First Cars-car tales and pictures

[citronut]

I like Imps a lot. The engine was based on the Coventry Climax 'Featherweight' fire pump engine...

mine sure was a fire engine, or should that be engine fire

another flavor of the Imp was the Singer chamois

http://tinyurl.com/ma8vyw2" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jim on a gooooogly search it shows this as the Californian

http://www.imps4ever.info/family/cally.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

and the Husky

http://www.imps.me.uk/Imps_in_pictures/ ... 0Husky.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[citronut]

A very very easy "Whatsthisthen?"

and the Hillman Imp coupe was known as the........................



regards Neil

acording to gooooogly it was the Californian

[NewcastleFalcon]

Imp Californian, Singer Chamios or Sunbeam Stiletto Take your pick!!

Its no contest Jim......come on.....it has to be the "Sunbeam Stiletto" and that's just purely the name without examining the trim!

acording to gooooogly it was the Californian

It was so easy Malcolm, that I'm afraid Jim beat you to the points this time.

Regards Neil

[Xaccers]

Xac, an excellent read

Seconded, Thanks Xac, just wonder how the buying transaction went when the cavalier was new......"yeah red's alright but do you have one in "mushroom"?

Well my sister bought it from a sandle wearing lecturer at her college, so it may have had the sales guy saying "Have we got the perfect car for you!"

[CitroJim]

Well my sister bought it from a sandle wearing lecturer at her college, so it may have had the sales guy saying "Have we got the perfect car for you!"

Sounds like it was the perfect car for him too

Mushroom was a posh name for beige wasn't it?

Imp Californian, Singer Chamios or Sunbeam Stiletto Take your pick!!

Its no contest Jim......come on.....it has to be the "Sunbeam Stiletto" and that's just purely the name without examining the trim!

Neil, I was simply offering supplementary information on all the names by which the coupé was known!

Thanks for the points

[NewcastleFalcon]

This is the first family car we had, a Ford Anglia similar type of colour to to this one, maybe not exact, but a bluey green as I recall.



I remember our previously empty garage getting that car smell-probably the product of oil and petrol, exhaust, touch-up paint, and start-ups. I think it had a large white round gearstick knob. I do remember a friend of my Dads coming round to do a cylinder head gasket, and it consumed oil. There is no other word for it, we loved that car! I literally cried my eyes out when Dad decided to get another car. Can you blame me......he had decided to buy, on the recommendation of the travelling baker shop man Maurice...who also had one of these monstrosities...

... a 1955 Morris Cowley. To make matters worse it wasn't a proper car......it was a huge hunk of black metal, the most old-fashioned shape known to man, with hideous "bench seats" in the front, probably red vinyl, and a gear stick that was on the steering column.....probably to make room for that bench seat. I think it also had the pathetic semaphore indicators (although when my eldest daughter saw my pic of the A30 Semaphore indicators thought they were cool, and asked me if I could fit some to her Clio!)

I look back through diffferent eyes now of course but at the time the Black Morris Cowley was just awful, awful, awful! This is obviously the wrong colour but the only black pic I could find was described as a "Landranger".



Next one was a white Vauhall Victor Super-that was better. Still column change and bench seats but......cooler by miles. We got a recon engine for that one and used one of those stickers which you just never see these days "Please Pass-Running in" Remember them



regards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

I amused myself for a while putting the registrations of my former vehicles in here to see if any of them were still going. My 1969 Mini didnt come up with anything, nor my Lancia Beta, but success..my 1973 Triumph GT6 is still going strong . When I had it it was blue but now its red!

I suppose looking back, it was always probably the most likely to survive, in my opinion it always sounded good and looked good, it had a straight 6 and as long as the king pins didnt shear and you knew your trunnions you would always get plenty of enjoyment out of a GT6

Heres a picture again... maybe I should do a bit of investigation and try to get it back again but I reckon its going to be a lot more than the £600 measly quid I sold it for!



regards Neil

[Hell Razor5543]

Nice picture!

[NewcastleFalcon]

Just about to edit it in! It looked a bit like this



regards
Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

My first car was this beauty..



A 120L Estelle, 1982 model. Sadly this is the only picture I've got of it. I acquired it in 1988 for the princely sum of £90 with 33,000 miles on the clock. It was so cheap as the insurance company had written it off - the missing back bumper, bent rear chassis outrigger and rear crossmember, the broken headlight and the ruined gearshift told the tale. The original owner from new, an older gentleman, had a sloping drive way , in fact, his house is the bungalow here :



Now, if I tell you that he parked nose-in, and left the handbrake off.... it's easy to see why the car might have rolled down his drive, across the road, down the grass banking and ended at about 60 degrees to vertical resting on it's rear OS corner in the river. The front wing was damaged when it fell into the river when it was pulled out.

I fixed it for about a tenner and a bit of filler and paint!

Like others, I found driving underpowered, low-grip, ill handling cars at slow speed a great help in learning how to control a car!

You may be pleased to know that RMR 88 Y is still on the go according to www.vehiclecheck.co.uk so your restoration efforts must have been top quality!

regards Neil

[Northern_Mike]

Someone's done something with the plate then as we scrapped the car when it threw a leg out on the M66..

Enviado desde mi GT-I9505 usando Tapatalk

[CitroJim]

Someone's done something with the plate then as we scrapped the car when it threw a leg out on the M66..

Maybe it was bought as a private plate. Someone with the initials RMR celebrating an 88th birthday perhaps?

It is, after all, quite a nice palindromic plate and ones with two numbers are liked...

[pauldarbyshire]

Hi im Paul and have been a member for a few days and would like to talk about my first car.

My first car was a 1976 Vauxhall Viva E Coupe it cost me £450 and I had it for 6 years until it died on the way home from work one evening. Then gears were all over the place, what I mean is where 3rd gear is that was first gear and so on, also my dad and I with help from a Haynes manuel stripped and rebuilt the engine as the head gasket had blown and also I was rubbish at checking the car and nearly seized the engine. I even forgot to put anti freeze in the car and one cold morning the car would not start and when I undid the radiator cap all I saw was ice so the car was in the garage with so many blankets over the engine to thaw it out.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Paul

I think the Vauxhall Viva E Coupe is worth a picture. Was yours like this? l



The picture list from google also had a few Firenza's on as well. So here's one with a vinyl roof in.....got to be "mustard" ?


regards Neil

[pauldarbyshire]

Paul

I think the Vauxhall Viva E Coupe is worth a picture. Was yours like this? l



The picture list from google also had a few Firenza's on as well. So here's one with a vinyl roof in.....got to be "mustard" ?


regards Neil



Hi I tried adding a picture but was unable to. Yes my Viva was white and had a black vinal roof.



Regards Neil