Innehållsförteckning för April 2024 från Classics World

EMAIL: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK FIND US ON FACEBOOK: THE LATEST FEEDS AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/CLASSICSMONTHLYMAGAZINE I have just finished reading the March issue, and write to congratulate you on a well put-together and refreshingly informative magazine. This is the first time I've bought Classics World, but recognizing David Gianessi's blue Peugeot 504 on the front cover, I was persuaded to part with the requisite cash. You see, I live not so very far from David, and have admired his Peugeot at close quarters before. In the March editorial you asked for contributions about cars we once knew. I've owned an eclectic mix of interesting motors, from a Bond 875 three-wheeler to a Jensen Interceptor and a Lloyd LS600 Kombi-Wagen (the only one in the UK) to a Vauxhall Royale Coupé. However, I'm writing today…

I recently came by a wonderful 1960s brochure from Citroën, issued to celebrate the 35th anniversary of its factory in Slough. It has photos of the production line in the building which covered four acres. The publication features pictures of the DS, the Safari and the unusual Bijou. However, I was particularly intrigued by the small pick-up pictured here, which was trialed by the Admiralty and is being lowered onto an aircraft carrier. I wonder if any of your readers might have used one of these vehicles during their Royal Navy service?…

As I drove into town, it was going in the opposite direction. When I strolled up to the local shop for supplies later, it was parking up by a bar. I have seen it several times since. It is a Phase 1 Renault 5 GT Turbo from about 1986. At some point the plastic bumpers and side skirts have been painted to match the rest of the bodywork. It wears the badge of the ultra-rare, limited-numbers Copa edition, although I am insufficiently qualified to know if it is genuine. But it is in beautiful condition, and it is in regular use. I am living for three weeks in Playa de Sardina del Norte, a small beachside town surrounded by banana plantations in the north-west corner of Gran Canaria. This is…

Contributor 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 With Lily my 1967 Morris Minor back on the road and my 1950 Morris Minor Lowlight saloon stored in a serviceable condition (ie. with no long list of jobs to do over the winter!), dad and I have found time to crack on with the winter project.…

OUR CARS PROJECT VW JETTA GTI Before Volkswagen's engineers secretly appropriated an Audi 80 GTE engine with Bosch K-Jetronic fuel injection, nailed it into a stiffened Mk1 Golf shell, then lowered and uprated the suspension, nobody used the term hot hatch. But having convinced VW management that their skunk works project had legs early in 1975, the German company launched its new Golf GTI (Grand Tourer Injection) a year later in late 1976 and spawned a whole new genre that's still going very strongly to this day. Despite this, arguments rage about which car was the first hot hatch. According to some enthusiasts of the marque, the Simca 1100 Ti started the whole thing back in 1973. Others argue it was the Renault 5 Alpine in 1976. Even more ardent…

January 19th 2024 was a momentous day in the history of the Standard Motor Club as it celebrated its Golden Jubilee. That's half a century of dedication to the preservation of Standard cars and their derivatives, a milestone that will be marked at the club's Golden Jubilee International Rally in June. Before that, they plan to have a four-car display at Birmingham's NEC on 22nd-24th March for the Classic Car and Restoration Show – one of just six known survivors with coachwork by Swallow on a Standard Big Nine chassis, the only known surviving Standard Flying 20 V-Eight saloon in the UK, a 1937 Standard Flying 20 straight-six project car and a very original Standard Eight from 1957 (pictured). As the club says: ‘All four cars are remarkable survivors and…

The Classic Car Loan Project has enjoyed yet another success, with the most recent custodians of the CCLP's Riley Elf having now bought their own classic to enjoy. Emma Merryweather and her husband first heard about the CCLP at the NEC Restoration Show, just after they discovered they were expecting their first child. ‘I have always liked the Riley Elf/Wolseley Hornet shape, so to be given the chance of having an Elf for a year, kindly offered into the CCLP by the Riley Heritage Trust, seemed too good to be true,’ said Emma, ‘and even more so when we found out we were successful with my application.’ The key handover formally took place at the British Motor Museum the following year, members from the Riley Motor Club having kindly fitted…

EMAIL: CLASSICS.ED@KELSEY.CO.UK FIND US ON FACEBOOK: THE LATEST FEEDS AT WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/CLASSICSMONTHLYMAGAZINE This tale involves my late father's 1947 1.5-litre Riley and my 1964 Riley Elf. The one and half litre Riley, registration number DBX 425, was registered in Carmarthenshire in 1947, the year I was born. My father purchased this vehicle secondhand in approximately 1953 from a Riley dealer called Rex Neate in Botley, Hampshire. We understood that the first owner was a doctor from Carmarthen. This car was to replace a Riley 9 Monaco of which dad was really proud. The picture on the right was taken in approximately 1955 at the mainland end of Telford's lovely bridge spanning the Menai Straits. We were nearing the end of our touring holiday around North Wales, hence the Riley is very…

Peter Simpson's description of Morris Minor door fitting in the March issue took me back to the late 1990s when a friend invited me to accompany him on a day out by coach, organised by the Sussex branches of a Jaguar club, to visit the factories at Browns Lane, Coventry and Castle Bromwich, Birmingham. At the latter, we were given a tour of the automated assembly line for the S-Type, with components reaching the line just as they were needed and the bodyshells being assembled and welded together by robots. Just after the four doors had been lifted into place, there came the one point when things went ‘old school.’ There was a gentleman in a lab coat who had a bench on which were various hand tools and a…

My late mum and I loved coincidences. Her favourite was serving in an antiques shop and talking to a colleague about a mutual friend they'd not seen for years – when of course said friend then walked through the door. I thought of my mum the other morning when I was out walking our mad cockerpoo called Roarie. While randomly pondering why my teenage daughter's dream car is a teal Fiat 500, I happened to glance at a row of cars opposite and, almost inevitably, the first one in line of sight was of course a teal Fiat 500. Having never got behind a Fiat wheel I can't give a driver's view on the Italian marque, but one way or another Fiats have been a presence in my life over…

Contributor After years with Minis and Alfas, Andrew latched onto BMW in the late 1980s and has had at least one every year since. In fact he's now had well over 100. MY FLEET 1989 BMW 730I. OWNED SINCE: 2003. 1994 BMW 318TI: OWNED SINCE: 2017. 2006 BMW 118D: It's my dirty diesel daily. Let's not go there. This is my first ever entry in Drivers Diaries and I'm afraid it's going to be a BMW fest, but there are worse things to own. We will talk about my 1989 730i more next time, but despite having 316,000 miles on the clock it's a show queen I've owned for 20 years. I don't use it as much as I ought to, but it is a very rare five-speed manual. However,…

Contributor Will once drove to the Czech Republic with Simon Goldsworthy in a 1966 Vauxhall Cresta, who bought a Tatra 603 there and drove it home. He has owned a huge variety of cars, and claims to be unique in having owned a threedoor Sierra Cosworth and a Citroën 2CV at the same time. MY FLEET 1986 MERCEDES 500 SEC OWNED SINCE: 2012 1977 YAMAHA XS650 OWNED SINCE: 2020 Wise mechanics will tell you that 90% of fuelling problems are actually ignition faults, but for once conventional wisdom didn't apply to my Mercedes. While hunting down a persistent and long running (seven years and counting) misfire at idle – and getting nowhere fast – a petrol line somewhere underneath the car let go and turned my garage into a potential…

PART 4 With work on the front doors finally completed, the next item on our to-do list was the woodwork. Overall, our car's wood was pretty good; that was one of the reasons I bought it. But though the wood was extremely solid, its varnish was anything but, and the wood's good state of preservation is pretty much entirely down to it having spent many years in barn storage. Clearly, a full rub down and reseal was needed, not only for cosmetic reasons but also to give the wood a chance to survive in the world outside that barn. As most classic enthusiasts know, a Minor Traveller's woodwork isn't just for show. Rather, it forms the whole structural frame of the car's back end in exactly the same way as…

BUYING GUIDE With the benefit of hindsight, it is fair to say that the BMC Landcrab – the AD017 known as the Austin 1800 – missed its mark. Originally intended as a replacement for the Farina series, it grew too big, lacked the sense of style that came naturally to an Italian styled saloon, and unless your budget would stretch to the Wolseley 18/85 version, the interior was austere in the extreme. The designer, Alec Issigonis, felt that regardless of the size of a car there was no need for any sort of luxury aside from space, a view that was perhaps part of the car's downfall. Even when the Landcrab gained a six-cylinder engine wearing Austin/Morris 2200 or Wolseley Six badges, it still stole few sales from the likes…

Like people, some cars age more gracefully than others. That's why this issue we've put the timeless Mercedes-Benz R129 SL under the spotlight on pages 116-117. The car was a game changer in many respects with its innovative safety features – not least the fact it was the first Merc to boast a rollover bar which would pop up automatically in roofdown mode in less than half a second to protect the occupants if the car was about to flip over. But more than that, park up outside a swish coffee bar or high street restaurant and it still looks as fresh as it did 35 years ago. It's one of those ‘forever’ cars – elegant, easy to keep and stacked with lovely little features which will make you reluctant…

FUTURE Classics BUYING GUIDE Combining archetypal British sports car good looks, supple ride quality and excellent high-speed body control, the Chimaera ticks all the modern classic boxes – and then some. Moreover, with its lift-out targa style roof panel which stores in the car's vast boot, it offers the best of both worlds and can cope with the best and the worst that our British climate has to throw at it. At its heart is the wellproven Rover V8 engine, which appeared in a variety of guises – including a 240bhp 4.0-litre, a 285bhp 4.5 and the range topping 340bhp 5.0-litre – a unit that it shared with its sister car the Griffith. The Chimaera's general body shape changed little during production, although in 1996 it adopted the front nose…

Just reading your piece on the Mk1 Vauxhall Astra in the February issue. I agree with what you say, apart from when you say there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cabin. I borrowed one from Skipper of Gloucester, neighbouring dealer to Haines and Strange of Cheltenham whose plates are attached to the yellow car in your pictures. My test car for the Gloucester Citizen, a car from initial launch stock, was a pea green estate and I can still hear the engine rasp as I read your words. However, the early cars seemed to have a problem with the sun visors. They folded down OK, but try to turn them sideways and the stem snapped so the visor came off in your hands. It happened both on the estate…

Regular readers will be familiar with the name of Helen Poon, my Canadian partner in many road trips and automotive japes. You will remember reading about our fairly silly road trip last year in the Reliant Robin to the Isle of Man, and last month the much more sensible and civilised trip to France in the Rover 95. I'm very sad to have to report that Helen was involved in a serious crash on a road trip in New Zealand in January while driving an Audi TT, and that she did not survive her injuries. She had been a close friend of mine for more than a decade, although she was only in her mid-30s. The first trip we did together was top fun: I was the Prime MINIster of…

In the early 1980s you could buy a ticket to Silverstone practice days for a quid. Although barred from the pit lane, you could wander freely round the paddock. For car-obsessed parents of carfixated kids, it offered cheap but epic weekend child care. At the time we lived close enough to the circuit to hear race meetings on the wind, so my dad took us to practice regularly. On 14th May 1982, 11 year old me was strolling round the Silverstone paddock clutching a pen and the Motoring News. It was open at a half-page advert for the Pace Six Hours, a round of the FIA World Endurance championship. Every so often, my dad would point out a figure. ‘Go and ask for his autograph,’ was his simple instruction. Every…

Contributor An ex-expat motoring author and journo previously resident in Vancouver BC, Iain culled his fleet and shipped the survivors to Scotland, which unlike British Columbia is neither on fire nor under water. Here he hopes to make more progress with grand project plans, as well as bimbling around in his old Bentley and blatting around in his now completed Mini Marcos. MY FLEET 1947 BENTLEY MKVI OWNED SINCE 2015 ENGINE 4.25-litre straight six 1957 BENTLEY S1 OWNED SINCE 2019 ENGINE 4.9-litre straight six 1974 MINI MARCOS OWNED SINCE 2010 ENGINE Cooper-spec 1.1-litre A-series CHEVY/GMC RALLY VAN OWNED SINCE 2022 ENGINE 5.7-litre V8 1952 MKVI BENTLEY BOATTAILED SPECIAL, PROJECT OWNED SINCE 2014 ENGINE supercharged 4.9-litre straight six 1953 R-TYPE BENTLEY SPECIAL, PROJECT OWNED SINCE 2020 ENGINE 2.5-litre straight six 1971…

Editor Simon always has too many projects on the go, which means progress on individual cars can sometimes be slow. On the bright side, it does mean he never gets stuck watching telly of an evening. He likes virtually all classics, but has a weak spot for anything small, basic and generally overlooked. MY FLEET 1968 RELIANT REGAL OWNED SINCE: 2022 1969 FIAT 500 OWNED SINCE: 2022 1970 MG MIDGET OWNED SINCE: 2019 1984 ACCLAIM OWNED SINCE: 2020 1997 RELIANT ROBIN OWNED SINCE: 2023 2000 VW BEETLE OWNED SINCE: 2023 Wasn't there a TV sketch show back in the 1980s or 1990s that had a character who would come out of his shed and say: ‘This week I've been mainly…’ Invariably the sentence would be completed by something mundane like…

Ian Cushway Modern Classics editor BMW Z3 It's the obviously rival, surely – but it would have to be the 2.8 because the smaller engine option is pointless. I almost fell off my chair when I saw how inexpensive the car that played a cameo role in Bond's Goldeneye is these days. Believe it or not, I spotted a ‘99 example advertised privately for just £2495. Yes, really. Andrew Evanson Lancaster Insurance Lexus SC430 Remember these? Possibly not because the sophisticated open-top Lexus which appeared in 2001 was always a rare sight on our roads. It's more a refined comfy cruiser than an outright racer, but it still offers V8 silkiness and effortless performance. Prices for this glorious convertible start at around £5000.…

Mesh grille Mesh grilles always add extra sportiness, which is why they fitted them to the XKR from this era. And the good news is you can buy one for your XK8. There are different types available, but Adamesh supply ones that are made from electro-polished, handwoven stainless steel and supported within a thin metal band with protective rubber to protect your paintwork. They also do these three-piece grilles (£360) for extra visual drama. £179 from Adamesh. Sports cats Increased air flow always helps performance, which is why XK8 owners might be interested in fitting hi-flow catalytic converters with 200 cells per square inch (as opposed to the factory 400-500 cells). These ones are from Venom Motorsport. Brake disc upgrade The XK8's stock brakes are good, but you can add…