all this talk of Rootes group and other 70's rubbish Pom cars..... one of the best car I ever owned was a 1979 Citroen 2CV, straight out of Tin Tin, and a 1954VW beetle painted in WW2 Cammo colours with 1700 motor and Kombi suspension with reduction hubs and 16" landrover tyres.... Worst....hard one....Holden Sundog 1900....sheared the plastic distributor drive, and the top of a piston came off....still had good compression but noisy.. Used to treat Post Office vehicles like they do on Top Gear.....the 'new'Japper ones were the hardest to destroy...... XA Falcons....yeeech....Vauxhall Chevettes went really well....radio would drown out engine screaming...
.....i gotta admit that i had a good run with most of my early vehicles... the ones i didnt drive into trees or put over banks....lucky the metal was heavy, the speeds were hard to achieve and fuck all traffic down here when i was a boy...most memorable was a renault 10.....sports car compared to the british fords and sluggish rootes group vehicles ive had....
For many years I usually had a 1950's Morris Oxford in the driveway. The last one I had in the early '90s and was a 1958 Series 3 (just like the Hindustan Ambassador built in India for the last 40 years) repowered with an 1800cc Marina engine and fitted with CNG! The '50s Oxford was the automotive equivalent of a BMW airhead: simple, strong, and easy to work on. I had a VL Commodore 3 litre Royale on LPG for a few years which was a pleasure to own and drive. It was a relatively modern car when I bought it, and it was only let down by the cheap plastics. We had a Sierra wagon which was Mrs Headroom's company car. She got it new in 1988, and it was ultra-basic (no factory radio!) but it was peppy and comfortable and very nice to drive. Her current late model Mondeo is shamed by the Sierra in many ways IMHO. Our biggest disaster was an '87 BMW 325iA4 which we bought from a yard in Parnell late in '95. The yard was owned by Jerry Clayton but wasn't part of his BMW dealership. My mother-in-law had already bought a BMW 318iA2 from them a few months earlier and we were very happy with that deal, so we used the same salesman to buy the 325. It looked stunning but it was a disaster, having been involved in a major accident and rebuilt. The car had hit a strainer post on a rural road at 100kph+ and then got tangled in fence wire. It should've been a write-off but the assessor was an idiot, the panelbeater was incompetent, and the insurance company then spent months wringing their hands. We were blissfully unaware of all of this until after we'd bought it, and on the first drive home I knew it wasn't right. It took a few months but we eventually got our money back. One fun vehicle we had for a few years was a late '70s CF Bedford jumbo (ex Post Office) which had been repowered with a Chev V6 and fitted with a double bed. It was a hoot!
Some of the best BFTP cars I had were any of my HQ-HZ holdens. Also had an XD ute that I got a good run out of until it rusted away, it did however seem to eat head gaskets. Also had a brace of '69 Vivas which were ok....... With out doubt the worst BFTP car I had was a mark IV cortina it was a POS My little 1100 'tinfoil deathtrap' Laser is growing on me as well, 10000 trouble free kms since I got it at the start of the year, and it has just passed it latest WOF with no issues........
My one and only car i ever owned....was a Hunmber 80.....i wrote it off against a light pole on the market road flyover.......@ about 16 i think....rode bikes only after that........and company cars/vans.....in London i "used" a Peugeot something...it was a 7 seater.....im not sure who owned it but they got lots and lots of tickets.......i left it at Heathrow airport with a sign in the window says there wasn't a bomb on board....and then i traveled around the States and Canada in a 1961 Rambler......it never stopped working EVER....well the engine didn't...everything else did....we left it on the streets of NY to be collected with the trash....although i still have the plates (stolen...NY on the front and Texas on the back) and the emblems....i still cringe at the Humber 80....
My first car was the epitome of solid English reliability, gutless, but built like a tank: a 1962 Morris Oxford. I did alot of miles in it loaded up with mates during my scarfie years in Dunedin. I rolled in once, complete 360 of course, and managed to push in all 4 of the wings. Couldn't open the bonnet or the boot! Some home panelbeating did the trick! Another time my mate borrowed it and returned it sans bonnet! I drove it round for moinths like that. Til some snake pulled me over and frowned upon me, but didn't ticket me! It eventually developed a few leaks in the front windscreen, but the heater was first class. Great for those frosty Dunedin mornings! And the boot was huge! Aaaah, such great memories! (Wipes tear away from eye)
First ever car was a Ford 100E Prefect - my brother scored it as a write-off and tarted it up for me. I sanded it for a new paint job. Sidevalve engine and 3 speed box with a huuuuuge gap between 2nd and 3rd. Horrible thing. Second was a Peugeot 403 - magnificent car, never did a thing to it, sold it to a mate and he had it for years before some woman lost control on the East Coast Rd Browns Bay and wrote off the Puggit. We once did the round the bays run and left the Puggit at the end waiting with a boot full chocka with Leopard Deluxe Beer () and ice. When we got to the end there was the Pug, dripping water out of the boot, but the beer was awesome. Next was a VW Kombi that was so rotten you could put footballs through the rust holes in the floor. The only brake that worked was the front right hand wheel. Someone had nicked a couple of WOF books from a local garage and we used to write ourselves WOFs - I got pulled up by cops a couple of times in that van (certainly not for speeding) and they were incredulous that it had a warrant. It fitted a CR125 motocrosser inside it and we went everywhere in that thing with a couple of mattresses in the back for instant accommodation. Next was a low-light 850cc sidevalve Morrie Minor. Slower than a wet week but never gave any hassles. Good times.
All this talk about Rootes Group and I had to work on one of it's finest today- 1973 VH Hardtop, 265 factory manual. And for the first time in about 15 years the bitch of a thing took my eye lashes and 1/2 of my 1970's porn star 'stash We have all done it, I'm sure. One hand on the dizzy (He put it in 180 out) and the other choking off the carb top while he cranks it..and it beltched out a massive fireball (it should have been the 318 engine) so big I was caught up in it. Hate that, thought I knew how to avoid such things. BFTP cars eh? All my cars/utes/panel vans/ bus's and trucks have been BFTP eligable and we are talking over 60 vechiles, the newest thing on 4 wheels I've owned was an '82. My favs has to be either a '69-70 VH Valiant Hardtop, had 2 of them so far- don't like the 318 engine or the 245/265 so it would have to be a 225 slantie or a 360 but mandatory manual transmission for either. Or a '64 EH Holden. So far I have owned 6 station wagons, 4 sedans, 1 Targa car, 1 panel van and curently the ute I have now. The worst cars? Anything that rusts from the inside out is depressing- XA Falcons, VH/VG Vals and HT/G/K Holdens have all fallen apart on me- Took an HK Holden ute to the landscapers, ute was tidy, WOF/Rego but 1 digger scoop in the back of gap 7 and she fell in half right there in the yard. Had to dig out all the gap 7 with a shovel back into the digger bucket, rip up some pallets they had there and use the wood to jack and prop the body back to drivable so I could get home to make it a Westie garden ornament.
.....showing my age here, but i can remember when the Square in chch was full of rockers and bodgies on brit bikes and the yanks at the 'base, hung out with their ,hot rods, there ....i can remember an a40 somerset with the biggest fat wheels we had ever seen with a v8 in it.....my mk 2 zephyr , 62 facelift model with RADIALS on it was pretty ordinary in there...we upped our credibility a bit by cutting a hole in the bonnet of an eh holden, poking some triple strombergs on it....didnt have rubber fuel lines that would fit , so we used green garden hose...new exactly when we were gonna cut our fuel out by the length of the air bubbles in the hoses poking out thru the bonnet....we also had a '55 vauxhall velox that looked like it had been thru a demo derby, only glass in it was the windscreen and a few beer crates in the back to sit on....marvellous times....youngsters these days wouldnt have any idea of the fun we could have in our underpowered ,heavy, slow vehicles....all relevant tho, i suppose.....cops would take the distributor if they thought we were too pissed....
Here are a few of my past junkers; Shaggin' Wagon warmed 350ci SB Chev Turbo 350 Still got the ute, ex took the sedan. 360/4spd 295hp @ R/W Fun and fearsome all in one, still have the engine and the front cut resides in my lounge
Plenty of great cars/utes/vans/station wagons , looking back over the years would love to have alot of them today! but still have nite-mares about that bloody Hilliman Imp
Jeez, not many of you guys have experienced a good root/Rootes then!! My first car was an Austin 7 (1938). That wouldn't pull a sick old lady off a shit house seat! Next was a '29 Dodge rescued off a Taranaki farm by my old man, who thought it would make an excellent stock car. In the end I did sell the '36 truck motor out of it to a stock car racer. Had a very hairy moment in that car when ringing it out on the Midhurst straight (all of 60 mph). The drive shaft broke and dug into the road. Didn't roll, but the diff didn't like the experience either. Had a '37 Studebaker 6 that did 90 mph. I sold it to a mate who wrapped it around a power pole about 3 months later. He didn't kill himself, but completely stuffed the car and the pole. A '54 Velox with slide up and down windows was one of the best performing/handling cars I owned of the BFTP era. I traded it in at Hamilton for a '62 Mk2 Zodiac which was a pig at handling and burnt that much oil, I used to refill it with waste oil. I'm not sure who got the better deal, as the diff was really singing in the Velox when oil wasn't supplemented with a dash of sawdust. It's amazing what happens to perfectly good cars,when years of no maintenance takes it's toll. Did anyone mention the 6 o'clock swill??
a 52 morrie oxford to start traded in on a 60 something PB vauxhall................really cool speedo went thru 3 different colours...........traded that on my first bike............TS250 savage...........since then......pfft...........cars......nothin special
Started at age 17 with an A50 for a couple of years, nice smooth driving car, moved on to a 2 door Morris minor, which I toured the South Island in, the rear seat folded down and opened into the boot and even my 6ft frame could sleep in there, bloody cold in mid winter though. My stand out vehicles were a 1985 Chevy 350 powered LWB pickup ( Still used $700/mth worth of gas at 40c/litre), I drove it every where with foot buried to the floor. 1994 Range Rover old shape but first of the air suspension models, awesome ride and tow anything anywhere. The last memorable one was a 1999 Suabaru Legacy with Big bore exhaust, Son couldn't keep up the payments so we bought it, absolutley awesome exciting ride. I was a forestry contractor at the time and used to take it into the bush towing big loads. Indestructable engine, had 300,000km on it and we caned it every where, still didn't use oil even at that mileage.
....2nd car was a morris oxford, 64 i think, had a cracked bell housing, got one from a wrecker, wrong bolt pattern, took it back, he said , they had 4 or 5 changes to the bell housing mounts over about as many years, gave me another, wrong pattern, got fucked off and sold the thing to the wrecker, great car when it was running well, leather , woodwork, nice and shiny, didnt take me more than a year to fuck it, probably trying to keep up with a local 16/60 wolseley of the day...or a mk3 zody....bit like z cars...
