Tag Archives: British

Second Coming ? – MG Maestro 1600

Shelby Pierce Arrow – Niello Concours at Serrano

The weekend before last Geoffrey Horton took his Jaguar out of it’s garage for the last time this year to attend the Niello Concours at Serrano. He kindly sent today’s featured photographs for us to enjoy.

The achievements of Pierce Arrow and Carroll Shelby were being celebrated at Niello, above a 1933 Pierce Silver Arrow one of only three such 115 mph V12’s known to exist.

Suffering from slow sales of aero engines made under license from (French) Salmson in 1934 British Salmson extended it’s license deal to include local manufacture of Salmson cars. Above is a 1936 S4C similar to it’s French counterpart except that it has syncromesh on the top two gears of the gearbox. Around 250 S4C’s were manufactured from 1934 to 1938.

For a Delahaye the vehicle above is pretty tame, by Delahaye standards, I’m not sure of either the year, model or coachbuilder, looks most likely a 135 which could have been built 1935 and 1954. If you know which more please do not be afraid to chime in below.

As regular GALPOT readers will know Geoffrey Horton restored a rats nest back into a 1955 Jaguar XK140 FHC SE / MC which he now enters in Concours events. The 1956 example above has been in the same family since 4th January 1956, it is totally original and unrestored, as the owner says “cost of $90,000” and “cost of to keep it original, with sentimental value = priceless”

Not sure what this one is at the time of writing looks a little like a Mk 1 Triumph Spitfire with a lot of additional chrome, the wheels look like they come from a Berkeley. If you know what this one is please chime in below, it’s certainly not in my I-spy book of cars.

Carroll Shelby ordered two new Cooper Monaco’s beefed up to carry Shelby’s 289 Ford V8’s for the 1963 URRSC sports car championship.
Chassis #CM/1/63 seen here was driven by rapidly rising star Dave MacDonald to victories in both the 1963 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix at Riverside and the Monterey Pacific Grand Prix at Laguna Seca which along which helped MacDonald secure the 1963 URRSC sports car championship.

The 1965 Shelby GT 350 was built to compete in the SCCA National B Production Championship with full race suspension larger oil pan and straight through exhaust side pipes. It was fitted with ‘only two’ seats to comply with the SCCA regulations. This particular copy, one of 562 built in 1965, has been in the same family since new.

For 1970 the US Department of Transport demanded extra visibility over the bonnet / hood of all cars and so all post 1970 model year Mercedes 280 SE’s received a lower grill than in previous years. The Low Grill 280 SE Cabriolet above is one of just 237 built in 1970.

Capable of reaching 60 mph in six seconds and covering the quarter mile in just 14.4 seconds the Ford Torino GT introduced in 1970 could be ordered with sports deck, hideaway head lamps and reflective side stripes, just like the one seen above.

The English Corvette as the Triumph TR8 was known was manufactured 1978 to 1982. This one would appear to be one one of the 2400 dropheads built between 1980 and 1982.

The Panoz Esperante can be ordered in GT, GTLM and GTS specs with an after market JRD upgrade available if you need the speed and have the budget to satiate it. The car above is a 2005 model is the first of 80 Supercharged GTLM models. Amongst Wild Bills other vehicles are an amphibious Amphicar and Messerschmitt Kabinen Roller !

And so it’s time to thank Geoffrey one the last time this year for his fabulous Concours d’Elegance contributions to GALPOT this year, there will of course be further contributions about individual vehicles, and hope that his Jaguar stays safe over the off season in anticipation of the 2013 California Concours d’Elegance season.

Thanks for joining me on this “Shelby Pierce Arrow” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

PS Since writing this Geoffrey has informed me that the unidentified car that looks like a cross between a Triumph and a Berkeley is a 1956 FIAT 1200 TV Spider. We live and we learn ! Thanks again to Geoffrey.

The Misfit – MG C GT Sebring Replica

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During the endless mergers that took place in the British motor industry after 1945 many models like today’s MG C GT owe more to merged corporate parts bins than to fresh from the ground up planning.

The rational behind the MG C roadster and GT models was too build a vehicle to replace the six cylinder Austin Healey 3000 whose ancestry can be traced back to the Austin Healey 100-Six launched in 1956.

The recipe for the new MG-C was to use the MG B body shell first seen in 1962 and fit it with the 3 litre / 183 cui six cylinder Austin C series motor that was more commonly found in the Austin Healey 3000 sports car and Austin Westminster saloon/sedan.

Unfortunately the cast iron block C series motor has 2 cylinders more than the motor around which the MG B was designed around and the C series motor was a good deal taller than the MG B 4 cylinder. This meant the chassis cross member that held the 4 cylinder motor had to be replaced, the front suspension strut suspension replaced with torsion bar suspension, the front bulkhead had to be modified and when all was said and done to accommodate an automatic transmission option the engine was not placed as far back as the engineers would have liked to achieve a 50/50 front rear weight balance.

The new MG C also had to run on 15″ wheels in order to keep the oil sump off the ground, but all in all the engineers were pleased with their 120 mph creation which had a respectable 53/47% front to rear weight balance.

Unfortunately the press panned the car in essence for not being different enough from the MG B but also because they found the handling tended towards understeer / push. It has been noted in some circles this characteristic may well have been exacerbated by the fact that the MG C was so much smoother than the MG B that journalists might not have been aware of the speeds they were traveling when experiencing the understeer push phenomenon.

Completely oblivious to the handling criticisms Prince Charles took delivery of an MG C in 1967 and this car has apparently been passed onto Prince William. The car seen here has been turned into a replica of the triple carburetor MG C’s raced at Sebring in 1968 and 1969, though the tailgate spoiler was not used by the works cars of 1968 and 1969 which were racing in the same class as full blown racing cars like the Porsche 907 and 908 models.

Of the 9002 MG C’s manufactured between 1967 and 1969 4458 were hard top GT’s. With the merger of British Motor Holdings with Leyland owners of the Triumph brand in 1968 the Triumph TR 6 was chosen as the newly merged corporations 6 cylinder sports car of choice and so the MG C died an early death, though in 1973 an even larger, but much lighter, engined MGB GT V8 would appear.

Thanks for joining me on ‘The Misfit’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres’, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Hire Car – MG Bellevue Special

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The MG Bellevue Special appears to have started life as one of the 745 MG N series sports cars built from 1934 to 1936. The first NA series chassis around which this particular vehicle was built was originally supplied with a twin carburetor 56 hp six cylinder motor upgraded from the Wolseley Hornet.

In two seater guise this car was prepared by Walter ‘Wilkie’ Wilkinson of Bellevue Garages in Wandsworth London as a racing hire car for use at Brooklands in the 1935/36 seasons.

In 1937 Walter converted the car into an ‘offset’ single seater using earlier MG K-Type axles, brakes and wheels and the sleek aluminium body along with a rack of six Amal carburetors. The six carburetors were later replaced with a supercharger.

Wilke Wilkinson, a founder member of the British Racing Mechanics Club, went on to prepare the Le Mans Winning ‘D-Type’ Jaguars of Eccurie Eccose in 1956 & 57 and moved on to work with the BRM Grand Prix team where Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart were the drivers in residence. This car seen driven by Ian Baxter at Prescott and Luton Park has recently been sold, the asking price was £175,000.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Hire Car’ edition of ‘Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Straight and True – Austin A40 Countryman

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For the first official post at the new home of GALPOT I thought it might be appropriate to go back to the birth place of my passion for the automobile and for driving by having a look at an Pinin Farina styled Austin A40 Countryman.

I was 5 years old when my Folks purchased their first car I remember going to the offices of the British Motor Corporation in Nicosia, Cyprus and looking through seemingly countless brochures full of illustrations of two tone motor cars when we went to order it. The car Dad ordered was grey with a white roof his thinking being that the colours would reflect the fierce Mediterranean sunlight and help keep the interior of the car just a little cooler. The car came with red vinyl seats and red carpets.

I’ll never forget my excitement when Dad pulled into our grapevine dappled drive for the first time with our shiny new car registered CE 270, we spent what seemed like hours pouring over the details I mistook the shiny chrome heater control panel for a radio and learned where to find the spark plugs, distributor, the spare wheel and jacking tools. Seems incredible to think now that our Austin hatchback was not supplied with any seat belts, though it was not long after we got it that Dad had some fitted to the front seats.

Over the ensuing two years we explored the ancient history of Cyprus from north to south and east to west, but best of all most Sundays of the summer we loaded up a picnic, home made awning, swimming goggles, flippers, buckets and spades and then headed to Mckenzie Beach, just outside Larnaca, where all our neighbours and my school friends would be. That beach is particularly important to me because one Sunday Dad invited me to sit on his lap in the drivers seat and steer the car. My first lesson being that you could drive it straight and true without any input to the steering wheel at all.

Without any navigation skills most of the time I spent in the car was naturally on the back seat, in fact I probably spent as much time sitting astride the transmission tunnel where, although exterior view was limited, I used to pretend I was riding a motor bike ! In 1966 when Dad got posted back to the UK our little grey A40 Countryman was loaded onto a ship and we headed for Istanbul and then Athens where the car was unloaded. From Athens we started our first road trip driving over 2,500 miles through Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungry, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium and a bit of France on our way to London.

The last time I saw our A40 Countryman, called Daisy, now with the UK registration DHM 44D was 3 years after we sold it, the hours of fun we had on the beach were telling in the large areas of bubbled paintwork under which rust seeded by the Mediterranean sea had obviously terminally taken hold of the bodywork on our now eight year old A40 Countryman.

Thanks for joining me on this ‘Straight And True’ edition of ‘Getting’ a li’l psycho on tyres’ I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

1977 ECotY – Rover Vitesse

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There were not many four door executive vehicles that would look comfortable parked along side a Ferrari or Maserati in the 1970’s but the Rover SD1 powered by the familiar alloy Buick derived V8 and designed by David Bache is certainly one that could keep such company in any car park and not look out of place.

Thanks in part to a painfully slow process of rationalisation that was occurring at British Leyland during the early 1970’s involving many duplicitous departments and management within the nationalised organisation it took 54 months for the SD1 to move from drawing board to production.

David Bache was not in the least shy about his design influences incorporated into the SD1 including these indicator lights which are almost identical to those found on a Ferrari Daytona.

Built in a new purpose built £31 million factory in Solihull the SD1 was marketed as the Rover 3500 and launched in July 1976 to an ecstatic reception regarding the styling and performance, though the quality of some of the materials used and build were short of the market leaders particularly the emerging BMW brand. The deep front spoiler and BBS pattern wheels on this model signifies a later model in this case built in 1986.

The Vitesse badge hitherto associated with Triumph models belies the fact that the SD1 had technical and marketing input from the still separate and competing Triumph design and management offices. In late 1980 the Rover Vitesse, seen here at the Atwell Wilson Motor Museum, was introduced as the performance version of the Rover 3500 and the Vanden Plas the Luxury version that included leather seats.

While the styling of the SD1 was ahead of it’s time the rear suspension was actually a technological step back from the de Dion suspension used on the previous Rover P6 to a live rear axle, though this made the cars easier and cheaper to build the move did not compromise the handling, much praised in the contemporary press, in anyway.

Since British Leyland had so many competing brands in its range the 1977 European Car of the Year award winner was not the money spinner that it should have been because it was priced so as not to compete directly with the Jaguar XJ6 against which it was seen in an extremely favourable light.

Thanks for joining me on the 1977 European Car of the Year edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil psycho on tyres’, I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at a fully loaded turbocharged competitor of the Rover SD1. Don’t forget to come back now !

Royal Tragedy – Rover P6 Series II 2200 SC

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Some of you may remember I found a cut’n’shut Rover Series I P6 Cabriolet behind a hedge last year, today I am looking at the Series II P6 introduced in October 1970.

Initially the P6 Series II comprised exterior changes to the grill, plastic replacing alloy, rear lights and the instrumentation and switches of the two more expensive Twin Carburettor and 3500 versions.

From 1973 the Series II P’6s came in three flavours the 98 hp 2200SC, Single Carburettor, 115hp 2200, Twin Carburettor and 3500.

Production of the P6 ceased in March 1977 with 32, 270 units produced over four years. Allegedly the last 2200 model was a Left Hand Drive export model that was converted to Right Hand Drive by the Tourist Trophy Garage in Farnham.

British Leyland, the nationalised merger of large swathes of the British motor industry was entering it’s worst period of industrial relations during the production of the P6 and this was reflected in abominable reliability issues, one driving organisation reporting that their 3500 P6 had required three engines, two gearboxes, two clutch housings and a wiring loom in 6000 miles motoring over 6 months and was off the road for 114 days out of the 165 days that it was tested over !

An attempt was made to export a high spec P6 to the USA but with less than 1500 units sold many of the cars built for the USA were eventually sold in Left Hand Drive European markets instead.

While driving her daughter Stéphanie home on September 13th, 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco, nee Grace Kelly, suffered a stroke which caused her to drive her P6 off the road. She never regained consciousness and died from her injuries the next day, while Stéphanie who fractured her neck in the accident, made a full recovery.

Thanks for joining me on this edition of ‘Gettin’ a lil’ psycho on tyres’, I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t forget to come back now !

Gettin' A Li'l Psycho On Tyres

Art Tidesco blogs on all things motoring