleaser of them all – a Zaporozhets 968M, the air-cooled rear-engined V4 car that was the USSR’s ‘people’s car’ and is one of only two 968Ms on the road in the UK. Based in Keele, on the Saturday a convoy of 15 cars made a journey around Stoke-on-Trent taking in the post-industrial landscape, canal and Gladstone Pottery Museum with its iconic bottle-ovens, before concluding outside the spectacular…

TR4-6 PANELS Price: £54/£96 As part of a recent commitment to broaden its support to the TR sports car fraternity, and hot on the heels of launching a universal top hose for TR2-TR4A models and replacement outer sills for TR4-6 variants, British Motor Heritage (BMH) has now recommissioned existing jigs in order to offer forward deck pieces complete with the related hood bracketry for the TR4A, TR5 and TR6. These sought-after items have been unavailable for some time until now, and give customers the choice of purchasing the bare pressings alone at a recommended price of £54 each, or the new jig-assembled ones complete with hood bracketry and finished in E-coat primer at £96. All these items are available now from BMH, orders for which should be placed via the…

In 1963, the motorist who owned a new Consul Cortina Super Estate was the sort of person who was going places. For them, a Morris Oxford Farina Traveller was square, whereas they took pride in driving a car that was truly ‘with it.’ Best of all, Ford decorated it extensively with the finest artificial timber known to humanity, as witnessed by Gavin Hutton's very rare surviving example in a lovely original condition. The Cortina began life in 1960 as Project Archbishop, and by September of 1961 Ford GB approved the estate version. This represented something of a breakthrough for Dagenham as it was to be their first factory-built five-door car. In the previous decade buyers had been offered station wagon versions of the Consul/ Zephyr-Six MkI, but E.D.Abbott Ltd of…

Group Editor at Kelsey Media, Paul heads up the team which brings you our weekly paper Classic Car Buyer and the monthly Classic Car Mart, as well as being unofficial marshal of the company’s eclectic and ever-changing fleet of classic project cars. Ranging from Honda CRX to Bentley Turbo R, the collection temporarily includes this Escort XR3i, while Paul’s own Alfa Spider has recently been changed after 23 years of ownership for a modern classic in the shape of a Honda S2000. MY FLEET 2003 HONDA S2000 Owned since: 2020 1984 FORD ESCORT XR3I Owned (by Lancaster) since: 2019…

Will has a collection of Morris Minors. This column follows the maintenance and modification of them for daily use, as well as the long-term restoration of a 1950 Lowlight Tourer from a desert scrapyard in America and a 1970 Morris Van which has been in his family for nearly 40 years. MY FLEET 1950 MORRIS MINOR LOWLIGHT SALOON OWNED SINCE: 2012 1950 MINOR LOWLIGHT CONVERTIBLE OWNED SINCE: 2017 1967 MINOR SALOON OWNED SINCE: 2010 1970 MINOR VAN OWNED (BY MUM) SINCE: 1980…

We introduced our Austin Montego estate last issue, and assessed its viability as a project. It was not an auspicious beginning, with calculations on the back of the proverbial fag packet suggesting it could cost anywhere from £5000 to £10,000 to put right. That is a huge amount of money for such an unfashionable classic. It is also rather vague with a very wide spread, but bodywork estimates are never an exact science and really there is no way of making a truly accurate estimate until you are well into the dismantling process. Thankfully, despite the fact that this project was clearly not going to be economically viable, the publisher was still keen to save the Austin if we could. So we agreed a plan to tackle one job at…

1 Before Rob drained any oil, he degreased the underside of the Bentley with brake cleaner. We suspect there are a few oil leaks to tackle, but need to assess how bad they are by starting with a clean underside. 2 The gearbox’s sump pan had a thorough coating of oil from somewhere, but we’ve not spotted any drips, so perhaps this covering has taken several years to accumulate and may not be a major concern. 3 The leaking oil has managed to splatter over this exhaust mid-silencer which could create some unwanted smells when hot, so Rob cleaned it off as best as possible and almost brought a shine back to the exterior.…

1 Unsure of the age of the pink coolant in our Bentley, we decided to replace it with the official liquid from Flying Spares. The system holds up to 10 litres, and this was drained via the plastic drain screw on the base of the radiator. 2 The new coolant is supplied as a concentrate and needs to be diluted with water using a 50:50 ratio. This was poured into the expansion tank, then the engine was run and more mixture was added. The heater was switched to hot to help remove any air locks. 3 Whilst refilling the system, Mark Worth released a bleed screw on the top of the radiator to allow air to escape. It also helps to detach the small hose connected to the expansion tank…

1 With eight spark plugs to replace and seemingly easy access, Rob was given a 21mm spark plug socket, 3/8in ratchet and selection of extension bars. Releasing the HT leads was finger-crunching, but slackening the old plugs and fitting new ones was much easier. 2 The new NGK iridium spark plugs were supplied by Flying Spares and were exactly the same as the old plugs. They should be tightened to 25-30Nm, but Rob was advised to simply tighten them until he felt the compression washer was being crushed.…

ROVER To our warped way of thinking, this looks for all the world like the greatest and most realistic arcade game ever built, like those motorbikes in front of TV screens on which you can race your mates. That is just wishful thinking though, as it actually shows a Rover 213 Vanden Plas car on what we assume are the test rollers at the end of the production line. Introduced in June 1984, the 213 was a lightly reworked Honda Ballade and Rover's first FWD car. The VdP was the top of the line, but there was no automatic option. Sadly, in taking over from the Acclaim, the 213 meant the end of Triumph as a marque. ROLLS-ROYCE It's a little disappointing that the photographer didn't get the whole car…