First Cars-car tales and pictures

[Gibbo2286]

I had one of those, same colour, when I bought my business back in 1965, paid £40 for it at the back of the local Vauxhall dealership, one of their not so good part exchanges that the wouldn't sell retail
My memories of it were the way the body frame creaked and groaned on the bendy road coming back from the cash and carry with grocery shop stock. I sold it on and bought my first Austin Westminster.

[Expertamateur]

My first car after coming to UK, photo taken half an hour after I discovered what those two Schrader valves under the back did when I poked them with a pencil.

[NewcastleFalcon]

My first car after coming to UK, photo taken half an hour after I discovered what those two Schrader valves under the back did when I poked them with a pencil.

Welcome to the thread. One of the jobs I did to my first car an Austin Mini 1000 was renew the subframe, replaced the front to back hydrolastic pipes at the same time, reassembled everything, and headed off to the garage to get the suspension pumped up. REsult hydrolastic fluid all over the garage floor...leak from the valve area. at one side.
I probably could have had myself a cheap fix by remaking the joint between the hydrolastic unit and the valve and wrapping the threads in plumbers tape but like the novice I was, unnecessarily got a new hydrolastic unit to fix the leak.

Neil

[CitroJim]

My first car after coming to UK, photo taken half an hour after I discovered what those two Schrader valves under the back did when I poked them with a pencil.

Oops

[Expertamateur]

It wasn't such a disaster. I quite like the look of lowered cars. Handling wise it cornered like a slot car but the ride was a little bit hard until I got is pumped up again.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Watched a video from the excellent Steph on her idriveaclassic channel on you tube on the Standard Vanguard.
If I recall right that was the car my Grandpa used to have in the early 1960's, and at this time of year he would bring the Christmas Tree on a trailer in what appeared to be a big old fashioned car. It wasn't one of the later more modern looking incarnations but probably something like this..


Standard Vanguard Estate - Flickr - mick - Lumix
Mick from England, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Quite an American looking vehicle and a nice interior and dashboard which will get an outing on that thread

Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Quite a rare beast that one, what I recall about the Vanguard was the damned column change always just a bit wrong and very difficult to adjust, a good engine though used in a lot of stuff including farm tractors run on TVO.