• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Triumph

The above posted link is enthralling. Thanks for that. I have put it into favourites. Sorry to see the factories and left over cars being stripped and presumably erased by the Chinese. You would have thought that the government would have spared the former employees and British people that considering the small change that was got for it. So damaging to morale I would have thought. From the article it does not seem likely that further production will take place there. Sad beyond words.
 
Hi
The old car on the left of the pic. is a prewar Ford Y model. When I started work, at Meteor Garage, Moseley, after my army National Service,in 1950, I worked on a few of them, it was quite a job getting a reasonable brake on them, I remember.

Barney Martin
 
spooner said:
Hi,
The Mayflower was built in smaller numbers than the larger Renown. The Renown had a Standard Vanguard engine and they were built in Coventry. HJ Mulliner, the coachbuilders, in Small Heath. (Golden Hillock Road I think), were taken over by Standard, and I believe that was the only place where the Mayflower was ever built. The Renown was often called 'the poor man's Rolls-Royce' on account of the body style.
Mulliner's was the only place to build the Vanguard Estate too. My late dad worked there for several years untill the place closed down in the 1950's. (I'm talking about the Mk1 Vanguard, I don't know where the later marks of the estate were built).
Spooner:)
Click to expand...
Mulliners were in Adderley Park Rd.
 
Barney martin said:
Hi
The old car on the left of the pic. is a prewar Ford Y model. When I started work, at Meteor Garage, Moseley, after my army National Service,in 1950, I worked on a few of them, it was quite a job getting a reasonable brake on them, I remember.

Barney Martin
Click to expand...

Barney,

I have sent you a PM.

Darby.
 
Mike I have just read through your book and also found it fascinating inasmuch as it answered some questions for me. I have just put the Rover long service awards photo up on Friends Reunited - you may recognise a few faces. I am the once good looking but haggard one on the back row.
 
Eric Gibson said:
You are wrong, the Devon had its headlights out on the front of the wings not on the inner panels. E.
Click to expand...

Quite right, it's an A70 Hampshire. I had one, JAC 102, and still have the old green logbook, somewhere. My uncle gave it to me when it became beyond economical repair. I used it as a field jalopy and had great fun with it until I managed to break the gearbox by inadvertantly changing from third to first at some speed!
I later found that it had been quite a rare car as relatively few had been made......oh well:rolleyes:

Ian
 
This is a really interesting thread - I love reading about old cars, even though when I owned old cars I hated their guts....especially when trying to get one to start in falling snow!

When I get time I'll have a proper look at that Austin-Rover link. I never worked there (but knew a lot of blokes who did) but visited regularly when they had a foundry and I was employed by Foseco Ltd who manufactured foundry chemicals. What I recall most was having to go there in a BL car otherwise they wouldn't let you on-site! Foseco had a couple of Morris 1300's purely for visiting Longbridge and Cowley. Once I couldn't get a Morris and arrived in all that was available - a Cortina. The swines turned me round and I had to park miles down the Bristol Road and walk back carrying my equipment with me. But it was fun in those days, before the world took itself too seriously.

My last memories of Longbridge aren't so good, though. I had to visit the Purchasing Dept on numerous occasions and (I've said this before) the way most of the buyers treated suppliers was appalling. Eventually my company (won't say which one, but by then I'd left Foseco) decided to pull out of Rover - we were losing money on every delivery. We were told forcibly by a senior buyer that no-one turns his back on Rover! But we did. To be fair, the buyers were under so much pressure from above to reduce costs that they tried to acheive that by any and every means - same as they do today elsewhere! As a supplier to the automotive industry my company is lucky to make 8% profit on what we sell - we are actually told how much we can make!

Big Gee
 
Big Gee - Rover would love to have made 6% profit but it was just a dream. Anyone with sense would have put their money into a Building Society and got better returns but a lot less fun.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top