The Mini Van was 162AOU and fitted with an optional grille/divider behind the front seats, at Wadham Stringer in Waterlooville (nr Portsmouth).
The fitter who installed it was heard to say, on hearing it was a for a private customer "What is he - a flipping lion-trainer?"
|
Waterlooville?
Sure it wasnt Cowplain (where I hail from - On Milton Road.)?
There was a lot of RN housing round there.
Oh, my dad's cortina Mk1 estate was ETP 202 D.
He sold it for £60 in 1975. WITH a state-of-the-art push-button tuning radio!
To put things into perspective, a year before he'd been given a scientific calculator from work.
Worth £75.
|
|
|
|
Funnily enough, I have an uncle by marriage who was in charge of the paint shop at RR in Crewe until he took early retirement some years ago. He still makes a bob or two doing re-sprays and so on from home. His own car is a fairly old red Sierra saloon but it looks absolutely brand new. Suffice it to say that most of the cars in his close family circle do too.
|
|
64 coats of cellulose rubbed down by hand between every coat, five coats of lacquer on top... must be the prettiest Sierra in the world...
|
|
It does look pretty good Lud. If I was smart enough to figure out how to do those "Tiny Owl" things I'd post a photo sometime.......
Edited by Humph Backbridge on 24/10/2008 at 16:50
|
"Waterlooville?
Sure it wasnt Cowplain (where I hail from - On Milton Road.)?
There was a lot of RN housing round there."
No - the Wadham Stringer site was here - tinyurl.com/5k5g7o on Hambledon Road. We lived in Hambledon itself, and my parents were only briefly in quarters, in Waterlooville, in early 1959 after they came back from Cyprus. They bought their first house for just over £3,000, ISTR.
Wadhams had their own commercial coach-building shop behind the showroom/workshop, and also had a petrol forecourt.
Edited by oldnotbold on 24/10/2008 at 17:01
|
|
Going up a steep hill in slightly too high a gear had my dad (and shortly afterwards everyone in the car) rocking backwards and forwards to "encourage" it to make the top. Come to think of it, he still does that...
|
my father has every type of driver's license, with buses and trucks license too
he drove every kind of a car I believe
also drove almost 2 days with almost no sleep (1 - 2 hrs of sleep :P) which I won't even try to do :D
always using eco-driving (changed gears on like 2500 - 3000rpm in Audi A3 1.9 TDI) without even realising it
some other things which I don't remember
|
|
My dad is probably younger than half the people here so not really any stories to tell. My dad did once run a Lada for 50,000 miles without a single oil change, his idea was that the car was too cheap to bother servicing. By 67,000 miles only 3 cylinders worked, it belched so much blue smoke it attracted the local plods attention twice and was just a complete rust bucket. He sold it for £15 with 3 days ticket :D.
|
The reason the RR went, so my father said, was because petrol went up to 4s 8d a gallon - which is pretty much 5p/litre in modern currency/volumes. I've no idea what the RR did to the gallon, but it can't have been good - perhaps 22.
It had cable brakes, and for a while the starter motor was out of order, so my mother used to have to wait for the milkman to come to start it on the handle, which caused her to utter the famous phrase, when invited out for coffee morning:
"I'm not sure I'll be able to arrive until XX o'clock. I can't leave until the milkman has been."
My mother did enjoy driving it though - Portsmouth still had policemen on point duty in 59-60 and she never was left waiting at the head of a queue of traffic. The policemen would always wave her through and stop the car behind. It was naturally assumed that a lady driving a RR, especially of that vintage, was someone who mattered.
|
Oldnotbold - wonder if our fathers knew each other? My father, then a Major, was in control of riot control for Cyprus and we also came back to the UK in 1959. Motoring connection - apart from water cannon, the other method of riot control was to drive into the riot in an armoured vehicle, swinging a long, knotted rope just above the heads of the rioters - who would duck and scatter. Cannot imagine them being allowed to do that now!
A link to your Katie Boyle RR, was that her second husband, Greville, was an absolute ace at finding parking spaces especially in Kensington. My m-i-l knew him and after his death (1976), whenever she couldn't find parking she would appeal to Greville for help. Without fail she would drive round the block again and find a space.
|
Those early Twenty tourers were great looking with horizontal radiator slats and rolled along beautifully if not very fast. Someone I knew and worked for in the early sixties took me for a drive in one belonging to his parents, Cambridge dons both. Before a certain point they had a three-speed gearbox and central lever.
My father had a 1932 20/25 with an inelegant landau or coupe de ville seven seater body. That had the r/h gearchange and four forward speeds, and was probably a bit faster than a twenty but it was fairly stretched at 65. Just as well because I seem to remember it too had cable brakes, although the front ones may have been hydraulic.
Rolls-Royces could be flustered by harsh press-on driving but were faithful and had good road manners.
Edited by Lud on 25/10/2008 at 00:41
|
|
|
