Whats everyone driving these days? :)

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

Cheers....

....Kevin....

Citroens are fantastic cars and basically bullet proof from an engineering point of view...

As for the Austin/Morris, they are lovely and far more practical than an old Mini...

BTW, Todd has the Austin MKII version and I have the Morris MK I version. Apart from looking a little different, my car was made in Zetland, Sydney, Australia rather than the UK and has a few key differences compared to the British built cars:

- Rotodip rust proofing
- Bench front seat
- Handbrake repositioned between the door and the seat
- better dust proofing
- Deeper foam in the seats
- No suspended headlining (just foam stuck to the roof)
- Moulded boot mat around the spare rather than 'floor above the spare'

...overall there were 37 changes that were deemed essential for the Australian market.



Morris 1100 in Australia - Website for Enthusiasts of Morris 1100-1300-1500-Nomad

www.elevenhundred.com www.elevenhundred.com
 
1992 Chevrolet Caprice

I call her Clarisse. Smooth, safe, fast. And believe it or not, for a 305 cubic inch V-8 pushing around about 4,200 pounds, she gets great gas mileage especially on the highway, if I keep my foot out of it *wink* I've got over 274,000 miles on the original engine but did have to have the tranny rebuilt last April. Many were surprised that I got the 258,000 miles I got out of a 700R4, apparently that's unheard of, but I managed to do it somehow :)

strongenough78++11-20-2010-03-49-22.jpg
 
Love the Caprice/Impala!!!!

Honestly, one of the finest "modern" American cars ever made....along with the Buick Park Avenue and Ford Crown Vics.

I've logged a lot of hours in both the Caprice and the Impala. Love 'em. BTW, the original 700R4 went to 235k in our Suburban, which as you state, is simply unheard of. I did a lot of research and had it rebuilt with all the latest and greatest "pull a house off a foundation" parts. Sadly, it lasted only 34k and failed for no apparent reason this summer. So I've had it rebuilt yet again, with more improvements and even components that are used in the later 4L80E. We'll see how this one lasts.

The 1950 GMC is fantastic...100% fantastic. Especially that it's been in the family so long and you're still driving it. That is one of the happiest trucks in the free world.

Chris, I meant to comment on your newly purchased Citroen. Is there a sexier car on the entire planet? No, I don't think so. Gorgeous!

Also Chris, didn't your 1100's come with crazy low final drive ratio's? Our automatic Americas were 3.65:1. I have a 3.11:1 in my manual transmission version. What does your automatic have?
 
Austin America . . .

As with most Issigonis designs, the ADO16 sedan (marketed under the Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, and MG brands) was a brilliant piece of conceptual engineering. It was light years ahead of most competition in terms of space use and handling, and might as well have been in another solar system when compared to the VW Beetle, the best selling import in the US during the '60s. The ADO16 was sold here by both Austin and MG, I'm not sure of the other brands. Unfortunately it wasn't particularly well developed or built and as a result sold poorly and had dreadful resale value.

In '75 a friend of my family took advantage of this when buying a car for his 16 year old daughter. Jim owned a Citroen DS and lived near us when both my parents were driving ID19s so it was inevitable that we should meet. He wanted an inexpensive car for Karen to drive to school, so he and my Dad began a search. My dad spotted the Austin America at a local used car lot. It was maybe 5 years old, not too many miles, and looked clean and well cared for inside and out. It didn't run but was really, really cheap. The plan was hatched: Jim would buy the Austin and my dad, who was an aerospace engineer and pretty good shadetree mechanic, would help him fix it. Karen was thrilled: in her eyes the America was a totally cute little car and at the time even the root-beer metallic paint was pretty modish.

Once the car was back at Jim's place we all messed around with it, and eventually the poor thing started but would only run on three cylinders. A compresson test showed no compression on one cylinder, but when Karen heard it running she came out of the house like a bullet: "Oh, is my car fixed? Can I drive it now? It's soooo cute!!!" When I broke the news to her that it only ran on three cylinders she looked straight at me and said "So what, is that like a problem? Does it mean I can't take it to school tomorrow?"

A tear down revealed that one piston, I believe no.2 or no.3, had split across the ring lands so the bottom of the piston was going up and down normally while the top was stationary. I recall that this was fixed but the car was sadly never very reliable and soon sold on, once again at a bargain price. Jim managed to find a Citroen 2CV, very rare in the US, which proved to be a neat third car for them and less troublesome than the poor Austin, albeit with significantly less performance and overall ability.

During the period from the end of WWII to the early '70s there were three British attempts to target the US market with cars named to appeal to Americans: the Austin Atlantic and Triumph Mayflower in the early '50s, and then the America in the very late '60s. All were decent or better cars in some respects but ironically they were all lead-sinker successes here.
 
....didn't your 1100's come with crazy low final dri

Todd,

I agree, it is hard to find a more glamourous looking car than a DS...

As for the final drive ratios, the handbook for 1969 states..

Morris 1100 - 4.267 - 14.4 mph per 1000rpm
Morris 1100s- 4.133/3.765 - 14.9/16.35 mph per 1000rpm
Morris 1100/s
automatic - 3.273 - 16.35 mph per 1000rpm

For me, that makes it about 4000rpm for 105kph in the 's' automatic....

Oh, and the one car that is missed from the list above, Hydraulic, is the Vanden Plas Princess 1100....
 
I did think of the Vanden Plas, but wasn't that sold through other BL dealerships? Was there actually a Vanden Plas dealership organization that treated it as a make of its own? Perhaps they sold it alongside the Princess 4-liter R . . . not exactly a desirable combination for any dealership trying to pay the rent as both were limited production vehicles.

The VdP is actually a very neat little car, what with its high quality plush interior and compact exterior dimensions, plus the comfort of Moulton's hydrolastic suspension shared by all the ADO 16 variants. A properly fettled VdP with the MG twin carb setup (on the Riley too I think) and manual trans would be lots of fun IMO. I seem to remember that at one point in the '90s a lot of VdPs went to Japan as they had a cult following there.
 
2007 Ford Falcon Futura Wagon

They've finally gone out of production as of June 2010, but this is my third one over 13 years. They'd been in production continuously from 1960.

Huge amounts of space, longer than our Landcruiser and with the current 4.0L I6 190kw engine, performs great and is economical for what it is, with 19mpg around town and almost 30mpg on the highway.

I've managed to squeeze one dishwasher and two full size washers in there at the same time :)

I'll have this one another 5 years or so, but since they no longer make them, I have no idea what I'll get next time.

The photo was taken back in July after some long runs through corrigated dirt roads in National parks down around Port Macquarie. The suspension is still a live axle with leaf springs at the rear, but they do an awesome job on really rough roads.

brisnat81++11-20-2010-15-02-55.jpg
 
Dealerships....

...unlike other country's where Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, MG and Princess cars may have had distinct dealerships, here in Oz they had amalgamated them from the late 1950's or early 1960's...

This was made possible by the positioning of the respective brands in the 'pecking order' of desirability and by not offering too many competing models. By the time the 1960's came around, the following was true here:

Morris = small cars (Morris 850 (which was a mini), Mini Delux, Morris 1100)
Austin = family cars (Austin Freeway, Austin 1800)
Wolseley = executive cars (Wolsely 24/80 - upmarket version of Austin Freeway)
MG = Sports cars (MGB, Sprite)
Vanden Plas = luxury (3 litre and 4 litre R. Princess 1100 available to special order but cost double a Morris 1100)

With the exception of the VandenPlas cars, all, including the MG's, were either assembled or in full production at the Zetland factory in Sydney. This also means that they all had the 'Rotodip' rustproofing experience too....This was so effective, that apart from a couple of design weakspots in some cars where water doesn't drain, cars left in fields for decades are often restorable as the rust is often surface only...

Morris 1100 in Australia - The Rotodip

www.elevenhundred.com www.elevenhundred.com
 
For what it's worth, Issigonis was generally completely disinterested in both rustproofing and designing cars to reduce rust traps. I wasn't aware of the better rustproofing on Australian built BL cars, but from what little I know of the Aussie automotive industry through the years it does seem a shame that parent companies generally ignored its innovations and improvements. BL could certainly have profited from better rustproofing in many markets, and it would have been wonderful had American Valiants and Darts been available with the hemi head that Chrysler Australia designed for the slant six.

I have a friend who's first car was an MG 1100 back in the '60s. She went on to become a hard core Alfa junkie, but has such good memories of the MG that she's always ranked it among her favorite cars. She and her husband own Autobooks and Aerobooks, a great resource for all kinds of car publications.

www.autobooks-aerobooks.com

Home - Autobooks-Aerobooks

www.autobooks-aerobooks.com www.autobooks-aerobooks.com
 
It's really sad about the reputation of the America

I think the Austin America is one of THE most unversally hated cars in the United States. Combine their well earned reputation for breaking down permanently prior to 30,000mi, with their 1275cc solid wall engine block being highly sought after by the classic Mini community and you have the death of nearly 50,000 cars that were sold between March of '68 and early 1971. There are probably fewer than 100 still running in the US, and that's a stretch.

But regarding their reputation, I have never once heard of anyone who drove them with respect, maintained them correctly, or when they broke down, built them back to original spec. Nope, 100% of the people who bitch about what a POS they were/are, will in the same sentence tell a story like the one above. Usually a combination of, "We bought it new and drove the hell out of it and when it finally broke we junked it 3 years later." Or, "We bought it for $100, got it running by slapping it back together as half-assed as we could (of course they never admit that) and then flogged it for a short time until it broke and then we junked."

Their reputation is kinda sad, because when built correctly, they are as bulletproof and dependable as anything out there, especially in the vintage car world. My longest trip has been 15.5hrs non-stop (other than fuel) from here in southern California all the way to Olympia, Washington, arriving at 3am. Slept in the car until 6:30am, drove to a fellow 1100 owner's home where about 5 other 1100's met up and then we drove back south 100-something miles to Portland, Oregon to the All British Field Meet. Did the show all day the following day, and the next day, I drove home non-stop about 13hrs. Back when I was in college, I'd think nothing of leaving work at 10:30pm and driving 550mi back to my home town in northern California, arriving at about 7am. I'd leave a day later and drive home. When I was doing road rallies a few years ago, I would drive 320mi to get to the rally start point, stay in a hotel overnight, and the next morning start a 2 day rally. After the banquet on day 2, I'd drive the 320mi back home. When we were actively showing the car, starting when my daughter was 1mo old, we'd load the car with 2 dogs, my wife and I, a 10x10 EZ-up, cooler, luggage, infant in baby seat, lawn chairs, and all the display stuff for the show, and drive 200-300mi to each show, show the car and drive home in the same day. Our furthest show was 550mi away in Phoenix, AZ (although we didn't take pets or daughter to that one).

Needless to say, after 26 years of ownership, I've pretty much dispelled the reputation as being owner induced.

Chris, about your final drive......that is a fantastic gear ratio for the automatic!! Let's get your transmission working properly so you can enjoy the car this summer!
 
My daily driver!

Hi

My daily car is a company one , its a 2007 BMW 320d SE

It does 45mpg and goes 20,000 between services and i do about 35,000 miles a year. Its a great car but being rear wheel drive is useless in any snow deeper than 1 inch!

Richard

ricky5050++11-21-2010-04-45-16.jpg
 
but my heart sits with ..

This is my 1973 Wolseley six auto, it does about 22mpg and has power steering and and a 3 speed auto box which has just been rebuilt (ouch!!££) It still needs some tinkering but its a rare car over here now. Its the Wolseley version of the Austin/Morris 1800/2200 which is the bigger brother to the Austin America and Morris 1100 all of which were based on the original Mini.

ricky5050++11-21-2010-04-54-25.jpg
 
1973 Wolseley six auto

Lovely...

So that has the 2200 'E' series 6 cylinder engine that was developed from the 1.5 'E' series 4 cylinder that the Maxi and Australian Morris 1500 had (which was a slightly reworked 1100 and could be had with a 5spd!)....

A small item of trivia for you...the 6cyl engine was used first in the Australian made Austin Kimberly/Tasman in 1970, 2 years before the British could get their hands on one and effectively making an Australian car the first to have a transverse 6 cylinder engine...
 
Todd

I would love to have the reverse gear working fine...but I have to tell you that automatic transmission places (and I am not the least bit mechanically minded) charge about AUD$2-2500 to overhall one of these....

...so whilst it may be a smallish job to do the brake bands, and I am happy to have a quote from someone, hourly rates for mechanics in Oz are over $100....

Now knowing that we are close to parity for the USD, you can see just how expensive it can be here...
 
Chris, a decent shop should only need about 2hrs labor to adjust those bands and if you have a good local shop that works on vintage stuff, you should have no problem talking them through it. It's pretty easy.

Love the Wolseley 6. I've always loved the "Land Crabs" and especially the Ute's that were built in OZ.....those are killer!

For snow driving in that Beemer, you need the latest snow traction technology, the snow socks. Have you seen these yet? Awesome!!! Just a special fabric "bag" that slips over the tire in seconds and off you go. No clearance issues, no messing around with fasteners/tensioners, no rough ride or slow driving. They're about $75 for a pair here in the US through places like Amazon and Tirerack.
 
Um, Austinado . . .

You are reading rather more into my story of Jim's America than I wrote. The car was indeed bought and sold for little money, but at the time a used Austin of any sort (excluding Austin-Healeys) had minimal resale value in Dallas so that was a given. My father and Jim and I did not, however, get it running "by slapping it back together as half-assed as we could". It was put together right, and from what recollection I have the engine never failed again but the car had other issues. Very possibly it had been abused or negelected mechanically by a previous owner even though it was physically quite presentable. Jim spent years with his DS19 as a daily driver, and also had a good luck with the 2CV and a Renault R10, so he wasn't mechanically insensitive. I always remember that story with a chuckle as I was an auto-obsessed teen who didn't appreciate the fact that other people didn't know or care much about cars, and was totally surprised when Karen said "Is that a problem?" to my sad news that the America was only running on three cylinders! I now know that was a typical reaction for a 16 year old girl, even a smart one like Karen, but at the time I was left at a loss for words.

I do not recall any hatred for the America at all - it was so rare even when new that most people here in the US didn't have a clue that it existed. Back then this perplexed me as from an engineering design and conception standpoint it was so superior to anything from VW, Toyota, or Nissan, and yet people snapped up Beetles, Coronas, and Datsuns as fast as they could be shipped over.
 

Similar threads

D
Minivan opinions and going to be applying for my first car loan!
2 3
Replies
57
Views
58
mamapinky
M

Latest posts

Back
Top