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Been seeing healy,s austins jags from the 60s and early 70s going for crazy money. What I recall from my youth these cars were worthless. Had a friend that had a austin healy vert after a year it was dumped for a bug he got 2 months of driving out of it and 8 months of break downs. mg's were no better. Jags are so good they convert them to 350 chevy engines. Just puzzled.
Trouble is, they're pretty crap, and most of them were scrapped back in the day for being rusty crap, so now they're rare pretty crap, which some people will pay big bucks for.
Been seeing healy,s austins jags from the 60s and early 70s going for crazy money. What I recall from my youth these cars were worthless.
The same thing was said about musclecars and 69 Camaros in my youth.
Originally Posted by 72 cutlass455
Had a friend that had a austin healy vert after a year it was dumped for a bug he got 2 months of driving out of it and 8 months of break downs. mg's were no better. Jags are so good they convert them to 350 chevy engines. Just puzzled.
Lucas electrics aside, a Jag is actually a pretty decent car IF you know how to service it and service it correctly. Lazy-*** Americans looking for a status symbol couldn't/wouldn't do that, so Jags got a reputation for unreliability when the real problem was their owners didn't know how to take care of them and wouldn't pay the Jag tech to do it, because the corner gas station was sure to be unable to do anything more than an oil change. The same can be said for almost any British or European car from that time period.
We're seeing the same mentality starting to creep into old car world- "It's unreliable! Gotta update the engine/trans/whatever so it'll work just like my new appliance!"
Bull ****. The cars were reliable almost to a fault when they were contemporary and people drove them millions of miles on their original drivetrains. And now they gotta have a Chevy/GM 350 and all the bells and whistles to be reliable? Ain't buyin' it. Oil leaks and tinkering are part of the great attraction of owning and maintaining one.
If you gotta have all that to enjoy an old car, you don't need to have one. Period. You want a modern car, go buy one.
The same thing was said about musclecars and 69 Camaros in my youth.
Lucas electrics aside, a Jag is actually a pretty decent car IF you know how to service it and service it correctly. Lazy-*** Americans looking for a status symbol couldn't/wouldn't do that, so Jags got a reputation for unreliability when the real problem was their owners didn't know how to take care of them and wouldn't pay the Jag tech to do it, because the corner gas station was sure to be unable to do anything more than an oil change. The same can be said for almost any British or European car from that time period.
We're seeing the same mentality starting to creep into old car world- "It's unreliable! Gotta update the engine/trans/whatever so it'll work just like my new appliance!"
Bull ****. The cars were reliable almost to a fault when they were contemporary and people drove them millions of miles on their original drivetrains. And now they gotta have a Chevy/GM 350 and all the bells and whistles to be reliable? Ain't buyin' it. Oil leaks and tinkering are part of the great attraction of owning and maintaining one.
If you gotta have all that to enjoy an old car, you don't need to have one. Period. You want a modern car, go buy one.
I've owned and 66 Austin Healey 3000, 67 XK-E and a 2000+ [Can't remeber wifes car] Vandempas
They are beautiful cars but IMHO have some serious design flaws.
The Healey has the distributor down so low, that any mud puddle you cross will drown it out. You're sitting right next to the transmission and you feet are up againist the engine therefore in the summer,They're hot as HELL.
The E type IMHO is the most beautiful production can ever made.But Every time you get in it, You've got a 50/50 chance of it starting.
Turn key and listen. If you don't hear the fuel pump going click, click, click turn off key, open trunk, remove shoe and bang fuel pump with shoe. Repeat until car starts.
How the Brits won the Battle of Britian flying Spitfires with Lucas electric systems will forever remain a mystery to me.
Wasn't Lucas "The Prince of Darkness" Girling the ones that had 3 settings? Off, Dim & Flicker
Anyone remember the Stirling roadster from the late 80's/early 90's? Neat little cars, but they used Lucas electrics & honda brakes. If they had only gone the other way around, they might have stayed in business a little longer.
I tried to find some information on them online, but these cars are such orphans now, that information is truly scarce. Couldn't even locate a decent photo.
Wasn't Lucas "The Prince of Darkness" Girling the ones that had 3 settings? Off, Dim & Flicker
Anyone remember the Stirling roadster from the late 80's/early 90's? Neat little cars, but they used Lucas electrics & honda brakes. If they had only gone the other way around, they might have stayed in business a little longer.
I tried to find some information on them online, but these cars are such orphans now, that information is truly scarce. Couldn't even locate a decent photo.
To each his own. If that is what somebody wants to spend their money on so be it. You look at the old Jaguars & Porsches and see the power they got out of these smaller engines and they were doing something right. Old Jags I like, old Porsches I don't.
I remember watching an action once when a Hemi Cuda convertible sold for over $1M. The commentator said that if he had a million he wouldn't spedn it on that. Opinions are like azzholes. Everyone has one.
The British Car industry was entering its terminal decline in the late '60s/early '70s.
A combination of awesomely incompetent management and an indifferent workforce with outdated or underdeveloped new designs was something it never properly recovered from.
The Jaguar XJ6 had the makings of a great car (despite its engine dating back to 1948) but its dismal build quality always let it down.
The MGB could be built from a 1950s parts bin.
Most European cars of the time weren't that great either, Mercedes, Volvo and Saab were better than most, but a lot more expensive than similar cars from other makers. How many of you knew that early Saab 99 models had a British Triumph engine?.
Volkswagen came close to the brink as its air cooled rear engined cars were hopelessly out of date by then, like the Model T Ford in the '20s perhaps. They bought out Auto Union (Audi) and came up with the Golf (Rabbit) which saved the company and have gone from strength to strength since then.
The French goverment bailed out both Renault and Peugeot/Citroen and by the early '80s they were making decent cars again.
Fiat and the other Italian makers were making cars guaranteed to rust very quickly, even by the standards of the time, and they made British electric systems seem bombproof by comparisome. Now they own Chrysler, how times change.
Rust was an enormous problem for most cars then, Mercedes, Volvo and Saab were a little better, they just had a big problem with it.
When the Japanese started marketing cars in Britain they were derided as dull and uninspiring cars, however they didn't break down nearly as often as European cars. They were no better at resisting rust though.
The few American cars in Britain at the time also rusted just as badly, the separate chassis design meant they resisted rust better, but when the sheet metal rusted out the normally went to the junkyards as new panels were very hard to obtain.
Perhaps it is unfair to compare British and European cars of the time present in North America with domestic offerings, they weren't really designed to cope with long distance high speed cruising on your highways.
It's fair to say American cars weren't suited to Europes narrow twisting roads either, their handling and brakes weren't designed to cope with our roads of the time.
Of course there were plenty of exeptions to these rules on both sides and nowadays the differences are becoming less distinct, our cars have gotten bigger as our roads have improved, yours are getting smaller as gas gets more expensive.
I wonder how American cars stack up against British and European cars of the same era, did you have plenty of repair shops kept busy fixing breakdowns between scheduled maintenance just as we did?.
There are hardly any British cars of the time left now, the unlovely and unloved cars of the time are nearly all long gone to the crusher. Any that are left have had their faults fixed (or dismissed as "character") and either escaped the rust bug or have been restored.
They have a rarity and nostalgia value now just like an Edsel or - dare I say it - a 1969 Oldsmobile.
Roger.
Last edited by rustyroger; November 10th, 2011 at 09:28 AM.
Opinions are like a-holes in that no one really wants to see or hear the other guy's.
Guy want to pay a lot for whatever car he wants, I say God bless him for having the cash.
Guy wants to put whatever engine he wants in his car, I say God bless him too.
Guy tells me me he doesn't approve of what I'm doing cuz I don't share his own narrow point of view, I say who give's a sh*t.
Me, I'm not dissin on anybody.
In my youth I fell in love with a 63 Jag and several Triumph motorcycles and all the quirks embedded within. I enjoyed the whole experience. Call me crazy!
Can anyone name a British car that has made high JD Powers ranking?
How about used car recomendation? from C.R.?
Car that require extra servicing to stay on the road can be and should be labeled unreliable.
I love certain euro cars, as I have 2 Volvo's in the garage.
I had a MGB GT once, cool looking car, tractor engine and all. Crap for working on, not to mention the wiring. Some poor engineering on that one.
my 2cents
Last edited by nonhog; November 10th, 2011 at 12:30 PM.
Location: Hague, VA...1-1/2 hours from the year 2017
Posts: 341
Excellent post, rustyroger.
I've owned Oldses for a long time but have also had various Porsches and Alfa Romeos. Regarding European car rust, oh they sure did, but the GM stuff from back then did its share. I had a '72 Olds Cutlass Supreme in 1984 that was absolutely loaded with rust along the body sides and trunk lid.
Currently, I have a '72 442 and a '74 Alfa Romeo GTV; each offers me something the other lacks.
The 442 is loaded with neck-snapping power, big-car ride yet with decent handling, and tons of racing-type gimmickry (stripes galore, hood grilles, dual gate shifter, sport steering wheel, SS-II rims, 3.42 gears and bucket seats).
The GTV on the other hand is a fragile little car that has the typical Italian electrics (a step above Fiat at best) BUT has a durable aluminum dual overhead cam engine, five-speed with 0.8:1 fifth gear, four-wheel disc brakes, excellent bucket seats, sport mahogany steering wheel, a lot of fun in the turns, 4.55 LSD, Trans-Am Series racing heritage and 27mpg.
Both are fun cars for different reasons, both relatively easy to work on, both have most parts available for them (although the GTV is pricier), and both turn heads all the time, though for different reasons :
The British Car industry was entering its terminal decline in the late '60s/early '70s.
A combination of awesomely incompetent management and an indifferent workforce with outdated or underdeveloped new designs was something it never properly recovered from.
The Jaguar XJ6 had the makings of a great car (despite its engine dating back to 1948) but its dismal build quality always let it down.
The MGB could be built from a 1950s parts bin.
Most European cars of the time weren't that great either, Mercedes, Volvo and Saab were better than most, but a lot more expensive than similar cars from other makers. How many of you knew that early Saab 99 models had a British Triumph engine?.
Volkswagen came close to the brink as its air cooled rear engined cars were hopelessly out of date by then, like the Model T Ford in the '20s perhaps. They bought out Auto Union (Audi) and came up with the Golf (Rabbit) which saved the company and have gone from strength to strength since then.
The French goverment bailed out both Renault and Peugeot/Citroen and by the early '80s they were making decent cars again.
Fiat and the other Italian makers were making cars guaranteed to rust very quickly, even by the standards of the time, and they made British electric systems seem bombproof by comparisome. Now they own Chrysler, how times change.
Rust was an enormous problem for most cars then, Mercedes, Volvo and Saab were a little better, they just had a big problem with it.
When the Japanese started marketing cars in Britain they were derided as dull and uninspiring cars, however they didn't break down nearly as often as European cars. They were no better at resisting rust though.
The few American cars in Britain at the time also rusted just as badly, the separate chassis design meant they resisted rust better, but when the sheet metal rusted out the normally went to the junkyards as new panels were very hard to obtain.
Perhaps it is unfair to compare British and European cars of the time present in North America with domestic offerings, they weren't really designed to cope with long distance high speed cruising on your highways.
It's fair to say American cars weren't suited to Europes narrow twisting roads either, their handling and brakes weren't designed to cope with our roads of the time.
Of course there were plenty of exeptions to these rules on both sides and nowadays the differences are becoming less distinct, our cars have gotten bigger as our roads have improved, yours are getting smaller as gas gets more expensive.
I wonder how American cars stack up against British and European cars of the same era, did you have plenty of repair shops kept busy fixing breakdowns between scheduled maintenance just as we did?.
There are hardly any British cars of the time left now, the unlovely and unloved cars of the time are nearly all long gone to the crusher. Any that are left have had their faults fixed (or dismissed as "character") and either escaped the rust bug or have been restored.
They have a rarity and nostalgia value now just like an Edsel or - dare I say it - a 1969 Oldsmobile.
Roger.
Last edited by 72 w29 all green; November 10th, 2011 at 12:21 PM.
Reason: None
The same thing was said about musclecars and 69 Camaros in my youth.
Lucas electrics aside, a Jag is actually a pretty decent car IF you know how to service it and service it correctly. Lazy-*** Americans looking for a status symbol couldn't/wouldn't do that, so Jags got a reputation for unreliability when the real problem was their owners didn't know how to take care of them and wouldn't pay the Jag tech to do it, because the corner gas station was sure to be unable to do anything more than an oil change. The same can be said for almost any British or European car from that time period.
We're seeing the same mentality starting to creep into old car world- "It's unreliable! Gotta update the engine/trans/whatever so it'll work just like my new appliance!"
Bull ****. The cars were reliable almost to a fault when they were contemporary and people drove them millions of miles on their original drivetrains. And now they gotta have a Chevy/GM 350 and all the bells and whistles to be reliable? Ain't buyin' it. Oil leaks and tinkering are part of the great attraction of owning and maintaining one.
If you gotta have all that to enjoy an old car, you don't need to have one. Period. You want a modern car, go buy one.
My '70 911 started EVERY time, and NEVER stranded me in years of daily-driver use, it was faster than all but the fastest muscle cars, and it could outrun anything in the curves .
Sure, it didn't know how to idle and was decidedly unfriendly in heavy traffic, and I had to put the floor mats up on the seats if it was raining, so they'd stay dry, but it was very high on smiles per gallon.
Can anyone name a British car that has made high JD Powers ranking?
Believe it or not YES!, and it was a Rover!.
BBC Top Gear commisioned a series of JD Power surveys of the British market in the mid '90s.
One year the Rover 75 made it to third place, by then Honda controlled the remains of the Leyland company and it was essentially a British design built to Honda quality standards, it was too little too late to save the company though.
Jaguars also made reasonable places in the surveys, mainly because the driving experience and comfort levels compensated for indifferent reliability, although they were heaps better under Fords ownership than the earlier models. They regularly topped the polls for dealer service satisfaction, which is quite a feat for a car that didn't have top notch reliability
Makes with reliability problems normally scored low for dealer service, I think because most people got pissed at dealers unable to fix their cars properly.
The Japanese normally topped the charts in Bitain, offering a range of cars that were pleasant to drive and reliable as well. Lexus normally got the #1 spot.
I remember a comment about a Renault model; "Owners didn't enjoy the uninspiring and frequent drives to the expensive and uninterested dealers to not get their car repaired properly".
Chrysler were importing Jeep and Neon models to the UK at the time, they didn't fare very well in the surveys. The bottom of the chart was normally propped up by Fiat, Vauxhall, and Peugeot. All plagued with poor build quality issues the dealers struggled to put right.
I worked at a Vauxhall (GM UK) dealership then, I remember putting a lot of weights round Astra model exhausts which was their answer to noisy vibrations from them, It didn't work, aftermarket systems didn't give the same problem, it made me wonder why a decent system couldn't be made by the people who designed the car in the first place.
Only 9 years old? I’m sure my thoughts will be relevant!!! 😏
I have a friend who is constantly buying selling cars. He has a 10 acre farm with probably 50 cars, all for sale. Some are nice, some are really nice, and some are just parts cars. The only car he absolutely refuses to part with is a 75 Lemans, and only because it belonged to his grandfather. For the right price, anything is for sale.
He like Volkswagen cars. I personally can’t imagine paying what some people do for what appears to me is a car made entirely of compressed rust, but he does seem do ok buying/selling them. I didn’t know there were as many varieties of the Volkswagen buses, some worth big money.
I've had a few British sports cars(4 I think). I consider them as big roto hydromantic., made to disappoint but fun when they work. I raced a new 67 Midget for two years and blew three transmission and had it completely rewired, had two throw out bearings replaced which aren't really bearings at all but carbon hockey pucks. How antique can you get. I swear the British will invent something unique and new and then not improve upon it for 50 years. In my humble opinion they should be treated like a bad habit ,probably make you poor and could shorten your life. and for sure **** off your wife.
Only good thing I can think of is they got me into Miatas... Gees I sound like a bitter old man as I reread this post.......Oh well so be it....Tedd
As I was looking up a couple electrical devices of which I salvaged from one of my old Volvo 343s (essentially rebadged DAFs), I stumbled onto a site offering vintage GM parts:
Being on the road, last Sunday, a couple of classics drove by. I've captured one of them on my new dashcam. It isn't yet recording in high definition. I'll see if I can adjust it, this weekend.
Here's the MGC bagged. If I'm not mistaken, this looks like a fat bumper mounted on exports to North America version.
According to "privacy laws" here in Germany , I was legally required to erase the plate number. But, not the H at the end which stands for Historical:
Last edited by Killian_Mörder; January 30th, 2021 at 01:15 AM.
As I was looking up a couple electrical devices of which I salvaged from one of my old Volvo 343s (essentially rebadged DAFs), I stumbled onto a site offering vintage GM parts:
Does anybody know what this is for a Brit car? It looks super cool:
I believe it is a Jowett Javelin. The company went out of business in the 1950's. Their factory was taken over by International Harvester who made tractors there for a number of years. One notable feature was its water cooled flat four engine, maybe a world first in a volume production car?.
November 10th, 2011, 01:58 AM
, I was legally required to erase the plate number. But, not the H at the end which stands for Historical:
