Average Cars From The 70's & 80's

davidjwest

skiddlydiddly wrote: »

We had some of the old sheds mentioned in the thread:

Morris Marina(engine set on fire on motorway)
Austin Princess
Vauxhall Viva

Coincidentally my first two cars were a Marina and a Princess and my dad had a Viva.

I never had any problems at all with the Marina or Princess.

Then got a Nova and had no trouble with that either, apart from the cam belt going at around 120k

The old cars did rust badly but in my experience they were reliable.

davidjwest

vax2002 wrote: »

1986 Opel Manta GTE, it was built like a german tank, 130,000 miles of trouble free, quiet smooth motoring, never broke down once, never spent a penny other than servicing , unlike the car I replaced it with a Citroen BX, The AA had a nick name for it they knew it so well.

Actually, German tanks weren't very reliable, the Russian ones were better.

mikey72

birkee wrote: »

Just as an aside, back around 1972, I used to work with Nigel Mansell.
For some reason I always seemed to get out of the car park first, and the first couple of miles or so were spent with him trying to get round me in my Austin Cambridge, and him driving his old green Austin 1100.
(No, I wasn't racing him, just the way it used to happen.)

Yes, those old Cambridges were a bit big and slow moving on a narrow road.
I liked them though.

Dippypud

Austin 7 (1936), Austin A50 (1955), Reliant Regal (1963), Morris Mini (1966)...

what makes you think I never had any money in the 1970s & 80s

jase1

My dad had some proper junk in this period -- Escort, Viva, Pug 204 (the single most unreliable pile of junk I've ever witnessed), Talbot Horizon (the second most unreliable pile of junk I've ever seen), Fiat 128 (this was a good car in fairness, but he wrapped it round a lamp-post). None of them were all that old but he always seemed to have more trouble than the fathers of my German/Japanese/Swedish owning friends.

Never did learn -- he has a Laguna now!

iolanthe07

most obscure was a Wartburg something or other.

The Wartburg Knight. This really was a terrible car, made in the German Democratic(!) Republic. It had a two stroke engine that was banned around 1980 because of its high exhaust emissions.

BoxerfanUK

My first car was a Mk4 Ford Zephyr V6 (2.5 litre) in Blue Mink metallic colour. I bought it off my dad when he bought something else, reg no MEB 541G (1969). It was a lovely car to be honest, built like a tank, 3 speed column gear change and big bench seats front and back (very handy ) I can also bore you with a story about it.

Being 17 and all that, I wanted it to go a bit faster, so I bought a twin choke Weber carb conversion kit which gave it some extra oomph. When I went to eventually sell the car I decided to remove the carb kit, but because it had an adaptor plate to convert the twin choke carb to the single hole inlet manifold on the engine I dropped one of the bloody nuts down the hole of the inlet which meant I had to remove the inlet manifold as I couldn't retrieve the nut!!! :mad:

Now, here's where it got complicated. Anyone that knows the old Essex V6 engine will know that the inlet manifold is on top between the two banks of cylinders, and to remove it meant removing the ditributor. No problem I thought, took the distibutor out, but what I didn't realise was that attached to the bottom of the distibutor was a drive shaft which drove the oil pump located in the engine sump, so yes, you guessed it, as I withdrew the distributor the bloody drive shaft fell out and dropped into the sump with a clang!! Aaaaarh :mad: Now we have to remove the sump to get the drive shaft out. Luckily for me, I just managed to squeeze my hand into the sump after loosening all the nuts. Moral of the story... don't mess about too much with cars lol.

After that things got better and I bought a 1970 Capri 1600 GTXLR in Amber Gold metallic, reg no CGH 643H, I loved that car. That eventually made way for another Capri, but this time a 3 litre V6 model, a 1973 3000GXL in red, reg' no MME 726L, wow that thing went well for the time. After that things went downhill fast as I decided to get married, so my beloved Capri had to go. :embarasse

bigjl

I had an Austin A40 aswell but initially thought that cars from the '60s were too old.

Mine was a Black over Red with the fold down boot and fold up rear window, rather than the one where you just folded down the bootlid. It was a 1966 mk2 Farina. DSB 464 D was the reg if i remember correctly, had to sell it after my first year in Uni, then got the Skoda Estelle and then my "flying brown" Allegro.

mikey72

Well, I've read the list, and apart from the fact the Japanese cars were wonderful, did anybody actually own one in the 70's or 80's?
All I remember were rot boxes that were an oddity to see around occasionally, and the Honda Accord made in the Leyland factory.

Remember the Volvo 66, haven't seen those for decades.
Peugeot 205, some of those are still going strong today.

The japanese had the motorbike market then though, Honda SS50 was the moped I had.

bigjl

Even today the only Jap cars in my home town tend to be Subarus, mainly as the local tractor dealer sold them years ago.

Jap motorbikes are plentiful, but for some reason Jap cars, and german cars to be honest are thought of as some kind of oddity.

Can't say anybody in my home town has had any major issues with buying what is available locally.

Though the local Ford dealer closed down, there is now a Vauxhall dealer, along with the Peugeot dealer and a Fiat dealer, the Renault dealer had two showrooms, they closed the local one and made the one 60 miles away bigger.

Believe it or not many drive that far for a service. And they get a courtesy car!