Last Sunday I went to my third meeting with the Avenue Drivers Club meeting which took place just a stones throw from GALPOT Towers in Queens Square.

While I have heard of and seen a few Soviet Built UAZ’s in my travels to foreign climbs but this is the first one I have dared to see up close let alone photograph. I am not sure of it’s age but I am guessing it was originally supplied for military service which would make the model either a UAZ 469 or more likely a post 1985 UAZ 31512, these vehicles had a great reputation for reliability until first the factory started using cheaper materials for construction and then counterfeit spare parts flooded the market.

Among the many vintage vehicles present was this ‘long rad’ 1935 Model Y Ford one of around 1300 survivors of the of 170,000 built between 1933 and 1937.

Present at many of the show’s and meetings I have been to this summer has been this 1991 Nissan Figaro a retro styled vehicle that takes it’s design queue’s from the seven iterations of the Datsun Sports / Fairlady roadsters produced between 1959 and 1970.

Looking tres cool on it’s non factory alloy wheels was this 1957 Chevrolet Corvette C1, the interior if which was as immaculate as the exterior.

Car of the day for me was this 1922 Vauxhall 30/90 a work in progress that was repatriated from a former British Colony in the 1970’s. Where as in Britain such vehicles exterior panels will have corroded away in the former colony, where this car spent the first fifty years of it’s life, the metal work remained in good shape but the extensive original wooden body frame had been completely munched away by termites !

This 1963 Trojan 200 three wheeler complete with single door opening forwards from the front and a soft top was built under licence from the German aircraft manufacturer Heinkel. Trojan went on to become a manufacturer of many racing cars including under licence several Mclarens models powered by Chevrolet V8’s for both Can Am and Formula 5000 and a one off Formula One car.

The 1974 Vauxhall Victor above was being offered for sale for £1,000 if your interested I have the phone number, usual disclaimers apply.

Close second in my favorite cars of the day was this Sunbeam Pick Up which started life as a 1929 Sunbeam 20/9. The vintage cars alone have made my outings to the Avenue Drivers Clubs meetings on the second Sunday of every month more than worth the effort.

Gracie above is a 1972 SAAB 96V4 which had less than 10,000 miles on the clock in 2006 due to the original owners putting it in storage two years after they bought after giving up driving. The car was found in a wooden garage 25 years later and underwent a thorough restoration of it’s mechanical parts which had deteriorated through lack of use.

Not sure at the time of writing weather the 3 litre / 183 cui twin cam powered 1927 Sunbeam 2 seater is a 20 hp or 35 hp model but it looks and sounds very purposeful with its tail faired in like the hull of a boat.

Personifying the gentrification of Bristol’s Queens Square was this elegant 1958 Jaguar MkIII, the car is powered by the same 190 hp motor as used in the Jaguar XK140 launched two years earlier.

Finally I had a long chat with Rich who owns the 1963 Volvo 121 above and his friend Matt, turns out they spotted this left hooker on the internet and then went to Sweden to go and get it. Their journey back through Germany was enlivened by a perished connection between the steering shafts. Rich has all the original documentation for his pride and joy and reckons it has covered over 300,000 kilometers about 240,000 miles.

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