Fav local cars when growin' up ?

Silvera

What were your favourite cars - in your locality - when growing up ?

Two of mine ............

Dades

I always loved an old Lancia Beta that lived across the road from me.
Still think they're really cool looking.

Kinda like this one...
Bring back the 70s

Was seriously thinking of buying one up until recently.

shagman

My mate Ger has one for sale just like that except in metallic blue and with a 2ltr volumex supercharged engine in it.Sounds to me like what you want
Needs mild restoration mainly bodywork ,no structural rust he's only looking for €1500.
Heres his e-mail address or pm me for his phone number....... g_fitzgerald@eircom.net

Dades

shagman wrote:

My mate Ger has one for sale just like that except in metallic blue and with a 2ltr volumex supercharged engine in it. Sounds to me like what you want

Thanks Shagman, but I've already found the hole I'm going to throw my cash into!

If you shine a torch down the bottom of the hole you can just make out the letters F-I-A-T

mike65

The nearest thing to a cool car when I was a nipper was my neigbours
Truimph Herald The fact the bonnet opened the "wrong" way was a point of interest!

Actually we had the whackiest car on our road - the Saab 95



Only a dark blue one from 1965.

Mike.

Silvera

......... some more of my favs........

stratos

My rd was quite good had 2 amateur racing drivers lived on it. So a couple of escorts rs and mexico's. A formula ford that used to tear down the rd at about 100 mph with the drivers bare head, hair flying. When we were Kids our hut was an abandoned Rover p5b Coupe. It got removed and we moved into a Morris Minor. Big Cars were rare (cars were rare) guy on the road had a mk 1 Granada, seemed fabulous as a kid. The other one that seemed exotic at the time was an Opel Manta s.

alastair

These were the local cars that made an impression on me as a chisler.

There was one of these in metallic bronze/copper laid up in a farmyard locally along with some vintage lambrettas and army surplus panhard (possibly?) armored cars.


(wealthy german guy moved into a house up the road with one of these around '79/'80. It had the checkerboard pattern upholstery)


and for a brief period, my family had one of these with the V8:

(great engine, rubbish build quality, too expensive to keep)

Merrion

(great engine, rubbish build quality, too expensive to keep)

The epitaph of the British motor industry there...

stratos

Wow Lucky kid alastair to grow up with an sd1 v8. I'd still love one. Unfortunatly they are still too young. In another few years who knows. I also got to agree, the british built great cars badly. When we were teenagers one of my friends swapped some stuff for a Herald estate. The bellhousing cover was missing and sparks from the clutch used to fly around inside the car when you changed gear. Ah good times

hawkmoon269

Believe it or not there used to be a white Lotus Espirit near to where I was living growing up in the early 1980's - stunning car. Wonder where it is now - probably long since departed to the great scrap-yard in the sky.

That aside, I liked Manta's and Capri's, also quite liked the styling on the Ford Sierra, ahead of its time really.

Dades

hawkmoon269 wrote:

Believe it or not there used to be a white Lotus Espirit near to where I was living growing up in the early 1980's - stunning car. Wonder where it is now - probably long since departed to the great scrap-yard in the sky.

Wasn't it blown up by evil henchmen trying to break into it?

Or maybe that was just in the movies...

hawkmoon269

Indeed. Maybe it's rusting away in Roger Moore's back yard. Great cars to look at but the early models have a terrible reputation for reliability

shagman

l.o.t.u.s ....Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious

PaulK_CCI

The car that "did it" for me when I was still a nipper in Holland, was a Lotus Europa that whizzed passed me and my dad in his Renault 12. We were doing something like a carefull 60mph whereas the Lotus seemed to be doing double that!!! I just remembered that high pitched exhaust note and unmistakable rear end, but I was too young to know what it was at the time, but it certainly made an enormous impression on me that something so small could travel so fast !

A week later when my dad went to the Renault garage to pick up his car after a service, I spotted the little green sportscar sitting in the corner of the garage, and I immediately recognised it as the same car that flew passed us that day and I had a chance to look at it in more detail, and I was allowed to sit in it and all. That's when I found out it was a Lotus Europa twin cam, and that experience was enough to get me hooked on cars!

Only later, it dawned on me WHY a Lotus Europa would be sitting at a Renault dealer at all, a fact that hadn't even occured to me in the slightest then.... because only later when I started reading up on cars, I found out that the gearbox for the Lotus and some of the other parts had been lifted straight out the ominous Renault 16

Here are some pics of a Lotus Europa we found in France just last year: 5,200 km on the clock from new. The most original and "straight out of the factory" Lotus Europa ever !!!! The owner knew it too, with a price tag of around the 30k

mike65

PaulK_CCI wrote:

T The most original and "straight out of the factory" Lotus Europa ever !!!! The owner knew it too, with a price tag of around the 30k

For years I had a copy of a mag (the green border one, autocar?) with an ad for the Europe on the back cover. The price? £1500!

Mike.

Silvera

Gee...my tastes were simple compared to some of you guys !

More of my favs........

stratos

Untill about maybe 6 yr ago there was a europa parked in the superquinn(quinnsworth i mix em up) car park everyday in Finglas. Imagine that as a daily driver. Trolley anyone ??

hawkmoon269

stratos wrote:

Untill about maybe 6 yr ago there was a europa parked in the superquinn(quinnsworth i mix em up) car park everyday in Finglas. Imagine that as a daily driver. Trolley anyone ??

Interesting. I remember a red Europa round about 89/90 or so, used to be parked near the Hill in Stillorgan. Possibly the same one?

Blitzkrieger

The best I had to look at was the local publican's Saab. Popular legend had it that you'd be doing 80 and not even know it. I suppose 80 seemed like a lot back then