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Worst car of the 1960's

i had a mk11 zephyr 6 ex girling run about,red plastic seat covering,three speed column
change, bench seat,i can remember taking the in laws down to Weston super mare,
we stopped just the other side of northfield to fill it up, and you can tell how,long ago it was in the 70s i think and i struggled to put a fiver,s worth in and it was over flowing.
it was a nice car, we slept in it on more than one occasion.
happy days. regards dereklcg.
 
My father-in-law had a Consul 375 and it was a lovely car! Its one unfortunate trait was the column-change gear-linkage kept breaking, usually in second. It had a bench front-seat, very comfortable.

As this thread is, however, about the worst cars of the 1960's, did anyone have a DAF? This nasty little thing was belt-driven via a leather belt and cone system. A girl-friend of mine had one, and the belt snapped. Could we get another? Could we ****! She finally got a firm of saddlers in Walsall to make one for her, but then there was the small problem of how to fit it....

Big Gee
 
My father-in-law had a Consul 375 and it was a lovely car! Its one unfortunate trait was the column-change gear-linkage kept breaking, usually in second. It had a bench front-seat, very comfortable.

As this thread is, however, about the worst cars of the 1960's, did anyone have a DAF? This nasty little thing was belt-driven via a leather belt and cone system. A girl-friend of mine had one, and the belt snapped. Could we get another? Could we ****! She finally got a firm of saddlers in Walsall to make one for her, but then there was the small problem of how to fit it....

Big Gee

I think they were called the Daf Variomatic???? Funny little car.

keith
 
In 1962 I bought a 1959 Vauxhall Victor. Looked the rock 'n' roll business inside and out but ended up a rotbox. When I gave it away to donate the perfectly good engine to another Victor the boot when you opened it allowed you to check the tread on the back tyres. The engine went on to do well over 100,000 miles but the bodywork by 1965 - Yuk!
 
But mike, think about the bloke some years ago who had somehow managed to keep his victor in good nick (probably gave it a steam claen every 40 miles) and who got a very good price for it because it was probably the only one that had survived. I never had one but remember our headmaster, who was a bit of a perfectionist, bought one . and within about a year it was almost the worst-looking car in the school yard
Mike
 
Workmate of mine had a Vauxhall Wyvern in the early sixties, braked hard once and the front suspension collasped.
 
The worst car of the sixties was whatever car I was driving at the time. I could only afford rubbish.

Phil
 
My 1959 Victor and me in the Summer of 1963 at Brean. (I was in the passenger seat , it wasn't left hand drive). I bought it for £299 off Cadey's petrol station in Warstock, now a block of flats by MacDonalds where the Bagnall Arms used to be.Cadey's was a Cleveland Petrol Station. The first owner of my Victor was the Cleveland Petrol Co. as a reps car so already had 53000 on the clock but the back seat had never been sat on. With a front bench seat the upholstery was powder blue and the steering wheel had a chromed horn lower half ring. Design - real Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Rust!
 
In or around 1967 I borrowed £100 off my old man and (foolishly) bought a 1960 Mini Saloon. It was blue...ish. I swear that every morning when I opened the garage it had more rust-spots than the night before...

...however, like many cars in those days, it was mechanically sound, and I drove it almost to death (my girl-friend lived in Brighton and most weekends I'd make to 350+ miles round trip to see her).

One fine day, I got into this little swine, and reached behind me to press the starter-button, which was just behind the hand-brake. Surprise, surprise, my thumb just kept going down..and down..and down. The entire housing which held the starter-button had rotted away. I fixed this (slight) defect by means of a few pounds of Holt's Polyester Putty, but a week or so later the rear sub-frame collapsed. Enough for me. I put it back into the garage, and there it sat for 2 years until my uncle took it off my hands, and ran it for another 10 years! He even entered it in some competition to locate the oldest running Austin Mini!

Compare with my (first) Ford Sierra, bought in 1982, on which I did 180000 miles then sold it to my father-in-law who put another 150000 miles on its clock until the gear-box said 'good-bye'.

Two years ago, I took delivery of a (company) VW Passat Estate, which after 38000 miles needed a new engine/gear-box/turbo after the oil-pump disintegrated. With a new engine, etc., I get 54 m.p.g. and I've just done 2000+ miles around France without a hiccup.

You takes your money, you makes your choice...

...cars - I love 'em! (Not)

Big Gee

PS: anyone remember the Wartbug 2-stroke monstrosity?
 
This is a photo of my first car, well a van really, ex George Masons, the grocers, I kept the bottom half dark green as was there colours, and painted the top half light green, and put an old bus seat in the back.I paid £125 in 1958.
 
My first car was a brand new Hillman Imp for £634, bought from a garage on the corner of Wellhead Lane and Aldridge Rd in Perry Barr in 1964.
Drove it proudly away, but on reaching Kingstanding Rd it broke down.
Phoned the garage and they came out and fitted a new carburretor. After that it ran for 4/5 years, even the automatic choke worked. Antifreeze was a problem because of the aluminium engine. It also had an accelerator pedal without a cable, some sort of pneumatic connection.
Maybe I was reasonably lucky with it, only once called the AA and they got it going with a squirt of WD40
With some office guys I once drove virtually non-stop overnight from B'ham to Coverac Cornwall one Bank Hol in 1965, nearly going off the big curve where the M5 ended at Strensham joining the M50. I remember finding my way across a foggy winding road on Bodmin Moor.
My Imp could always out-corner Mini's in my wilder driving days.
I saw an Imp recently and thought how frail it looked, and how did I once do 84mph in one.
 
The person who compiled that list obviously never owned the first version of the Hillman Imp with it's useless automatic choke! :-;)

I will go along with that, It also had a air operated throttle and with the doughnuts on the drive the earth return was the strap under the gearbox. On mine sometime in its past this had been damaged and one day I found that I could switch the Ign on and off by moving the gear lever !!, The engine could overheat owing to the rad being behind the rear wheel but I fitted a water temperature gauge and on long runs turn on the water supply to the heater matrix which was in the front of the car.

The engine designed by Coventry Climax was great by the transaxle poor and you needed a bag of sand in the boot otherwise you could go STRAIGHT ON.
 
That F model Vauxhall Victor, I made a lot of money out of them in the late 50s early 60s, we used to go round the Vauxhall dealers and buy them for about £40 a time from round the back yard, take them home spend a couple of days with the welder and filler and a quick coat of brush on Tekaloid paint then sell them for £150 each, they were good cars, looked good and we never had a complaint.

When Vauxhall introduced them they wanted a big launch and they had a large stock of them brought into Birmingham and parked them, packed tight, in the bombed site car park on Broad Street, unfortunately the local kids had a bit of fun climbing on them and running from roof to roof causing thousands of pounds worth of damage. E.
 
Is this you Eric

[ame="https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6564618232591273624"]Vauxhall Victor 2200bhp runs a 7.6@191mph 1/4mile[/ame]
 
Eric,
I can't remember the name of the garage - it seemed to be an extended converted house painted white.
I remember the first service, being a suspicious type, I put some little strands of Evostick on bolts which I knew they had to undo etc. Guess what, the stands were unbroken, and the foreman had an uncomfortable time as he attempted to explain how the bolts were undone without breaking the strands. They had to do another service while I waited and watched.

oldmohawk
 
Definitely not me alf:) never believed in all that souped up stuff.

oldMohawk , it was Buntings I guess, opposite the Alexander stadium on the corner of Wellhead Lane. E.
 
Eric, It was opposite the stadium so it had to be Buntings. I bought a Vauxhall Viva later and thought it was really comfortable after the Imp, but a rusty hole came through the bodywork after 18 months, so down to Halfords for gauze, filler, wet & dry, etc. I did buy a Ford Focus in 1999 and a rust hole appeared in the silencer after 13 months. The dealer said it was 'fair wear and tear' !
 
The Ford Zodiac was a good car. The only slightl problem with design was ..... the bonnet seemed to be about 6 yards long which made it a bit tricky to park sometimes.
 
Old Mohawk,

I too remember that garage...if memory serves, it was on the opposite corner to what used to be the Land Rover axle factory, which these days is student flats. I left my Moggie Minor there so they could so some work on the brakes, and when I went to collect it the garage had been busted into and the battery, radio and front seats of my Moggie had been nicked (yeah, I know, I never understood why, either...). The gaffer at first refused to cough up until I re-visted with my ex-boxer dad in tow, and very soon all was resolved. Maybe it was Bunting's, but I honestly can't remember.

I never had a Hillman Imp, but I did have a couple of Vivas (the square-cut Mk 3 type) and they really were rot-boxes. They also had only a 7" clutch, so I got pretty good at re-lining that particular mechanism. Someone I knew had a Mk 1 Brabham Viva, which went like the proverbial, until one fine day the back axle decided to take an upwards course through the body.

Having said all of that, my current car is a 2006 VW Passat Estate. In April, the oil-pump seized, resulting in a replacement engine, turbo and gear-box, and thank Gawd it was still under warranty. Since then it's been OK, but goes to show that it's not just old cars that were dogs.

Big gee
 
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