Old British cars ! ( we did have some good stuff )

The Only Good Stuff The British Car Industry Made......Was The "Range Rover"......Had One

For 21 Years......Never Once Let Me Down.....Also Owned A GT Cortina For 3 Years.....

Worked It Over Big Time.....Ended Up Being A Very Fast Set Of Wheels.....



Cheers Glen.

 

I found this old picture of Glen in his Barbour Jacket when he had his Range Rover. You cut quite a figure Sir.

 

Jerry Seinfeld and Ricky Gervais in an Austin Healey

 

Jaguar still makes pretty cars. In high school I had a Xk8. I quickly figured out I could not keep it though. The transmission was crap and the service bills were beyond what a 17 year old could afford. The only reason I could have one at that age was they depreciate so much compared to a BMW or other luxury brands.

I still miss the car though. Looked just like this.

 

I bought an Austin 1300 GT in the 70's and ended up having to strip and rebuild the gearbox at 20,000 miles. They had used an incorrectly machined layshaft during it's assembly.
I learnt my lesson and bought an Audi 100 the following year and it ran for 285,000 miles on its original clutch, not bad for London traffic and teaching Jane to drive.
Every vehicle that both Jane and I have bought since then has been Audi or VW.
We now use a Mk 5 golf and the trip recorder showed 76 miles to the gallon after driving our daughter 200 miles to spend the week end with one of her friends. The 400 mile return trip used little more than half a tank of fuel.
Jane is still trying to beat my record, but she did not like my suggestion of amputating her right foot. LMAO.

 

American cars go fast in straight line, suffer greatly whilst cornering.

Australian car bridge the gap for both

Asian cars run on sewing machine engines

English cars are cute

German automotive gets all of that and pushes out the best. well except the Asian sewing machine. German automotive says fuck them sewing machine engines.

I still prefer the American muscle cars though. No fancy LED screens or handicap features so you can drive, just good old grunt and groan. but! German car first on race day.

 

When I was a kid a family friend owned a garage business. He gave me a ride in a Lotus Esprit Turbo once. I remember being pushed to the back of the seat when he opened up the throttle. It was a great thrill for a school kid.

 

Ha Ha remember racing one of those on the ring road on my Suzuki ! never seen a car move so fast

 

Working in a carpet factory in Kidderminster once my mate said "there is an old car covered in a sheet in that workshop over there " so we went to have a look must have been about 1999 ish it was one of these ! (It had wheels like a Bus massive thing )

 

I think that Audi VW are the best German cars for everyday use and reliability.
BMW are more focused on sporting appeal than reliability. While Mercedes are over priced and since being manufactured in other countries, their quality has suffered badly.
VAG also manufacture outside Germany, but their managers and quality control engineers are still German.
Perhaps the most important factor is that when they upgrade a component that is failing, the replacement part is required to be an exact fit to existing cars, so once you replace the item, the problem is fixed forever.
I once had to replace a hydraulic cylinder at 20,000 miles. The replacement ran for 200,000 miles.
In addition, realizing that they had a problem, they sent stocks of the upgraded part to all distributors in the UK, withdrew all stocks of the old part and charged a very low price for the replacement.

 

All my theater carpets are manufactures in Kidderminster. They can still manufacture woven carpets on the original 27 and 36 inch Axminster and Wilton looms. We still use them to run between the rows of seats in a trough that is designed to exactly match the width of the carpet.
They last for 10 years in busy theaters (I specify the pile length, density and number of rows to the inch) along with an 80-20 wool composition.
Trials with tufted carpets failed within a few years.

 

That was my job for 40 years maintaining and building carpet looms ! cant think of any woven carpet factories left in Kiddy nowadays I actually moved the wilton looms at victoria carpets from the old car factory in town to the stourport road factory ! but even that one has now closed !
Few outlets keeping the names going but thats it really !!

 

I used Victoria voltaire tufted broad loom carpets with 'John Cotton' underlay for commercial flooring, since above 20% nylon and rubber underlay does not meet the public building fire standards.
The Victoria looms were sold to "Carpets of Kidderminster" who used them to reproduce original carpets for listed building restoration. I believe that they have now stopped production, but the original owner is trading under a new name.

 

Ha Ha I know that Guy !

 

All I know is that those overly british Dacia Duster commercials are irritating. Wouldn't be suprised if they had the opposite effect. Except... i see those cars regularly on the road