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CitroJim
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by CitroJim »

Xac, an excellent read :-D
BW wrote: The big twin shoe drum brakes were better than the early discs I think, especially when wet.
They were excellent when kept in adjustment BW. Much, much better than a disc but then just putting your feet down Flitstone-style was better then the disc...
NewcastleFalcon wrote: PS.....so what exactly was this called then?
Hillman Husky... Although there was another bigger Husky based on the Minx before the Imp version. 'Husky' was in some ways the Hillman name for an estate... The Imp based Husky did not arrive until 1967, just after the end of Minx-based Husky production.

There were several other Imp variants too. One was very attractive indeed.

I like Imps a lot. The engine was based on the Coventry Climax 'Featherweight' fire pump engine...
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

CitroJim wrote:Xac, an excellent read :-D
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"? :)
CitroJim wrote: 'Husky' was in some ways the Hillman name for an estate... The Imp based Husky did not arrive until 1967, just after the end of Minx-based Husky production.
This nice little minx, was probably pre-husky naming

Image

so I think these are the the Minx versions of the Husky

Image

Image
CitroJim wrote: I like Imps a lot. The engine was based on the Coventry Climax 'Featherweight' fire pump engine...
For those of you interested, particularly in Coventry, this may be an interesting read

Image

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

A very very easy "Whatsthisthen?"

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

Image

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by CitroJim »

NewcastleFalcon wrote:and the Hillman Imp coupe was known as the........................
Imp Californian, Singer Chamios or Sunbeam Stiletto :) Take your pick!!

BW, forgot to say on the GT550. You're close but no coconut, it was certainly related to a cylindedr issue but not directly the ones you mentioned. Cooling was never a problem due to the Suzuki 'Ram Air' system but all three cylinders had a tendency to 'nip up' if the bile was well thrashed or oil ran low. This caused severe cylinger danage because they were hard chromed alloy just as in the NSU Quickly - That was the connection between the two... Both the Kettle and GT380 had conventional steel linered cylinders.
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by citronut »

CitroJim wrote:
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 :shock: :twisted: :roll: #-o :-D :lol: :rofl2: :rofl2: :wink:

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;
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by citronut »

NewcastleFalcon wrote:A very very easy "Whatsthisthen?"

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

Image

regards Neil
acording to gooooogly it was the Californian
Regards, malcolm.

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

CitroJim wrote:
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! :-D
citronut wrote: acording to gooooogly it was the Californian
It was so easy Malcolm, that I'm afraid Jim beat you to the points this time.

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by Xaccers »

NewcastleFalcon wrote:
CitroJim wrote:Xac, an excellent read :-D
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!"
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by CitroJim »

Xac wrote: 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 :lol: :lol:

Mushroom was a posh name for beige wasn't it?
NewcastleFalcon wrote:
CitroJim wrote:
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! :-D
Neil, I was simply offering supplementary information on all the names by which the coupé was known! :)

Thanks for the points 8-)
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by 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.

Image

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".

Image

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 :?:

ImageImage

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by 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!

Image

regards Neil
Last edited by NewcastleFalcon on 26 Jul 2014, 21:46, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by Hell Razor5543 »

Nice picture!
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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

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

Image

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Re: Nostalgia-car tales and pictures-first cars.....

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

northern_mike wrote:My first car was this beauty..

Image

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 :

Image

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!

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Post by Northern_Mike »

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

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