Just a small gathering of classic cars that I happened upon on Saturday. Little events like this are those lucky coincidences that I enjoy about taking the occasional random trip to parts of Greater Manchester I don’t normally visit.
Withington
Time for another trip through eBay’s Classic Car section. A boy can dream.
Having grown up in the country the “Cloud 9” Rolls Royce appeals to me. The description’s disappeared since I first found it but this beauty is a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud atop a four wheel drive Mitsubishi chassis so you can go almost anywhere in style. The temptation would be to put chunkier tyres on it and take the newlyweds across the fields.
But now I live in the city and find off roaders (or their sad, spoilt offspring- “soft roaders”) pointless and annoying on the roads I regularly use. So a smaller car is in order for day to day travel. Like this Messerschmitt bubble car, which is located somewhere in South Manchester. It is, however, in the sort of fine condition that would make you think twice about taking it out often, so how about this pile of bits, from which could be built a bubble car rat-rod?
Slightly more practical than the previous two cars is this Ford Anglia retrofitted with a two litre Vauxhall engine which is just the sort of car I’d love to own if I could afford to own a car. This low riding Volkswagen 1600 also appeals, I could even use it to shift bikes and bits. A Morris Minor van would be another sweet way to shift stuff as well. Or how about a Morris Marina van in a very seventies colour, which claims to be gold but could better be called something like “baby shit beige”.
Back into fantasy territory with this ex-military Land Rover, which has been built to withstand more winters like the last two. Or perhaps this quarter million pound E-Type Jag.
If this Cosworth engined Ford Escort looks familiar, it’s because I asked for £25,000 to buy it back in March. Bids are currently at £7,962.69, with the reserve still to be met.
£2,500 is teh starting bid for this tasteful “Godfather” VW Beetle. More expensive, but far more tasteful, £11k seems to be the asking price for Mk2 Jags and Daimlers, with a Jaguar in British Racing green and a Daimler in Old English white.
The listings let me list cars by distance from my house, which is neat. 30 miles seems like a good point at which to stop, but I have to step over that just to mention this Datsun Laurel Six lowrider with “hydrolics”. It’s like a little bit of SoCal landed in Barnsley. Not sure it’s something I could live with, but I have to admire the craziness behind it.
If I had the room to run one, and the £10k to buy one and a child to use as an excuse, I think I’d want a Pocket Classics replica of a Jaguar E-Type, Porsche Speedster or Jeep. They also do a Mercedes 300SL and Bugatti Type 35, and I’d settle for either of those as well.
Another image from Butch Pate’s Fotki galleries, which gave us the hot rodded prison bus last week. A Mk2 Jaguar dragster (or possibly even Pro Street car, it has the headlamps and indicators as a nod to street legality, and it looks like there’s a number plate on the rear and the Oklahoma equivalent of a tax disc in the window). I can’t imagine Morse piloting this through the sleepy country roads around Oxford. Unless he really needed to get to the pub, which was a quarter of a mile away, in about 12 seconds.
Update as you can see, I now have the car’s right name. Lynx Motors are still going, and still making Eventers from XJS’s.