Wire Wheels Magazine Issue4

Classics, creations and restorations
Lagonda Burps
Roadtrip Belgium
Trip prep advice
Orphaned Alvis body
MGB propshaft overhaul
Issue 4
Boat-tailed Wraith
Part 4
To Hungary in a
Speedster? No.
RR club
Vancouver chapter

Contents
Hawk 289: upmarket Cobra replica
When replica makers are obsessed with their subject,
they tend to make good cars. Here’s one.
Roadtrip: Belgium in a Speedster
That was the plan, anyway. Turned out it was an inadequately
planned plan.
Lagonda Burps: economics of upscale classics
It is 100% cheaper to run a serious classic car as a
daily driver than a serious modern car.
Hands On: Mini Marcos Part 3
Plumbing, subframe trial fitting and an ancient grudge.
Alabama in Almhult: a Yank car show in Sweden
The Swedes are obsessed with classic American cars.
Fair enough, some of them are good.
Not good vibrations: MGB propshaft overhaul
Propshaft universal joints are universally fixed the
same way. Here’s how.
WireWheels Magazine is published by
Ayrspeed Automotive Adventures Ltd -
which is the venue for the orchestration of one-off cars such as
the boat-tailed Rolls special, and for prototyping other ideas, if
sufficiently interesting.
www.wirewheelsmagazine.com
iain@wirewheelsmagazine.com
Syncronicity: orphaned Alvis body rehomed
1937 Charlesworth body from a Vancouver special
build ended up on another 1937 Alvis in Australia.
Ayrspeed Diaries: boat-tailed Wraith Part 4
The rolling chassis gets its engine and box, the pedals
and steering are designed, and the exhaust built.
Trip Prep advice: checklists
The Great 2020 Lurgy has parked many classics for a
year. Check them carefully before disinterment.
Plus: L’Ayre du Temps; One will be at one’s Club
Editor: Iain Ayre
Designer: Jelena Ayre
No liability is accepted for any information published herein: the
editor’s degree is in English and Art. His automotive opinions and
for that matter his chassis concepts are based on writing 1000
motoring articles and 20 books, but he has no formal engineering
qualifications. Caveat emptor, innit.
www.ayrspeed.com
iain@ayrspeed.com
Gentlemen, start your engines
It does occur to me that the Gentlemen title is heading
slightly in the direction of a tendency to drift towards
the masculine gender arena rather than being fashionably
woke: but the phrase is a reference to 1950s
racing, when there were virtually no ladies racing at
all. There are still only a few, and the number may
never rise much.
Through many years of automotive writing, I’ve
always encouraged women to get involved in petrolhead
games, and one or two of my female friends are
enthusiasts: but cars as toys are simply not something
that appeals to many women, in much the same way
that knitting doesn’t appeal to many men. That’s just
the way it is.
It’s peculiar that riding ponies has a huge appeal to
many young women, but riding motorcycles doesn’t.
I’ve done both, and the buzz is very similar: speed,
danger, power, limited control, intensity of being alive.
Chat about fetlocks and manes with such young ladies
is lively, but their eyes glaze over when the parallel
thrill of bikes is mentioned. Maybe it’s because horses
share being dim and disobedient with many men, but
they mostly have rather nicer natures.
As long as everybody of whatever sex or gender gets
to do what they want, none of this matters. Some men
try to keep women out of car games: not really sure
why that would happen unless they just don’t like
women. Which makes no sense. Some people are a
pain in the bum, but gender doesn’t really come into
that. Men who don’t like women have a problem with
themselves, really. Would I try to join a knitting club if
I liked knitting, even if it were 100% female? I hope I
would have the courage to do that. It would probably
work out okay, although it would be odd at first. The
knitting would be the thing, and after a while I’d probably
be just one of the girls. Come to think of it, at
school I headed for arts and languages with the ladies,
while the more laddish lads did maths, physics and
chemistry which certainly made my eyes glaze over.
Way back in my youth, there was a girl from a different
corner of my local pub who was slightly scary,
because she had rebuilt a Chevrolet Camaro herself.
This was suburban London, with student budgets, and
my Vitesse had a pretty big engine at two litres. Her
engine was five and a half litres! Not only that, but
This is the Camaro in question. I always thought
its hips were a sublime piece of automotive design,
so I photographed just that section of the car.
she had restored it herself, including cutting off the
rear quarter and welding on a new panel. It was also
painted black, which requires perfect bodywork. The
deepest I’d been into my car was taking the head off
and grinding the valves in to get it to run on six cylinders,
and some minor P38 action and touch-ups. She
was also clever and rather beautiful, with very long
blondish hair, and when she fired up the Camaro and
blatted off down the high street, it was very impressive,
but it never even crossed my mind to ask her
out. She was doing petrolhead stuff ten times as well
as I could do it, so I just admired her from a distance.
In retrospect, everybody else would have been doing
the same, so she probably spent Saturday nights alone
watching telly.

A good few years later, I was supply teaching. I’d
taken an English and art teaching degree, because I
didn’t think I’d end up staying in the UK, and a British
teaching degree in English gets you a job the same
day in pretty well any major city in the world. Supply
teaching is horrible, and sometimes involves covering
for somebody ill with stress problems because their
class is unusually nasty. With experience, you learn to
do it to them before they do it to you: every first lesson
with a new class involves the boring and unpleasant
business of establishing who’s boss, and not doing
that is not an option. I stopped doing high school work
and only did middle school in the end, because it was
just too much of a pain. I’ll happily muster up all the
patience it takes to teach anybody who wants to learn,
but if it’s just a contest of wills over control, forget it.
In a weird synchronicity, I found myself covering
for Ms Camaro. She was having trouble with a first
year middle school class, which makes them 8 or 9
years old. Sometimes particular classes are just bad
news, with an unusually high percentage of violent or
disruptive children. What sort of psychopathic little
monsters would be too much for a woman who had
built her own Camaro and out-machoed every male I
knew? The prospect of dealing with such a class was
a bit daunting, but FFS, they’re only babies, how bad
can it be? As it turned out, they were unruly, but not a
bad bunch at all, just lively. It does take a great mental
effort to control any class at all, and the incidence of
teachers coming down with stress illnesses and mental
problems is very high. It’s the toughest job I ever had,
and that includes driving Trekamerica tours coast to
coast with two hours’ sleep a night.
Ms Camaro got out of the state sector and got a job in
a private school in Knightsbridge, which went much
better – parents who pay for education tend to back
teachers up rather than suing them - and we met for
lunch occasionally. The first time was in the cavernous
Pizza on the Park at Hyde Park Corner in central
London. I was in a back corner, and I heard her arrive
on the bike which she rode to commute into town. (Of
course she did. It was a Triumph Bonneville). Six feet
tall, she strolled across the big restaurant, swinging a
helmet and clad in skin-tight black leather. By the time
she got to my table, the whole place was pretty well
silent, and every eye was following her to see which
celebrity she was going to have lunch with. Couple of
hundred people looking at me thinking who the hell is
that, he’s not famous at all, doesn’t even look rich. A
moment to treasure.
L’Ayre du Temps
The story of Charles J Thompson and the Cortina tail
lights came to mind the other day. I interviewed the
Cortina’s designer when editing Classic Ford magazine.
Talking to car designers always went well when I
mentioned my own attempts at car design: they would
open up and treat me as a fellow creative rather than
as a reporter. A couple of times, a booked half-hour
interview stretched into lunch and most of a day.
Thus it was with Charles Thompson, a thoroughly nice
man, at least until properly riled.
All the best creatives have been fired or have walked
out of lucrative jobs, and Charles’s 37 years of employment
with the Ford Motor Company nearly came
to an abrupt end over Cortina tail lights.
Charles was born in Poona, India, and was educated in
Lucknow, but ended up in the UK where he did National
Service in the RAF in the 1950s before working
for the Briggs company as a draughtsman. Briggs was
absorbed by Ford, as was Charles. He was involved in
the earlier Zephyrs, but rose to a senior level around
1960. He designed the Consul Capri, the sexy coupe
version of the Consul Classic, which was the bijou UK
replica of the Mercury Monterey, with the backward
sloped rear window shared with the 105E Anglia. The
line of the roof and rear windows of his Capri ended
up in the much more popular later Capri. The cars
based on the Ford Classic were only built for a short
time, as they were both too American and too expensive
to make.
The game-changer was the Mk1 Cortina. Quite large
but light, and with elegant and well-balanced lines, it
was very popular indeed. Charles also designed the
Corsair, a larger and posher version of the Cortina
using the centre section and doors of the Cortina but
This is the car I used to drive to the pub and park beside the Camaro. Respectable enough in its own way.
Charles Thompson’s book of his paintings entitled “Wings” is available by googling it, and the low price
is insulting. His paintings are also not as expensive as they should be.

1962 Thunderbrd: “all ’62 Fords must have round tail lights.” Pic Greg Gjerdingen, Wiki Commons
with new front and back end metalwork, and with the
frontal styling based on the Ford Thunderbird. Most
people never notice that the Corsair is basically a
Cortina, so the adapted design was a success. Charles
also designed the MkIV Zephyr, which had an American
luxobarge look, but also displayed some of the
relative restraint and elegance of the contemporary
Lincoln Continental. (Lincoln and Mercury are both
Ford brands.)
The matter of the Cortina tail lights was fascinating. If
you look closely at the tail styling of the MkI Cortina,
the resolution of the sharp Italianesque lines doesn’t
work well with the fat circular tail lights. On the 1962
Thunderbird, the big circular tail lights work perfectly,
as the whole side of the car is designed to look like a
rocket.
Charles’s Cortina was light, sharp, angular, with a
recurrent theme of subtle triangles, and its tail lights
were wide, flattish triangles with the top angle cut off
to form an almost isosceles trapezoid. The top angle
of this shape followed the flipped-up line at the outer
edges of the bootlid, and the bottom angle matched the
horizontal bumper line. The fins were more suggested
than resolved. He showed me the drawings, and his
version of the tail end certainly looked a lot better. He
bodged the circles into the car’s shape successfully
enough, but it looks very uncomfortable compared to
the sharp Italianesque tail that he originally designed.
The trouble started after he had sent his original Cortina
design to Ford in Detroit, and the message came
back saying all Fords for 1962 have round tail lights.
“That won’t work,” protested Charles. “The whole car
is lightness and angles.”
Back came instructions to do as he was told and put
round tail lights on it.
Not a happy bunny, Charles did as he was told, probably
on the basis that at least if he was the one messing
up the design, he would mess it up less than anyone
else would have done, and he was going to have to
look at Ford Cortinas on the road every day for the
next ten years.
However, he also included what he expected to be a
terminal F*ck You. The three prongs of the round tail
light sections don’t just resemble the symbol of CND,
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, they were
copied from it.
Charles then sat back and waited to be fired. You
couldn’t have come up with a worse corporate career
suicide attempt than putting a radical socialist symbol
on the back of an American car.
However, he hadn’t understood the ignorance and
insularity of American corporate executives. Most
Americans never notice or see anything that happens
outside America: US news media doesn’t present
anything other than domestic US news even now, and
in the 1960s it was even more so. Calling a purely
domestic sporting event the World Series typifies this
attitude. Also, within the American corporate world,
mediocrity tends to rise: licking the right bums, stealing
credit and sidestepping blame are much more
important than competence.
Everybody in the more developed world thought it
was mildly amusing that Cortinas supported CND, but
the word never reached Detroit, and Charles remained
in his job until he retired early and made a great success
of painting aircraft, ending up as a big noise in
British, Canadian and American aviation art circles.
His work in that field is lovely – equally technical and
atmospheric.
Cortina’s rear end is converted to round tail lights as ordered. Pic Ssu, Wiki Commons
Radical socialist CND symbol is the last
thing you expect to see on the back of a
Ford car.
Pic Tony French, Wiki Commons

Hawk 289
Stuart Clarke’s MGB-based Hawk 289 Cobra replica still carries the 1950s spirit and
quite a lot of the mechanicals of its donor. We review a well-finished example.
The Hawk 289 is quite an expensive prospect, although
the end result is a very high quality car worth
serious money. An example with a 400bhp 351 Ford
Windsor V8 was recently offered for £38,000. It
would also be possible to build a Hawk down to a
budget: the body/chassis assembly is under £7000,
and a good secondhand Rover engine is a suitable and
lighter option.
The use of a donor MGB does help save quite a lot on
the build, as expensive items such as the axles, brakes,
steering column and so on can all be bought as a package
in a rust-doomed MGB for a few hundred pounds,
and they suit the car’s character well.
The choice of an American Ford V8 engine also helps
to keep mechanical rebuild costs reasonable, with
pistons from Summit Racing starting at $120 a set plus
shipping. It’s also still possible to find a period-correct
289 cubic inch V8 engine without breaking the bank,
although the later and more easily available 302 is
essentially the same engine.
Stuart was very taken with the 289 Cobra many years
back, and still has the copy of Classic Cars featuring
the individual Cobra he used as inspiration, replicated
as closely as has been practical.
So is a GRP-bodied car based on an MGB going to be
anything like an AC Cobra, in real terms? The answer
is emphatically yes, the spirit of the Hawk is authentic.
The AC Ace, on which the Cobra was based, was a
Perfect proportions of the AC Ace and early Cobra were executed in Superleggera light steel tubing supporting a hand-formed
aluminium skin: GRP is practical, tough and affordable.
The AC’s timeless proportions have kept it in the top ten most desirable cars for decades. The slim early bodywork enhances
John Tojeiro’s fine body lines.
pretty, quite fast 1950s sports car, which handled well
and was pleasing to drive, within the limitations of a
1950s sports car. It originally used the company’s own
straight six, designed in 1918. AC’s geriatric engine
was finally replaced by a Bristol six, but then Bristol
unhelpfully stopped making car engines. The optional
Raymond Mays-improved Ford Zephyr six was
unpopular with posh AC customers, and the prospects
looked grim. Then a Texas marketer called Carroll
Shelby suggested fitting the small-block Ford V8 with
its light, thin-walled block casting, yielding double the
horsepower and snowballing into a legend as the Cobra
developed into a fat, scary monster with huge 427
big-block motors and bulging wheels and arches.
The Hawk is pretty well the only current replica that
refers to the earlier and more subtle 289 Cobras, with
skinny wheels and flat wheel arches. The suspension
on the AC was by single transverse springs at both
ends, which was okay for a 2-litre six with a light aluminium
body and a light twin-tube chassis, but it was
not really up to dealing with serious power.
The same applies to the MGB’s axles and suspension,
which have the correct and appropriate limitations,
odd though that might sound: but in a 289 Cobra
tribute, we’re looking for a 1950s feel, with limited
but stable grip. Like the AC, the MG’s suspension is
quite good for its time, and even with standard V8
power doubling its performance, it doesn’t have any
nasty habits lurking to bite you – the handling is stable
and progressive, and while it doesn’t grip spectacularly
well, it will give you plenty of warning before it
begins to let go. There’s no snap oversteer or helpless
plough-on understeer as with the rather clumsy and
brutish big-block Cobras, and the small-block V8 suits
both Cobras and MGBs well.
I’ve written several times in recent years about MGBs
converted to US V8 power, and the combo works so
well that my next MG is likely to be a later BGT with
retro chrome bumpers and American power. MGB
version 5.0 gives you two cars in one - a relaxed touring
cruiser, and/or a psychopathic roaring sideways
bruiser if you floor it. The later 302CI Ford engine still
uses the same block as a 289, and unless you’re keen
to have exactly the right period engine number, a 302
is much easier to source and will do exactly the same
job.
Four-speed gearboxes are now rare with Ford V8
engines, and the usual manual gearbox coming with

a Mustang engine would be a T5, a strong gearbox
with well-spaced ratios. With around 250lbs.
ft of torque available for a relatively light car, gear
changing is to some extent optional: you can take
off in second and go straight to fifth, and the car
will grumble sleepily along at 1200rpm.
The Hawk’s chassis and body are both thick and
substantial, and the car’s overall weight will be
similar to an MGB, although the centre of gravity
will be helpfully lower. The light 289/302 V8
engine is actually only slightly heavier than the
old-fashioned and very heavy B-series four, and it’s
also mounted further back in the chassis, so again
the weight balance is quite like the MGB but rather
improved.
The dyno-measured torque from Stuart’s V8 is
275lbs.ft and the bhp is 210, so there is substantial
power available. It’s not too much for the MGB axles,
though, as the Salisbury differential is the same
for the MGB, the MGC and the MGBGTV8, and
provided you avoid violence with the clutch, the
diff will comfortably handle a fairly standard 5-litre
V8. If a much cheekier engine, or animal driving
techniques, prove too much for the MG diff, a
Jaguar XJ6 independent rear end can be bolted to
existing alternative brackets on the Hawk chassis,
and the Jag diff is pretty well indestructible.
The same potential for bolt-on upgrades applies
to the front brakes. The standard MGB brakes
will still lock up the front wheels, as the car still
weighs more or less the same as the standard donor
MG. Bigger brakes do give you more control
and better resistance against fading, so Stuart
elected to go down a traditional British upgrade
route and fitted Princess four-pot calipers. Obviously
the last scrapyard Austin Princess was melted
down and turned into a BMW or a Kia years
ago, but replica Princess calipers are still available
and offer an economical and useful upgrade. For
more aggressive retardation, the American Wilwood
brand offers good value for money.
The Doug Hoyle MGB front suspension upgrade,
available from Hawk Cars, is something that
Stuart will consider once he’s had the car for a
while, but the original MGB suspension is still a
good independent double wishbone setup, even if
the upper wishbone is a lever arm shock absorber.
Unequal length double wishbones are still a very
satisfactory system. The MGB’s crossmember is
discarded in the Hawk, but the rest of the donor
MG’s front suspension and steering are used. There’s
also a Hoyle-designed independent rear suspension
conversion available, or Hawk can supply an anti-tramp
bar and Panhard rod upgrade for the standard
live MGB axle. Again, the sophisticated Hoyle geometry
available from Hawk is definitely an improvement,
but there’s no rush to replace a perfectly serviceable
MGB front or rear axle and suspension.
Stuart’s engineering experience was initially academic
rather than hands-on, and with the help of evening
classes he taught himself to repair cars, from which
it’s only a small step to building them. In fact with
a brand new chassis and body, building a car like a
Hawk is easier than a restoration. Certainly a new
wiring loom grounded to a new steel chassis shouldn’t
give any earthing problems until about 2040.
I don’t think many of us would disagree that this is
a charismatic, beautiful and tempting car. If you like
MGBs and ACs, you will love a Hawk 289. It’s still
a 1950s sports car, but with optionally scary performance.
The next question is whether you could actually build
a car like this. The main thing you need is self-discipline.
You need to commit to doing a little every day,
even if it’s just tidying. If you can do that, the car will
eventually be finished. If not, it will be abandoned,
usually at the 90% stage. As to the skills required,
it’s basic mechanics and house DIY, so if you can put
shelves up properly you can build a good car. A wellmade
product such as a Hawk is certainly a realistic
proposition for somebody who would tackle a big conventional
mechanical task such as replacing the engine
in an MGB. If you are mechanically up to the task of
rebuilding an MGB engine, building a Hawk would
pose no problems at all.
It’s a bit of luck that Stuart’s build has been photographed
and written up in detail, so you can find out
exactly what’s involved if this idea blows your frock
up: we will start running the build story in our next
issue.
Hawk’s website is: www.hawkcars.co.uk
The more you study the sublime lines and curves of the
earlier Ace/Cobra body, the more the 427 starts looking
like a monster. The body can get away with fat arches and
scoops, but it looks best when skinny.
Front on, the Hawk is an accurate replica, apart from fatter radial tyres.
Hawk has been making Cobras for decades, and the moulds
and bodywork are about as good as it gets with GRP cars.

Chrome plated brass brightwork is still as supplied to AC
in 1962. Even the tail lights are still correct.
The cockpit is very inviting, trimmed in black leather and
displaying the full complement of chrome-plated jewellery.
The doors are quite small, so if you’re tall or what used to
be called fat in simpler times, it would be wise to visit Hawk
and check that you fit in the car, although alterations are
possible. A visit is a good idea anyway: say we sent you.
The boot is quite wide, so even with a fat wheel in the
spare bay, there’s a fair bit of room for squashy bags:
continental touring in a Hawk 289 would be a fine way of
spending a week or two.
The T5 is light, slick and strong, a fine gearbox. The ashtray
replicates the original, although it’s doubly useless:
Stuart doesn’t smoke, and the slipstream would tend to
empty it all over the car anyway.
Stuart’s Hawk was issued with an age-related number rather
than keeping the number plate from the MGB. For his
purposes, the number didn’t matter as long as it could use
a black plate.
The Smiths instruments that collectively form the Cobra
dashboard are still available as a set from Caerbont/
Smiths, with electronic tacho and speedo optional. The
steering wheel is still made by Moto-Lita as it was in
the 1960s, so it’s ponderable whether it’s a replica or an
OEM replacement part.
This engine is a genuine 289, although a 302 uses the same
block and is a lot easier to come by. The 289/302 is a good
engine, cheap to overhaul, powerful, reliable and light for its
capacity.

Replica AC ID plate now features the new VIN number of Stuart’s Hawk. Aluminium Cobra rocker covers are
ubiquitous these days.
Transverse spring is a nice visual joke: it’s a fake, the real
suspension is MGB coil springs. It’s got a few people going,
though.
Portraits Stuart still has the magazine with the Cobra feature
that inspired him to build this one. To buy a real 289
Cobra he’d have to sell his house.

Road Trip
A road trip from London to Hungary sounded like an
excellent idea, but ended in an amiable shambles.
“Drive to Hungary? Excellent idea.”
Thus spake your editor, firmly and decisively, but
without really thinking about it. This trip was actually
a long while back, but that tradition lives on.
A Hungarophile mate called Neil Winnington, amiable,
unreasonably tall and sporting size 13 feet, had
suggested a road trip from London to Hungary, to visit
some friends he had out there.
Hungary is somewhere east of Germany, isn’t it? I decided
to find something amusing to travel in and carry
out an extended road test. I was writing for several
magazines at the time, including the British and American
kit car titles. A journo jolly would be the correct
technical term for this trip.
The Chesil Motor Company came up with a car,
one of their excellent Speedsters, based on a Beetle
floorpan and powered by a VW aircooled engine.
This stretches the word “powered” somewhat, but in
WireWheels Magazine, power is an elastic concept.
Chesil’s Speedsters are very well made cars, their only
limitations being related to the Beetle from which they
are authentically built.
There was a lot going on right at that time, and I
squeezed a free week by jamming everything I ought
to have been doing into the preceding and subsequent
weeks.
As you’ll realise, historically the school pupil Ayre
didn’t pay much attention during geography lessons,
and arranged to pop down to Dorset one evening to
pick up the car. Dorset’s a bit past Hampshire, isn’t it?
Well, yes it is. You go down the A3 towards Farnham,
then continue through Hampshire to Winchester, then
you go on past Portsmouth and quite a bit further.
Chesil, it turns out, are virtually in Devon. Dorset
is not a ‘pop’. It’s a fair old trek, particularly when
you’re late and already tired, with an undiagnosed thyroid
condition because your GP’s not very good. Even-
The Hungary Games
CANCELLED
The map is spread out on the bonnet for the first
time. Hungary is waaaay over to the east. Not
going to happen.
Chesil Speedster is an amusing way to travel: it’s a Beetle in a plastic frock, but it looks like a car that
cost $150,000 and then had a $300,000 restoration.
tually there was food, beer, pub chat, and I finally set
off back towards London around midnight, in winter,
in a plastic Beetle, with Beetle aircooled heating and
the tiny windscreen requiring regular wiping with a
frostbitten cloth. There was an hour or two of sleep in
London, then a rather brutal alarm clock got me stumbling
awake for a quick root canal job in Guildford
before picking Neil up in Surrey to drive to Dover for
a meeting with a ferry. Winter channel crossings can
be a bit sporty, and as the puke-spattered ferry lurched
into Boulogne I could see a nice-looking hotel/bar on
the waterfront and decided that day had been going on
for long enough.
The next morning would require some catching up,
but no worries. Early start, top French breakfast with
a bucket of latte and a mountain of croissants and
still-warm baguettes, and we settled the bill and shot
off before the rush hour to get clear of the town. That
achieved, a layby beckoned, offering a chance to get a
grip and plan the day.
For the first time, the map was spread out on the bonnet
of the Speedster.
“Hang on a minute. Here’s us here, and Hungary is
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there. How the hell far away
is Hungary, Neil?”
“Erm,” said Neil. “I’ve always flown there.”
“How long does that take?”
“Um. Well. About three hours, I suppose.”
“Three hours, at 500mph, would be approximately one
thousand five hundred miles, wouldn’t it, Neil? Three
thousand miles to get there and back?”
“Um, er… oh. ”
Okay then, Hungary was off the menu. We decided
to go and have a look at the Nurburgring instead, and
then turn the rest of the week into an eating tour of the
Ardennes. Or rather, I decided that. The gastronomy of
the French/Belgian border area wasn’t of great interest
to Neil, as he only ever ate chips and drank Coke,
but as the whole trip had been based on Neil’s false
geographic premise, I didn’t feel too guilty about that.
Besides, anywhere near Belgium there are good chips
and there is good mayo. The French will tell you that
the Belgians have square arses from eating chips all
the time, but then the French will tell you lots of rude
things about the Belgians. And about the Germans,
the Dutch, the English… in fact the French are rude
about pretty well everyone but the Scots, with whom
they historically get on very well. The French are in a
permanent sulk because the world language is English
and they think life ought to be carried out in French.
Okay, we were in Boulogne, so where’s the Nurburgring?
300 miles to the east. Fair enough.
Drive up the French coast past Calais and Dunkerque,
not yet swarming with refugees and migrants, and then
head eastwards. We ambled towards Brussels, rich
with EU money and featuring dozens of diplomatic
palaces, with pretty well every car on the road being a
shiny new Mercedes with a taxpayer-funded chauffeur.
No visibly affordable restaurants, so back on the road
and off towards Germany, but with the night spent in
French-speaking Belgium. Flemish-speaking areas of
Belgium are comfy for Brits to visit from a linguistic
viewpoint: the Flemish speak English and French,
because only a few thousand Walloons speak Flemish.

A waitress poses by the Speedster: Neil deploys
cheek and charm and makes many new friends
en route.
Nobody else bothers.
Next day, off to Germany proper. Not super comfortable
there, being unable to speak the language. Most
of my European travels have been in France, or Spain
where I speak enough of both languages to get by: I
don’t claim to speak German at all, despite getting
what seemed like a clear pass with a past GCSE exam
paper in German a year or two back. Multiple-choice,
and standards have dropped by a few percent per annum
for 30 years, to virtually zero. Check out a recent
past GCSE paper, it’s an eye-opener.
Amble on through the Eifel national park on small
roads, actually very pleasant. It turns out that I do
remember enough German to sort out a Gasthaus and
a Zimmer to stay in, and pick out bier, wurst and so on
from a menu. Kartoffel und Coke? Chips? Bratkartoffeln
is chips, okay, gut, dankeschön.
Next day, on we go to the Nurburgring, looking to get
out on the track for some touristenfahrt action in our
pudding-bowl plastic Beetle. Roll up to the entrance to
buy the tickets for a few laps. It’s all shut. What? Corporate
rental day, closed to the public. Bollocks. Wonder
what the corporate company’s shareholders would
say about the huge waste of their money? You can bet
that the shareholders weren’t invited. There wasn’t
even anything going on, the place was silent apart
from some grumpy members of the driving public who
had tried to come out to play on the circuit. Oh, never
mind. Back in the Chesil and splutter off towards the
Ardennes, noted for paté.
I hadn’t previously been to Luxembourg, but you can
Botassart, le Tombeau du Geant and the village
of Frahan. Pic credit Jean-Pol Grandmont
who takes excellent pics of his home turf.
Mediaeval Bruges has canals, which offer an intriguing viewpoint on the mediaeval city.
drive right through it without noticing, really. Aim for
Sedan, then an amiable cruise through the Ardennes
on the small roads, looking for and at little restaurants
in small towns. If you see a place with expensive cars
parked outside, that’s always a good sign. The menu
prices may or may not brutal, but the quality will be
guaranteed. Deliberately asking for a recommended
local wine, even in execrable French, gets most waiters
on side, if you are wandering around rural places
where the English don’t visit much. There are some
magnificent patés in the Ardennes region, presented
with very local pride by small restaurants.
“Un selection de vos patés de votre pays, s’il vous
plait, Monsieur. Et frites et Coke pour mon ami Anglais
ici.”
“D’accord, Monsieur.” Crunchy baguette, salty butter,
top local plonque and a big plate of different patés.
Chips and Coke for Neil.
The Semois river has carved many deep curves in the
landscape, and if you’re just wandering around, the
scenery here is pleasing and inviting. Frahan is pretty,
almost surrounded by the Semois: if they joined the
bits of river up they could have a moat. There’s a national
park area in the Ardennes, but it’s mostly cultivated,
so you wouldn’t really know you were in it.
Drifting vaguely westwards towards the coast, and
Chimay rings a bell: it used to be a famous road circuit,
and it’s worth a visit. It looked abandoned and
dead when we went to look at it a while back, but on
Google Maps it still looks functional. The internet
tells us it is coming back to life again with bike racing,
which is excellent news.
Some of the towns in this area were completely flattened
in WWI, although they’ve been rebuilt looking
exactly the same. It’s interesting to look up at the
walls: occasionally there’s a section with pockmarks
and filled holes, which would have been the only part
of that building left standing in 1918.
Or again in 1945.
As we were in the north of France, Bruges is always

Daft but intriguing 7-litre Mini roadster was a
fine chariot in which to amble around a mediaeval
city taking pictures.
worth a visit. I once did a shoot on a 7-litre Mini in
Bruges, and it was a delight – the city is beautiful in
pretty well any direction you point a camera.
After a few days of ambling, it was time for Boulogne
and the ferry. Over to the coast, then, and the trip
continued south on the Routes Nationales and smaller
roads – it’s no particular fun driving a Beetle-based
car on the French motorways, where you’re either
slower than the trucks, or deaf from the yammering of
the engine if you keep up with them.
Changing down for a roundabout there was a bang,
and no clutch. Stumble round the roundabout in
whatever gear the car was already in, encourage it into
neutral and switch it off. Usefully, a village garage
was visible, so a flat push of a hundred yards or so was
no bother.
I have no idea what a clutch is in French, although I
know what a valve is – soupape – and I know what a
broken valve is – une soupape foutue. (Or, delightfully
in Canadian French, oon spap fuckée.) The French for
a clutch…. no clue.
Something of a revelation happened here. Buy a
new clutch cable for a Beetle? Not possible. Too
old. There have been virtually no parts for Beetles in
France for forty years, other than from specialists. You
can’t generally get parts for old cars in France at all,
because of many rather corrupt scrappage schemes to
make people buy new (French) cars.
Fortunately, rural garagistes are not just new-part
fitters, they are often imaginative and resourceful, and
have to fix farm kit and all sorts of things other than
cars. The garagiste looked for a suitable cable rather
than an obsolete VW part, and found a lift control cable
from a building. Right-sized wire, re-use the same
nipples, no problem. Go and have some petit dejeuner,
come back in a while, it’ll be fine. Another top French
roadside café breakfast, still-warm baguettes and
croissants, grand café au lait, and chips and Coke for
mon ami. Quoi? What?
Oh, he’s English. Il est Anglais.
Ah, d’accord.
The ferry was caught, and as far as I know that clutch
cable is still doing fine.
Speedster courtesy of www.chesil.biz
The centre of Bruges doesn’t have any ugly bits:
you could amble around it all day.
HANDS ON
Mini Marcos
The Mini Marcos is a 1960s British racing car repurposed for budget
driving fun: the editor’s example is a probably unique NOS barn find.
Progress has always been spotty with the Marcos, as
more immediate and more exciting tasks have pushed
it out of the way. It’s also a good illustration of the
wisdom of forcing yourself to do something to or
around a project car every day, even if it’s only tidying
and cleaning. That way the car will eventually be
finished. Whereas if you leave gaps, they can extend
to weeks, months, years. I believe I’ve owned this
Mini Marcos project for about a decade, and it’s been
stalled for most of that. Now there are convertible
Clouds, supercharged Bentleys and a mongrel Cobra
pushing in front of it.
The end of writing for the Mini magazines was also a
demotivator. That came about after a major falling-out
with the greedy publisher. I had written a book about
restoring Minis, and discovered that a deal had been
done behind my back and the book was being given
away free with magazine subscriptions. That was my
Not taking any risks here: the brake master cylinder
is new, and dual rather than single circuit.
wages being given away. There’s sod-all money in
writing books, but much of what little there is comes
when the book is launched. I don’t know why I still
write books: even without pickpockets taking your
Clutch master cylinder is new as well. This going
to end up pretty well a brand new car.

Mini subframe is rebushed, cleaned up and ready
to go in.
Brake calipers are rebuilt, resealed and bolted to
the driveshafts.
Front subframe is trial-fitted to the bodyshell: it’s
a 1970s British component car so measurements
tend towards the approximate.
wages, it pays less per hour than asking people if they
would like fries with that.
I’m not still sulking about that, but the Mini magazines
and other niche titles now pay so badly that it
makes no sense to write and shoot for them. Might
as well write unpublishable novels and unfilmable
screenplays, it would be more fun and the pay is about
the same.
The squeeze on most printed car magazine editorial
budgets has now gone so far that it pays about 10%
of what it did twenty years back: that obviously feeds
back into the quality, value and future of the magazine.
Editors do the best they can with the crumbs that
are grudgingly scattered, but you can see and feel the
Japanese wheels inherited with the Jap-imported
Squeak are race kit, almost weightless but
rather delicate for road use.
budget when you pick up the magazines. That’s why
people read their paper mags in WHSmith – they’re
not worth buying any more.
So with no demand for Mini stories, the Marcos became
even less of a priority.
However, it has pottered on. It’s now at a stage where
most of the pieces had been sorted and were ready to
go, but some of it is now going to have to be re-restored.
Brake and clutch cylinders don’t like being left
unused: the internal surfaces rust. Fortunately they’re
cheap, so even if all the new master and slave cylinders
had to be replaced with a new set, it’s not a big
deal although annoying.
The plumbing in the engine bay goes in before the engine,
as it runs around the bulkhead, and access behind
a Mini engine is very limited.
Making up brake and clutch hydraulic lines is quite
therapeutic, except when you flare both ends and
forget to put the connectors on, which will happen at
a rate that reflects how much attention you’re paying
and how often you have made up lines. Not a big deal,
you just cut off the final quarter-inch, slide the fittings
on and flare it again. You always leave plenty spare, as
piping can be shortened but not lengthened.
Rear suspension is still standard Mini, with
independent swinging arms compressing rubber
cones.
The engine and gearbox assembly is trial-fitted
to the front subframe.
Engine bay viewed from above is a decent size,
less crowded than the Mini engine bay.
Rear subframe is fitted up to the body, just as it is
in a Mini.

The shock towers on the Marcos duplicate those
in the Mini shell, but they’re fibreglass and
can’t rust. They’ve now been drilled out for the
shock bolts.
Steering column is zap-strapped into place for
the moment. It’s at a much more natural low
angle compared the rather bus-like Mini, but
then Marcos didn’t jam four seats, a boot and
an engine into ten feet.
Left side floor and shell, looking forwards.
There’s not much structure to the shell. A rollcage
would be the smart move.
Making the piping curves is quite fun, as you will be
rooting around looking for jamjars, jack handles, toolbox
lids to provide the right profiles to use for bending
the pipes into pleasing curves.
When fitting piping to the car, one of the regular IVA
test failures that’s worth paying attention to is the
spacing of pipe clips. The manual says clips every
30cm, although every 20 cm would work better for
me. There must be no possibility of pipes vibrating
and fracturing, so they need more rather than fewer
clips.
The piping itself must be steel in North America,
Kunifer copper alloy in Europe. The copper alloy
pipes are better as they don’t rust. You can’t use pure
copper piping, it’s too soft and suffers fractures.
The Mini that gave its all to the Marcos cause had
been rust-free, which was very helpful as the rear
subframe was perfect. That really is rare with any
Mini that’s been used at all as the subframes are very
prone to rusting. £300 for a cheap one, nearer £500 for
replica OEM. The front subframes don’t seem to have
any rust traps designed in, and they also tend to get
a coating of oily kak from the engine, which is a fine
thing.
Too many options proved a problem with the Marcos,
as there are three sets of instruments available for
it. The dash is veneered, precut and designed for the
three Mini clocks from the 1970s, which comprise the
speedo with its included fuel gauge, the oil pressure
The rolling shell is now mobile, and it’s more or less an assembly job from here. Weird that the project
stalled at this stage.
This is the instrument set that comes with the
Mini – separate oil pressure and coolant temp
clock, with fuel level and warning lights for indicators,
generator and oil pressure on the main
speedo dial. Simple and effective, and fits the
standard Marcos dash.
Just a reminder of what fun the demonstrator
was. In this shot it’s in Cromer during my annual
UK tour to have a chat and a drinky with all
my UK book and mag editors.

and coolant temp gauges. That’s all you really need,
and the clocks are Smiths, black faced with chrome
bezels, and they’re correct and original and would
look good against the wood. On the other hand, I have
two sets of Auto-Meter instruments, which are good
quality and offer a tachometer and a voltmeter as
well as the other Mini functions. There’s also an even
bigger and flashier set of Auto-Meter clocks, offering
a big tacho with over-rev recall, fuel, coolant temp,
voltmeter and also oil temp and transmission oil temp.
Although come to think of it, you would expect the
engine oil and transmission oil temperatures in a Mini
engine to be the same, as it’s the same oil. There’s still
a Cobra brewing up, so the fancy Ultra-Lite Carbon
set will probably go in the Cobra.
The other point is that this Marcos is unique: it’s a
complete New-Old-Stock Mini Marcos kit, never built
although it was supplied in 1974, and it should really
be completed as supplied.
Yet another choice is the Carbon Fiber Ultra
Lite set I got for the Cobra from Auto Meter,
with the tacho as the main instrument, and
subsidiary km/h speedo, water temp, oil pressure,
fuel gauge, voltmeter, oil temperature and
tranny fluid temperature. I should keep this lot
for the Cobra.
Lagonda
Burps:
misfires and economics
On the other hand, there’s an excellent set of
Auto Meter kit – speedo, tacho, oil, fuel, water
and volts. Which were obtained with this car in
mind.
Memory tacho establishes who over-revved
the engine and blew it up, assuming I let Pete
have a go at slalom. Of course I will, Pete.
These are all Sport Comp, a very popular Auto
Meter choice with highly visible orange needles
against a black face.
Twenty years ago, Colin Gurnsey completed the restoration
of this glorious Lagonda, took it to the Pebble
Beach concours and won his class. He enjoyed both
the process and the victory.
Having won a major prize, the serious pampering and
cotton-bud action was much reduced in intensity, and
although Colin has collected a good few more trophies
along the way, he’s been actively using it as a classic
car. That means driving it regularly in the summer and
not much in the winter except on nice days.
On a day in June last year, the Lagonda almost broke
down – it more or less refused to start. Rather than
being driven to lunch, it was left outside his house and
a few chums were recruited to have a look at it later.
None are mechanics, but all are familiar with the intestines
of classic cars.
Was it a lack of fuel? Disconnect the fuel pump,
switch the ignition on, fuel squirts, not the problem.
Crap in the fuel? No, the fuel is visible in the filter
bowl and is crystal clear. Both carbs having sticky
float problems at the same time? Pretty unlikely,
they’re simple creatures. Old fuel? No, it’s fresh.
Okay, sparks then. The Lagonda has two separate
magneto ignition systems: is it likely that they’ve both
failed at once? As the car inevitably suffers from not
being used very much and being kept in an ordinary
garage rather than being cosseted in a heated and dehumidified
automotive temple, spark issues are more
likely than a fuel fault. Also, if one ignition system has
already gone down, you wouldn’t find that out until
the second one failed. Checking them separately and
regularly would be a good idea.
Sure enough, no spark from the first system, and a
feeble yellow spark from the second magneto. Having
said that, with magnetos you don’t get a very fat spark
at starting revs anyway. A bit of poking and scraping
off superficial connection corrosion and the spark
looked better. The old lady burst into life and all was
well. Colin says that the sparks issue masked another
problem with sticky fuel gum deposits on the float
needles, discovered later. When the problem recurred
during a concours show, he was able to use the onboard
toolkit, strip and clean out the carbs, start the car
and drive it across the podium to collect another First
in Class. The Lagonda has been driven to and from every
event it’s entered, despite having no heater, which
Colin rather regrets: off season, the Pacific Northwest
can be damp and parky. But in the 1930s, only pansies

A car of high quality restored to better than
new condition could make £300,000 more sense
than driving a brand new equivalent.
or showoffs had heaters. Chaps just wore coats and
kept a stiff upper lip, probably frozen stiff.
Get to the point, please.
The point I’m ambling towards is that such a car, well
restored, regularly used and properly looked after,
could probably be driven for twenty years and 100,000
miles without any significant problems at all.
The above was the first breakdown in twenty years,
and it’s well established that a lack of use is a primary
cause of minor breakdowns in classic cars. The cost of
the car’s first breakdown in living memory was some
tinkering, using the car’s on-board toolkit.
Sort out the right classic car in the right condition, and
you really don’t need to bother buying a modern car as
well unless you want one. Modern cars’ reliability is
an illusion: according to the RAC, the overall number
of breakdowns remains fairly constant, although
the proportion of recoveries has soared: a modern
car can’t be repaired by the roadside, but is towed to
a main dealer’s computer and a substantial invoice.
Individual new-car components are more reliable, but
there are thousands more components to fail, leaving
you stranded on the roadside, further back than square
one.
It’s interesting to compare the cost of owning Colin’s
upmarket Lagonda with something modern in the
same league. Is it a valid comparison? Yes, it is. The
Lagonda is a fully practical convertible sports tourer.
It has four seats and some luggage or shopping space,
and it’s fast enough and comfortable enough for long
trips: yes, you could drive this instead of a new car for
daily use. Realistically, a fully restored Pebble Beach
classic is more or less a brand new car anyway.
The cost of buying and restoring this particular car is
a private matter, but Colin started with a basket-case,
and a lot of the restoration work was carried out to
Pebble Beach standards by RX Autoworks in Vancouver.
Their rates are reasonable, but they take as long as
it takes to get everything 100% right. I’m going to say
it would have cost about £150,000.
A Lagonda is a top quality car, so you would be
comparing it with a new convertible Aston Martin or
perhaps a Maserati Granturismo. Buying a VW Bentley
is out, as they’re now the drug-dealer’s ride of
choice. BMW Rolls-und-Royces have Indian-restaurant
sparkly ceilings and possibly even chandeliers by
now; Porsches and Ferraris make you look desperate
for attention, and buying a new Bristol is no longer an
option.
Colin has had his Lagonda on the road for say 240
months. It has cost possibly £40 in oil and filters
every year, but otherwise virtually nothing in repairs.
To be fair, if he had used it for 200,000 miles during
those years, it would have needed some repairs by
now – let’s say £50,000 which would include tyres,
brake linings, clutch plates, a light engine and gearbox
overhaul, and freshened paint.
After lunch, the chums assemble to see if the
collective knowledge can sort out why the
Lagonda won’t run properly.
Nothing is obviously wrong or misplaced or malfunctioning. It’s all still looking very nice, and is
actually all the better for a few years of patina.
Spread out over 240 months, the cost is therefore
£830 a month assuming that he never sells the car.
If he were to sell it, his costs could be less than zero
because he would probably get his money back and
more on such a car, depending on the state of the
economic boom/bust cycle, although Lagondas tend to
cruise above fashion and the inflation and bursting of
Porsche/Ferrari/E-Type price bubbles.
Aston Martin’s DB9 Volante convertible is a new
equivalent of Colin’s six-cylinder Lagonda. Then as
now, Aston Martin-Lagonda’s Rapide is the top of the
line, so looking at a new hand-built Aston compares
like with like.
Leasing a DB9 costs £1500 a month based on three
years, or a lot more than that if you feel you need
a new one every one or two years. Leasing is only
cost-effective as a tax deduction or for people without
capital who need to look rich, whether for business or
personal reasons.
If you buy it rather than renting it, the purchase price
is say £150,000 and then depreciation is 60% over
five years, probably 80% at ten years. That’s assuming
nothing goes horribly and expensively wrong out
of warranty, of course. Fingers crossed. A friend in
England recently bought a DB9 because the high-end
Mercedes sports cars she usually buys had become
so unreliable that a hand-built Aston was more likely
to get her to work, a notion that will please Brit-car
enthusiasts.
I don’t know that a new Aston is going to last for
twenty years, but if it does, the repair costs are going
to be impressive.

No problem with the fuel supply, and no sign
of kak in the fuel filter bowl. So we move on to
the sparks side and start checking out the two
magnetos: they’re doubled up to avoid breakdowns,
which has worked fine thus far.
So it costs £150,000 to own and say £50,000 to maintain
a DB9 for ten years, and maybe £100,000 more
to get twenty years out of it? Or you could invest
£200,000 in owning and running a pre-war Lagonda
for twenty years and then get all your money back and
more when you sell it.
Of course, finding £200,000 might pose a problem,
but the numbers still crunch pretty well the same way
when we’re looking at cars available for 10% of that
£200,000.
£20,000 buys you either a newish German or a driver
MkVI Bentley. Maintenance costs will be comparable
– the Bentley will definitely need regular and competent
maintenance to keep it in good shape, and the
Audi/BMW will yield few but fearsomely expensive
repairs – a water-pump costs £1200. In ten years, the
German will be worth less than its final repair estimate
and will be scrap, but the Bentley will at the very least
hold its value, although it’s much more likely to rise
significantly. It will also improve your mood, and will
become your friend.
You can’t really put a price on that, but even a numerolexic
like myself can see the cost benefits of driving a
classic car compared to a new one. I don’t do new cars
anyway, but I’m looking particularly fondly on my old
Bentley right now.
Let’s just keep this to ourselves, though. When
somebody shows up in a new and shiny collection of
invoices and wants you to admire it, make suitably
supportive noises and keep your patinated period
Bentley or Lagonda key-fob discreetly out of sight.
Senior WW photographer Paul Pannack sends a
photo essay from a small local car show in Sweden.
He’s been living there for a while. There’s a tendency
to assume that Sweden is a cold place, but the summers
can actually be long and hot. Winters used to
be snowy, but not so much any more as the climate
warms.
Sweden is very big on American classics, with the
Raggare culture still strong. This was originally a
1950s anti-establishment movement based around
the rocker/greaser/rockabilly style, a working-class
reaction against Swedish respectability. As ever, these
Alabama in Almhult
cults lose some of their original bite as the decades
amble past, and the current Raggare are all old men,
the sons of the original rebels. I’d hope not to have to
say they’re respectable now, but I’ll find some to talk
to next Swedish trip and report back to you.
The American percentage of the Swedish classic car
fleet is huge: in this case there were something like ten
times as many Yanks* as European cars, which in this
show comprised a few Volvos and a couple of Brits.
The number of daily Volvos driven by Swedes is a
surprise, since with global brands and common components,
Volvos are not really much different from any
One magneto is definitely not doing much, and
the second one is producing a yellow and rather
unconvincing spark. It’s definitely a spark,
though.
In the end the problem recurred, and turned
out to be the float needles sticking due to gummy
kak coming from the fuel, which was then
randomly flooding the engine. Five minutes’
cleaning, fresh fuel and away we go.
It doesn’t get much more wirewheelish than a MkII Jag, although the wires are wider and chromed,
which is more of an American than a Brit approach.

The other Brit is a Mini, although it has something
like 18” wheels rather than 10”, and
there are five wheel studs, so there’s probably
something cheeky and Japanese under that
one-piece GRP front clip.
other modern. It may just be habit - if you buy a car
and you’re Swedish you buy a Volvo by default.
The huge appeal of American cars is odd in view of
the cost of fuel in Sweden, which is usually slightly
worse than the UK prices. 15 Kroner or £1.27 for a litre
only gets you a couple of miles in a big-block, and
Sweden is a big country with many miles in it. Maybe
most of the big Yanks get to car shows on trailers
towed behind diesel cars.
Volvo PV444 in candy apple red with deleted
bumpers. An odd design, as if it couldn’t make
its mind up between the 1940s and the 1960s.
PV444 estate car or wagon, the Swedes
would probably use the American wagon
word. This one is a bit rude, and retains a
Volvo engine although it’s more ambitious
than the original.
Socially, Sweden is very advanced and civilised, with
very good healthcare and social services, paid for
by high taxes, which everybody seems to feel is fair.
However, in general housing is affordable, particularly
out of towns, and an eye-opener for most petrolheads
in the rest of the automotive world is that Swedish car
clubs often have their own clubhouse buildings. That
luxurious option is usually restricted to seriously rich
clubs everywhere else.
Turbo R means the same on a Volvo as it does
on a Bentley.
The Power Big Meet, an annual American-car celebration
in Vasteras, generally exhibits 17,000 cars.
That’s bigger than most American classic car shows in
America. Again, an eye-opener.
There was only one ‘proper’ hot rod at the show. At
their best, these can be entertainingly creative. One of
the amusing things about the modern hot rod fraternity
is that some of them are more snotty about period correctness
than Pebble Beach judges. They seem to have
rather missed the point of rodding, which originally
used to have the exactly same vibe as the Raggare.
One of the delights of this prissy snootiness is that the
obsessive modern rodders despise kit cars, and then
they buy a new plastic Ford Model A lookalike replica
body and a new steel chassis, and a kit of car parts to
assemble as a… well, what would you call it?
“What are you rebelling against, Johnny?”
“Whaddaya got?”
Story
As a teen in the 1970s, I had a Saturday job in a car
accessory shop in Harrow, run by a top man called
George who was one of the last of the original rockers
from the 1950s. He was a colourful and engaging
character, who retained the black leather, the quiff and
the Chuck Berry tapes, although he had also evolved
to Grand Funk Railroad. He had been a truck driver,
until an unfortunate incident. He drove a milk truck
on a regular route, and there was a set of traffic lights
at the bottom of a hill for which he would adjust his
downhill speed to get through the green without losing
momentum.
Unfortunately, somebody changed the timing of the
lights.
There wasn’t much he could do: the milk truck hit the
back of the traffic queue, and mangled a few Anglias
and Austins, and then the milk in the back slopped forward
again and he squashed a few more. He didn’t kill
anybody, but they were all a bit cross, and he thought
it wiser to lock himself in the cab until Mr Plod arrived.
George died fairly young, and he died of excess,
so unlike most old rockers, he kept the faith to the end.
P1800 remains a top sculpture, although the
unpointed fins showed either good taste or
cowardice, not sure which.
Yankees
Yanks or Yankees is still a slightly loaded
word in the States, although not anywhere
else. In a car show in Sweden or Britain, it
just means a Chevrolet or whatever.
In the USA, a Yankee is a Northerner, the
side that won the civil war, or at least the
first round of it. It’s debatable whether the
US civil war is actually over. The southern
Confederates lost the right to own slaves,
and some of them still resent that. The confederate
flag amusingly painted on the roof
of the General Lee in the Dukes of Hazzard
was also waved by the MAGA mob who
attacked the Capitol in an attempted white
supremacist coup. To anybody with brown
or black skin, the Confederate flag looks
like a swastika, and looking at the situation
coldly, that’s reasonable.

American styling
Car body styling reflects what’s going on in the relevant country, and can be revealing about
the state of the economy and culture of each period.
1930s
Depression. Most cars are Model T Fords, utterly functional. Black paint dries faster, so
they’re all black. Duesenbergs and Springfield-built Rolls-Royces are delicious, but most
cars are basic transport tools. They’re also tough as nails, because 90% of US journeys
are on dirt roads.
Volvo four-cylinder B engine is good for astonishing
mileages if the oil is kept fresh.
Another cheeky Turbocharged R installation.
The storming race-developed Volvo estate cars
of the 1990s are cheap enough to be engine
donors these days.
1940s
The first half of the 1940s was occupied by fighting previous generations of white supremacists
in Europe, but the 1946-1950 period saw some marketing-based styling and
modernisation, with bodies that looked unitary although they were still based on heavy
chassis frames.
1950s
The American industrial machine that won WWII now turns to consumer goods. Mainstream
cars are still utilitarian and simple, but the acreage of chrome plating increases
year-on-year. Towards the end of the decade, space-age rocket and jet aircraft imagery
appears as car decoration, and to some extent shapes the styling.
1960s
1970s
The wings and high bonnets left over from previous decades have disappeared, and
the bodywork perched on the still mostly unchanged separate chassis is specified by
marketers. 1961 in particular sees an explosion of excess, with joyfully vulgar fins and
excrescences. Cadillacs have proper rocket fins a foot high. As the decade progresses,
the stylistic hysteria backs off a little, but the enormous acreage of bodywork and the
hugeness of engines keeps expanding.
Excess charges on, with planned obsolescence now literally an art form, and the shame
of being seen in last year’s body styling being used to push huge sales – until 1973 when
the age of virtually free gasoline (36 cents a gallon) stopped dead. The next Mustang was
an ugly little lump with a 2.3-litre Pinto engine.
Two-door Amazon is another pleasing Volvo
design with faultless proportions.
Model A hot rod, big-block Chevy. Americana
is generally not WireWheels material, but the
progression of styling through the decades is
interesting.
1980s
There are no 1980s cars in the Swedish show, apart from a couple of Corvettes with
styling left over from 1969. I suppose that tells you all you need to know about 1980s
American cars.
Two-door 240 also has good proportions. This
one is used for drag racing.

If you get a faint Vauxhall vibe from the original
interior styling, you’re spot on. 1950s
Vauxhalls are shrunken Chevrolets.
Postwar Cadillac two-door, cool enough to
carry off a set of chrome wires although this
one makes do with steels.
Oldsmobile from slightly later, with cool rocket
motif on the bonnet. Not many parts remain
available for this one, at least when it comes to
body and trim.
Yet another ’55 Chevy, with bonnet rockets and
in candy apple red with a gold roof, and looking
good.
Early 1950s Chevy, with a straight six. Parts
are still available, and these are quite economical
and could still be used as a sensible
daily driver.
1955 Chevrolets remain common in the USA
as well as Sweden. You can build a new one
from available new parts.
The 1955, 1956 and 1957 “Tri-Chevies” were
a huge success, and still are. This one looks
resto-rodded.
1958 Chrysler Imperial, reflecting the change
to blended bonnets and overall squareness.
1959 Imperial, with a more aggressive grille
and fins erupting at the back. 1959 was a mad
and overconfident design year.

A Ford Fairlane from probably 1962, going by
the round tail lights. Early 1960s, and while
vast size is still a theme, the late 1950s excesses
have calmed down somewhat.
Plymouth Barracuda, 1966. Each brand usually
had a coupé muscle car variant to make
the more mundane models look sexy by association.
It might be possible to land a small bush
plane on the runway at the back of the Bonneville.
Another Camaro, this time in dragstrip trim.
They’re quite light cars, which helps.
The Fairlane is towing a vintage caravan,
which has been made from carefully arranged
single curve aluminium. Otherwise it would
have cost ten times as much to make.
Pontiac Bonneville design for the second half
of the 1960s. Vast, at nearly 19 feet long, and
with 6.4 litres being the smallest available V8.
Interior is actually quite restrained for a
1960s Yank. Real wood veneer is not an option
in 120° Arizona summers, so the wood is all
fake in American cars. Some leather is used,
but vinyl is more common.
Only one 1964/65 Mustang at the show, which
is surprising. It’s another US classic so common
that you can build a new one from available
resto parts, many of which are astonishingly
cheap.
Late 1960s Camaro. Actually a very attractive
and dramatic shape, powered by the indestructible
and design-fault-free Chevy 350 V8.

Replica or real 1968 Shelby 350GT Mustang.
Rather like Cobras, you tend to assume that if
you see something this expensive on the street
it will be a fake.
Cheeky twin-turbo big-block Chevy 350 in a
next-generation Camaro.
1970s Stingray. The dramatic C3 shape ran
from 1969 to 1982, and the primitive chassis
still looked like that of a boat trailer rather
than a sports car.
Another Corvette, probably 1990s. The chassis
was improved as time went on, but the
basic identity of the car – plastic bodywork,
straight line performance – carried on for
an admirable 67 years until it got a mid rear
engine in 2020.
1969 Buick GS. There have always been attractive
Buicks from away back – they looked
good in the 1920s and 1930s too.
Zundapp two-stroke is the continental equivalent
of a BSA Bantam.
There were some Jap tuner cars there for the
youthful and fashionable.
Second-gen Camaro runs from 1970 to 1981.
Not bad looking, and good proportions, but
it lost the taut and aggressive beauty of the
1967-69 cars.
“ ...the current Raggare are all old
men, the sons of the original rebels.”
1971 Mustang Mach 1. Bigger, heavier, blander,
soggier.
This is what the Swedish countryside looks and
sounds like when there aren’t turbocharged Volvos
screaming through it.

HANDS ON
Not-So-Good Vibrations
Paul got some footage of this car and others fighting the turbocharged Volvos on a
legal street dragstrip: the Yanks say there ain’t no substitoot for cubes, but they’re
wrong. Check it out on the www.wirewheelsmagazine.com website.
Ancient stationary engines are always worth a look. We like the brakes on this one,
to stop it ambling off on its own. Simple chocks would just be boring, wouldn’t they?
A nice 1974 editorial overdrive MGB in BRG,
that came and went a while back. Perfect for
opentop spring and fall ambles through the
Okanagan valley in BC.
Somebody either unaware or foolish had reused
Nylock nuts on the propshaft bolts. A
couple were finger-tight but none had fallen
off yet.
Jackstands or axle stands to stop the car falling
on my head.
Rear wheel drive and 4WD involve propshafts. They
have two universal joints that are universal both in
application and in movement, and they have a defined
life, although it’s a much longer defined life if they
have a grease nipple fitted and a non-lazy owner.
My MGB developed squeaks and a vibration. A new
universal joint in the propshaft cured it.
The symptoms were an increasing vibration under
drive at higher speeds, which went away on backing
off the throttle and on the over-run. That, combined
with a metallic squeaking from the back when reversing,
strongly suggested a failing universal joint on the
propshaft. A quick grovel under the car and a twist of
the propshaft by hand confirmed this, with a slightly
alarming amount of slop. If it wasn’t sorted out, a
total failure could have rendered the car undrivable.
A failed U/J can also be catastrophic: the MGB has a
crossmember that will catch a falling propshaft, but

many older RWD cars have nothing, and if the front
U/J lets go and the propshaft falls and catches on the
ground, it could potentially either pole-vault the car
on to its roof or rip the back axle out. Either of those
events will spoil your whole day.
Following the rules, which say you never put anything
you want to use again such as an arm or a head under
a car that’s not correctly supported, I got the MGB up
on a pair of substantial axle stands. My garage is full
of projects so it had to be a driveway job, but you have
to get the car quite high off the ground to be able to
pull the propshaft out: without substantial supporting
of the rear bodywork to let the axle dangle far enough
to get the shaft out, it looked a bit risky. In the end
I took the whole car off to Martin Webber, ace British-car
mechanic, to get it sorted out.
With a ramp, access is instant and a piece of cake.
Somebody had re-used Nyloc nuts to hold the propshaft
on. At some point in your classic-car journey
you find out, hopefully not the hard way, that Nylocs
are single-use locking nuts. They have a deformable
nylon insert that locks onto the threads of a bolt, but
just once. After that, they’re just a nut and will fall
off without a lock washer. Nylocs are cheap enough,
bought by the dozen: if you fiddle with old cars regularly
you should keep boxes of the common sizes.
If you do understand Nylocs and still re-use old ones
without lock washers, you’re somewhere between an
optimist and an idiot.
Delicate work with the lump hammer encourages
the bearing cup to come out.
A couple of quid or bucks buys enough ½” nylocks
to last an amateur for a year or two.
You need a medium-to-large vice, as violence
and a hammer are involved.
This had been a greasable U/J and you can see
green squidgy evidence of my attempt to grease
it – but it was too late.
The cup has been pushed out of the other side
of the U/J.
There is a ring of four bolts. You can spin the
propshaft for access by rotating a road wheel, if
you jam the other road wheel.
This is ten times easier with a ramp, so off we go
to Martin the mechanic. Four bolts, five minutes
and the shaft is free.
The circlips are squeezed out. Using proper
circlip pliers reduces the risk that the clips will
make a bid for freedom.
Once it’s been pushed through far enough,
it can be grabbed with a monkey wrench and
twisted out.

Same technique applies to the other branch of
the cross.
There are four cups at either end of the propshaft.
The needle roller bearings are still in one of the
cups, those from the other side are presumably
scattered around BC.
New needle roller bearings and a new cup are
fitted to the new U/J cross.
An old socket can be used to help drift the cup
out if it’s reluctant.
The final remaining cup is the easiest to bash
out.
The yoke is cleaned up so that the new cups
will go in smoothly.
Greasing bearings with bare hands always makes
the phone ring.
One side’s not too bad, but the other side is completely
shagged out. Remarkable that the vibration
actually wasn’t bad.
It doesn’t need to be an interference fit as it’s
secured by the clips.
Cross and cups are fitted to the propshaft.

Synchronicity
An orphaned 1937 Charlesworth body finds a new home
A socket and vice are used to push the cup into
place.
The cup is pushed on to the trunnion without disturbing
the position of the needle rollers.
The circlips are replaced, unless they successfully
escaped and are hiding under something
heavy.
One of the gods exists and is a classic car enthusiast:
that’s the only explanation for the weird synchronicity
that surrounds this Alvis body.
For 80 years, it was on an Alvis Speed 25 that was
then chopped up for a special. It really shouldn’t have
been, because it was a solid, very original and usable
if slightly tatty car, not even restored, and it was in
fine oily-rag shape. That sort of patina is ever more
rare as restoration scrapes and grinds it off, and then
covers history up in shiny new 2021 paint and fresh
leather. Yay, we’ve made it into a new car. What happened
to the old car? Most of it’s still there under all
the new shiny stuff, but you can’t see it any more.
We all know when a car genuinely needs restoration,
and hopefully more people will come to understand
when you should just preserve it and enjoy it.
The Alvis lost its body for a special. Building specials
from scrap four-door saloons that are too far gone is
absolutely fine and to be enthusiastically encouraged,
but scrapping a rare classic that’s in good shape is a
shame. A 1937 Alvis Speed 25 in usable original condition
is a rare and irreplaceable historic beast.
This was a few years back, and at the time I still
owned my 1950 RR Silver Wraith with a plan for a
fabric touring body. The Charlesworth sports saloon
body fitted to the Alvis chassis in 1937 was low, lean
and elegant, unusually attractive for a four-door. The
back doors were fairly small, which helped. The body
was also in very good condition, with virtually no rust,
and even the structural woodwork was mostly solid.
The main dashboard ended up on the special, but the
remaining interior woodwork was in fine condition,
and even the headlining was good: old and slightly
stained, but in good condition with no holes or insect
damage. The clever and very big dual sunroof still
optionally opened up over either the back or the front
Propshaft back on, and we’re good to go.
I might remember to grease the propshaft
from now on. But probably not.
The Charlesworth body, stripped off the car and loosely assembled.

their bodywork. This would be quite a fitting home for
the abandoned body. It would need the running boards
extended to fit the Wraith wheelbase, and the missing
bonnet and grille could be replaced by the RR grille
and the Wraith’s adapted bonnet, which was the only
piece of its original body that still existed. Bonnet
sides for this period are flat and just require louvres to
look right.
I bought the Charlesworth body, and after some
messing about, finally got it on the chassis to figure
out how to adapt them to fit each other. When I really
looked at it, though, the idea was a dead duck.
Main dashboard and instruments ended up
with the special, but there was enough left to
work with. A turned aluminium dash would
have worked with the veneered top dash frame,
which was in fine condition.
The Wraith grille, just placed in position to
see how it will look with the Charlesworth
body curves. Oh yes, that will work just fine.
Distinctive mudguard crease, pleasing lines.
Interior woodwork was all good, even the
headlining was usable, and the big dual sunroof
would have been a delight.
The body styling is pure
Deco, with a British spin.
of the cabin. I was even thinking about trying to repair
the minor damage to the original 1937 black lacquer
paint, rather than repainting. Once you’ve covered up
1937, it’s gone forever.
The story started when it occurred to me that I could
bypass a lot of hard work by changing direction with
the Wraith and putting the orphaned Charlesworth
body on it instead of making a new one. Charlesworth
was a top coachbuilder of slightly sporty bodies, and
plenty of Rolls-Royces and Bentleys were fitted with
Press on and get the body positioned on the
chassis. Oh, shit. It sits like a Land Rover. The
body is six inches too high.

The body can only be lowered by cutting the
bottom structure off, and by making new main
Wraith chassis beams. Okay, I’m not going to
butcher either the body or the chassis. Time
for a new plan.
The Wraith is an upright and respectable old lady, the
Alvis is a slinky sports saloon. In order to get the body
on the Rolls, both the body and the chassis would have
to be seriously chopped up, to the point where the
chassis would be redesigned, possibly running below
rather than above the axles, and the body would also
have to be substantially altered. It would actually be
easier to build a new body for the Wraith chassis from
ash and fabric, as per the original plan.
Okay, new plan, I needed to find a new and suitable
home for the Alvis body. There must be somebody
restoring an Alvis who would leap at the chance of a
solid body that just needs a chassis. I wrote to the Alvis
club a couple of times, but got no response. I wrote
about it in a car magazine and the Australian automotive
artist Peter Miller got in touch, seriously excited.
He had just finished restoring a 1937 Alvis Speed 25
chassis, but had no body at all, and was wondering
what to do next. Could he buy that body? Damn right
he could, that was the most perfect possible home for
it. The synchronicity continued: I was being absolutely
honest about every detail, and I mentioned that the
steel inner rear wings were still usable, but a bit thin
overall from rust. Unbelievably, Peter already had a
pair of new rear inner wings for a 1937 Charlesworth
body.
Peter’s car was a 1937, the same as the one in Vancouver,
and both of them had Charlesworth bodies, so it’s
quite likely that they had been in the same building
at the same time eighty years back, as coachbuilding
wasn’t a fast-moving production line. That’s a pleasing
thought.
Shipping costs from Canada to Australia were going
to be fairly brutal, but I was keen to help and poked
about a bit to find the best way. Wooden crates have
to be fumigated for bugs, and condensing the package
into as small a space as possible would obviously help.
Making the package easily mobile would also save Peter
money. In the end I welded together a steel frame
with fixed castors at the back and revolving castors at
the front, and got the wings and running boards stuffed
and strapped inside the body to make it as compact as
possible. Cheery emails were going back and forth,
and I was looking forward to reports of Peter’s progress
with the build.
Everything then went quiet. I’d sent many detailed
photos during correspondence, so it would be very odd
if he was unhappy with the body, but if he didn’t want
to talk any more, so be it.
A year later I read his obituary, which explained the
silence.
I can only hope that he got some fun out of it before
he went.
Packaging it up to go to Australia as cheaply
as possible. Doors back on, a steel trolley made
and everything else stuffed inside and strapped
down.
Peter’s Speed 25 chassis, freshly finished, naked
and just waiting for the perfect body to cross the
world to restore automotive karma to a state of
balance and harmony.
Peter has said he wants it, delighted with that. The body comes back off the Wraith.
The special. Its bum was too long, and it
didn’t sell well.

The Ayrspeed Diaries
The Silver Wraith Speedster
Part IV
Rad and grille
in position.
The radiator
had to rise a
couple of inches
to clear the
engine, but no
worries.
Building up from the rolling chassis
Figuring out basic positions. The crate is a bit high, but adjusting steering wheel height is no problem.
The process of turning the restored chassis, axles and
drivetrain into a drivable vehicle was carried out with
Adam Trinder of AMTMachine.com. Adam’s portfolio
of work, as far as Ayrspeed was concerned, was headlined
by an excellent Mini, into the back seat of which
which Adam had put a bike engine. It’s well worth a
visit to his website and past projects.
The engineering on the Mini was clever and creative,
and Adam had recycled a great deal of its rear suspension
and subframe despite a RWD conversion. He
had even retained much of the capacity of the original
boot, which most custom designers wouldn’t have
bothered with. So his approach of retaining originality
where practical, and thinking things through, suited
this project very neatly. It was also a big help that he
has a full machine shop, so ideas are executed and
sometimes abandoned in-house, saving on prototyping
time and costs. Although prototyping perhaps isn’t the
right word: part of the deal is that this Rolls is unique,
and all drawings and plans will be destroyed. We’ve
already been asked if we can build somebody another
one? Sorry, it’s not an option. Another boat-tailed
Rolls, yes, but another one that looks like this, no.
When the 19” wheels were sent from MWS in England
and fitted to the car, the tyres had to be sorted
and ordered. In the end, after much chat with various
people, the top recommendation was Excelsior Stahl
radials. They have a modern internal radial structure,
but they have a crossply/bias ply tread pattern. They
will look completely right for the car, but they will be
safer, more comfortable and more grippy than proper
old-school tyres.
Our friend Colin used them on his Bentley special and
Pedals are in the right place now. The pedal
pads were mounted on adjustable tubes by
Rolls-Royce so detail tailoring is easy.

Next up is the rear bulkhead, so we’re sorting
out the positioning of the boat tail.
Ferrari eat your heart out.
recommended them. We also ordered good quality
Michelin tubes from the UK. They were a bit tricky to
specify, as the valves are offset because of the Lagonda
wheels. There are pitfalls to be steered clear of
in ordering expensive items, with couriers gouging
greedily every time something is shipped: we don’t
ever want to be sending anything back.
The seat was conceived as a single bench seat shaped
for two people. The back of the seat would also hinge
forward and was originally planned to be the door to
the luggage locker, Although it later became a sliding
seat frame with separate locker doors.
The clutch is already working. Feels nice.
The boat tail was roughly assembled to confirm
its position before the rear firewall was
made. It would have a hinged lockable door
for luggage.
It’s useful that Adam and I are about the same size
and height as the car’s owner, so we could design the
pedals, seat and steering wheel positions to suit ourselves
and get the car tailored basically right. Al would
have been flying over for regular car fittings to get it
tailored exactly, and for social visits in Vancouver if it
hadn’t been for covid. It has been a stroke of luck that
we get on so well, and it makes the whole high-stress
process of bespoke car design a lot more fun if you
look forward to seeing your client.
The doors were planned to be quite big and rear
hinged to make it easy to get in and out. This sort of
car is a lifetime possession, so I’m thinking well ahead
to make it usable for as long as possible. If he eventually
decides to stop driving, it won’t be because he
can’t drive the car any more. The doors were designed
for Al, and the frames were made in steel and on
heavy hinges, so he will be able to lean on them to get
in and out.
The Wraith originally had a column gear change, long
gone, and there was just a stump sticking out of the
left side of the gearbox. However, the functions of a
selector are pretty simple, so I couldn’t see any reason
why I couldn’t simply clamp a gear lever on to the
stump and shape it to run across the top of the gearbox
to end up where I wanted it. Left/right/forwards/backward
movements would remain the same. That’s how
it worked out in the end, with a mostly decorative gate
and a reverse gear lockout.
My idea of the simple Z-shaped gear lever
worked a treat, the gear shift action feels great.
There will be a reverse lockout on the gate.
The exhaust will go forwards to clear the steering
gear, then down and into a single fat pipe
going to the tail. I specified a single resonator
box to take some treble out of the exhaust and
to stop it droning on the highway, but it can be
silenced a bit more at any point.
Adam made a brass gear knob.
He also fitted the gate, and the gear shift
action is slick and positive. There’s a simple
reverse lockout on the gate, later upgraded.

The exhaust system was rather fun. Adam’s stainless
exhaust manifold was a work of art, and the rest of
the system is a single fat stainless pipe with a resonator
box to stop it droning, but no silencer at all, just a
Vincent or Velocette-style fishtail at the back end. If a
silencer is needed, it can be added later. As it happens,
I was right in what I expected: the big lazy engine just
grumbles quietly at sensible street speeds, but if you
press on up the tacho or blip the throttle for downward
gearchanges, you get satisfyingly angry barking and
bellowing.
The driveshaft, overhauled. (The other one
shown is for another car).
The fuel tank in place under the
floor of the tail. Apart from the
fuel cap and pipe, the tail can all
be filled with luggage.
Adam’s exhaust manifold, rather gorgeous, very pleased with it. Fat single pipe to the tail, with a resonator
box.
Rob Maynard, who will be
making the body, is happy with
the way the body will adapt to
the longer chassis.
Nice stainless tail lights, with proper glass lenses.
Posh version of the lamps fitted to Model A Fords,
these were also fitted to Talbots, but only in shiny
versions. These ended up on the Alvis special,
traded for the original Charlesworth rear light
assembly.

Trip Prep: Checklists
Spares list
Fanbelt
Fuel pump
Fuses
Coil or coil pack
Plugs and leads
Distributor cap
Contact points
Condenser
Water
Brake fluid
Thermostat and gasket
Triangle, vest
First aid kit
Fire extinguisher
Tools
Mobile phone
Duct tape
Radiator bubble gum
Tie-wraps
Pliers
Spanners and adjustable
Socket set, screwdriver bits
Small hacksaw
Blankets
Novel
Classic Car Adventures have turned roadside breakdowns into a spectator sport.
If you comply with the required list of tools and
spares on a CCA trip, you will get endless help
and sympathy. If not… not so much.
Dave Hord of Classic Car Adventures (.com) has developed
a list of spares and tools that all his rally tour
entrants are required to carry. You won’t be excluded
from the trip if you’re missing one or two items, but
nor will you be supported with much sympathy if you
break down and are not carrying a sensible selection
of basic spare parts.
Part of the challenge of a Spring Thaw, Rush to Goldbridge
or any other CCA trip is the communal effort
to get a large number of old cars to the end of a quite
demanding weekend, and roadside bonnet-up drama is
part of that: car breakdowns as a spectator sport are all
part of the fun.
There’s also a tech check list, and all entrants have to
run through this before the first drivers’ meeting on
day one of a CCA trip.
It’s not a bad idea to apply both of these lists to any
classic car going on any substantial trip.
Checks
Headlights, dip/main
Sidelights, brake lights, indicators
Wipers/washers
Horn
Steering, excessive slop
Functionality of dampers
Tie rod ends, steering joints
Brake fluid topped up and clean
Brake pedal firmness
Brake hoses condition
Adequate brake pad/shoe thickness
Battery clamp
Wiring loom condition
Fuel tank and line leaks/condition
Recent fuel filter change
I usually carry a useful
toolbox won in a Mini
club auction.

Comprehensively covered.
Much of that lot
can be stuffed into corners
of the car: in an NA
Miata with a spare tyre,
space is at a premium.
Fire extinguisher is a smart move, even if it’s
somebody else’s fire. ‘Kitchen’ printed on the
extinguisher says it’s good for fluid-based
fires: spraying water on oil and petrol fires
just makes them angry rather than putting
them out.
A selection of metric sockets. If I need anything
bigger than those, I’m probably in deeper poo
than can be fixed at the roadside.
Vulgar waistcoat could be a lifesaver. It’s illegal
to drive in France without having one in the car.
Screwdriver bits use less space than screwdrivers,
and the socket handle also has more
leverage.
Story
1980s, most of my friends got married. Some of them
were/are Hooray Henries, and at one very Four-Weddings
wedding, every single car in the church car park
was a black BMW, apart from mine, which was a
black Eagle Jeep. The percentage of summer-frocked
Amandas was very high, although there were no Mandies,
obvs. Automatically offside, I went to that wedding
with a Japanese air stewardess in full kimono.
The expected kit to wear to these weddings was black
tie with a fancy waistcoat: mine was fluorescently
noisy, looked like a Turkish tablecloth on acid. My
young nephew Alex, showing promise in the snarky
department, said it was a toxic waste coat.
CCA’s Dave Hord has a full-on Canadian plaid
fetish, but actually a mask is a good idea for
reducing the number of slipstream insects you
eat.
Pete the Miata Man helped to sort out the tools
and spares, so the toolbox obviously had to be
properly branded.
Just in case I forgot what kind of car I was
driving.
Tooth-based insect-collecting is an issue if you
drive a Midget with no windscreen. Did it break
down? Of course it broke down.

One will be at One’s Club
One will be at one’s Club
Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club, BC Region
I’ve been a member of the North American RROC for
rather more than ten years, and was sent a little button
thing to celebrate that. I got sucked into the Rolls and
Bentley world when I bought a project Silver Wraith
rolling chassis, mentioned at length in WireWheels
Magazine.
At one point I was writing stories for the national club
magazine, but as happens in so many car clubs, there
were some political ructions, and the long-term professional
magazine editor was removed and replaced by
an amateur from Texas who does not reply to emails.
The national RROC magazine is fairly poor now,
which isn’t going to help with retaining or attracting
members.
However, the national USA club is mostly irrelevant
to the BC region of the club, which is also in North
America but is obviously in a different country. The
only time the BC people mention the national club is
to grouse about the membership cost. This grousing
will increase in volume unless the national magazine
improves. Independence is in the air these days with
Brexit and Scexit, so maybe there will be a revolution.
The national events have a tendency to be ostentatiously
expensive, and of course they nearly all take
place in the USA.
The local BC magazine is a delight, and is edited and
largely written by member John Pierson with unflagging
enthusiasm and actually a very professional
John Pierson drives his Silver Cloud on the final event of the year, organised by the Old English Car Cub,
which is the Lander-Bellingham run that honours the parallel London-Brighton run in England. John’s passenger
Bart is a friend who is no longer with us but is not forgotten.
A typical issue of the BC Spirit magazine, full of
who’s bought what car from whom, and all the
social and technical events that take place each
month.
In the ferry lineup at Horseshoe Bay. The Fuel
Economy Run is really just an excuse to go away
for a driving weekend with friends, although some
people take the competitive aspect seriously.
A motel car park with mixed valuable and more
ordinary Rolls and Bentley cars. Any hands-on
enthusiast can get into a 1990s RR quite cheaply,
as they’re now just old and not yet classic.
They also have Clive Sinclair/Atari period electronics,
which is justifiably scary.
approach, with pictures and checked details of everything
that goes on.
Quite a lot does go on in BC: there’s no monthly
meeting, but there is usually at least one event every
month, frequently more, and the elections and
paperwork are all dealt with during one very active
late-winter weekend that includes a tech session and
much social activity as well.
A favourite annual jolly is the Fuel Economy run,
which is really just a structure for a driving weekend
away. The idea is to get better fuel economy than
the manufacturer’s figure for your particular model
of Rolls or Bentley, and whoever gets the maximum
improvement over that, wins. I won it last time, with
18.5 mpg (Imperial) out of my friend Roger Pearson’s
Silver Shadow. I like driving, he likes being driven,
it’s a win-win. Roger is a respectable beblazered big
noise in the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, and we have
little in common, but for some reason we get on very
well.
The money-raising auction every year in a church hall
is another favourite event: some of the items members
bring to the auction are bargain Rolls-Royce parts and
useful tools, some of it is junk. The whole thing tends
to be MCed by member Dave Baron, who likes MkVI
Bentleys and amateur dramatics. The event is lubricated
by sherry and raises club funds that allow some
events to be free.

Not free, but for me worth every penny (okay, cent) is
the annual BC banquet, which has traditionally been
held at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, in the dining
room that looks over the club’s marina and the Burrard
Inlet and English bay to the twinkling lights and
mountains of North Vancouver. The location is beautiful,
the lamb cutlets are perfect and the company is
cheery. It’s my favourite club event.
Socially, the BC club is very welcoming. There’s
nobody I can think of who is particularly posh, and the
only requirement for membership is an enthusiasm for
Rolls and Bentley cars and sending $130 a year to the
national club.
A lot of BC is gorgeous. This is the view from
an affordable motel room on Vancouver Island
during an economy run.
The Vancouver Island-based members are a cheery and sociable crew. Steve Harris mostly likes rescuing
very obscure Brit coachbuilts, and this is his most mainstream, a James Young-bodied MkVI Bentley.
With its high waist and low roof, it’s the only MkVI that could be described as sexy.
That particular event didn’t go entirely smoothly:
the Shadow failed to proceed because of a
worn-out wire shorting out on the engine, so no
big deal at all once traced.
I bummed a ride back to Vancouver in a new
opentop VW or BMW Bentley or RR, can’t remember
which. Very comfy, though. Thanks, Gwen.
I was offered this Bentley Turbo R for $6000,
and regret not buying it: it was a massively powerful
and impressive car, and I should just have
enjoyed it until something went wrong.
Chris Los hammers his Phantom on a Spring Thaw rally tour, and why not? It’s comfy, sturdy and not slow,
so it makes an excellent ride for a full-on 1000-km driving weekend.

In the next issue…
Triumph Tales
Introducing the new Triumph section of WW: a
spiritual home for the Triumphisti
Spit and Polish
Sweet bike-carbed Spitfire: an art director’s resto,
lovely colours and tight panel gaps
Transatlantic
V8 Buick BGT: Buick/Rover hybrid engine in fine
Californian restomod B
Caveat Emptor
Silver Cloud and Bentley S buyer’s guide: mistakes
with buying these cars can be brutally expensive
TVR’s plakky TR6
Triumph-based Vixen and 2500M: a different flavour
but the same TR6 spirit
Reims Motor Museum
En passant through the Champagne region: cool
private museum makes a fine lunch stop
Roadtrip
RAF Henlow to Le Touquet: at least there was
some tarmac involved this time
Hawk 289 build
Part 1 de-rusting skanky old MGB kit: a rotting
MGB begins its reincarnation
Wraith Speedster
Part 5 body substructures: hands-on 3D structural
design with milk crates and measuring tapes
L’Ayre du Temps
Drunk drivers and bad luck: either all drunks
should go to jail, or none