Mystery car pix

andys120

Euro-sized, hell your Seicento would look huge next to it.

andys120

fintail

Some weird 80s Landcruiser we never saw here...pretty easy to read those badges. German plates too.

andys120

Yeah it is pretty easy to read 'em. It's an '87
LC/LJ70. We didn't get that one here. We got the larger SUV type (FJ75?).

ateixeira

I believe the Voyage/Fox were also not sharing platforms with the Polo, though to be honest I'm a lot less familiar with VW's euro cars from that era.

For a while there, Autolatina meant VW and Ford were partners. VW actually sold rebadged euro Escort hatches and 2 door notchbacks, it was just bizarre.

That fell apart and VW went solo again. I'm sure the VW heads at HQ will reign them in and force them to share the next small world car.

-juice

magnette

My Seicento is 127 inches overall, the Crosley was 137"( impressive research eh?), and its wider too - this is an SUV to me....

andys120

Wow, that Seicento is really small if it's 10"shorter than a Crosley. My guess is it's probably shorter in height but perhaps wider (the Fiat that is).

andys120

for a car of this sort>>

negative

Jaguar XJS? The top looks strange, though.

kyfdx

XJS.... I'd say that is the accessory hardtop...

Not sure why it is an unlikely location? Those were crappy cars new... and now they are cheap old crappy cars.. It seems you could find one just about anywhere..

fintail

That was some weird semi-convertible setup made in the late 80s...I want to say XJS-HSE or something like that

kyfdx

Maybe H-E? You think it might be a Hess & Eisenhardt conversion?

acura_el2000

yes, unlikely location for this car, if by that you mean, its not in a garage. then yes.

andys120

kyfdx

No idea... looks French...

fintail

Renault Dauphine ca. 1960

negative

Agreed. I think. Didn't the Dauphine have noticeable louvers (not Louvres) in the rear? (rear-engined, I guess.) I can't tell if this one has them.

andys120

Right on the money, it's a '59. Yes it was rear-engined. You can't see the louvers because of the angle of the photo, they're alongside the license plate.

Renault gave Volkswagen a bit of a race in the late 50s with it's superior comfort, ride and gas mileage. Lack of dealer support and inconsistent quality control ultimately doomed Renault's efforts in North America.

andys120

but isn't it cool?>>

stickguy

I'm bad with the years, but I'll say 1969. Looks like a mach 1 if I had to guess (and I do).

andys120

Good guess, it's a '69 Mach 1.

magnette

My Seicento is about 1" narrower than a Smart, when I said shorter I meant overall length, as I don't know how high a Crosley was,and the Fiat is only 6" longer than an old (real) Mini - I'm in a minority but I think of the current Mini as a larger car. I've never seen a Crosley, but it is a bit bigger than my car. The irony is that I'm 6'2" tall, and about 15.5 stone (215 lbs) - but then I owned several old Minis at different times, too. I just don't like carrying around half a ton of unneccessary metal just to take me to work, when a small car does the same job, with less, and uses less petrol too - it costs £0.93 a litre in London at the moment..I'd need another mortgage to run the Mustang Mach 1 in the last picture, at those prices!

magnette

The chrome bar ahead of the rear wheels is the edge of a vertical grille, which you wouldn't see from this angle. It was water cooled, with the radiator located at the front of the (rear) engine, so it was basically behind the rear seat. I think there was a sort of air-scoop underneath to get more cooling into it, but they sold loads in Africa, etc., so the basic concept must have worked. They were apparently a bit lively on slippery corners, though probably no more so than the VW.

michaellno

Ouch!

Lessee, 1 litre is .26 gallon, and .93 pound is $1.62, so that comes out to about $6.50 a gallon!

How much of that is tax?

And, don't you pay that 7 or 10 pound fee to get into downtown London each day?

magnette

It's £8 for the daily congestion zone charge, but it actually only applies to the middle of town, so my journey, which is across neighbouring suburbs is not in that area. I live within sight of a tube station, and so for going into the middle - during the week - we wouldn't use the car anyway. - it costs less on the tube, and its quicker. I have to travel around London quite a bit for my job, but again I avoid the zone if I can...
Petrol is highly taxed, about 80% goes in the government's pocket - but then free state funded health care costs money.... I'm just glad I don't smoke, they really pay tax...

michaellno

Haven't kept up with the situation, but wasn't "Red Ken" also proposing a higher surcharge for SUV's at one point?

If my calculations are correct, you are paying over $5 a gallon just in tax!

Although I suspect that if we taxed gasoline at that rate here in the states, we would all be driving Smarts, diesel powered cars or there would be a general rebellion!

andys120

magnette

1950 -52 Hotchkiss Gregoire, two door coupe - the coachbuilder for these and the cabriolet was Chapron.

magnette

There has been pressure on large SUV's, but at the moment it hasn't really taken effect. What is likely is that older trucks and buses will be taxed out of central London from next year, as there are plans for older coaches etc to be charged £100 a day to enter London - the aim of that is to reduce diesel particle pollution, as the rules for these vehicles were tightened up throughout Europe a few years ago. The actual congestion charge has freed up central London a bit during the day, although residents within the zone get a very much reduced charge annual ticket so it means that walking round central London you get to see a larger percentage of expensive, rare cars - residents of Westminster etc tend to be well-heeled, so there are some streets where you see more Rolls than Fiats or Fords...The charge doesn't apply on evenings, weekends, holidays or between Christmas and New Year.
The other thing I've noticed is that as electric vehicles and hybrids are exempt, you get quite a few of those - Toyota Prius, of course but also some peculiar little French and Italian electric cars, too. They don't have to pay road tax either if they are pure electric vehicles whereas a normal saloon over 1600cc pays £165 per year in Britain (its a bit lower for smaller cars like mine), but they also give an exemption on road tax for all vehicles made before 1973, so my MG Magnette doesn't have to pay any road tax.
How much are you paying for fuel? When we were over last, in 2002, we toured in the Southwest, around the Grand Canyon etc, and we virtually ignored fuel as a consideration on our holiday budget, because to us it seemed so cheap, but I know it is relative, and for some things we pay less here. This year I think we are going to Norway, and they pay even more for fuel than here, so we won't be renting a Winnebago!
I think even if you paid our prices you would still tend to drive bigger cars, though- you are in a large country and I wouldn't fancy a long run across Arizona in a Smart! And here many people do drive larger cars, but the average saloon is about a Ford Focus, rather than a Passat, say.

michaellno

At the moment, regular unleaded is selling for $2.12 per gallon and $2.22 for mid-grade (In Colorado, due to the high altitude, regular is 85 octane, whilst mid-grade is 87; in most of the rest of the country, it would be 87 and 89).

I do agree with you regarding the size of vehicles used -- as the distances are much shorter between major population centres in Europe, a larger car isn't quite as necessary. Or, folks take the train. In the US, larger cars are more popular for the exact reasons you cite.

UK car magazines hate the Toyota Camry, yet it is the best selling car here. However, Ford does sell a few hundred thousand Focus' here (including one to me, I might add).

magnette

You guys buy the Focus as a 4 door, more readily than here, where 90% or more are hatchbacks. The Camry wasn't as popular here because it is quite big, and it hasn't been on sale here for a few years. Toyota sell well, but mainly Yaris, Corolla and Avensis.
We take the train as a last resort in many cases, because it is expensive for inter city travel and the network doesn't go where you want - if you want to go to/from London its better, but, say, between Liverpool and Cardiff, or Southampton and Birmingham you would have a more difficult journey. Our main roads are often very congested especially here in the South East, parts of the M25 London Orbital Motorway are allegedly the busiest road in Europe, so if I go back to Wales I usually have to travel in the evening, when I can average 70 mph, whereas in the day I would never achieve that. Coming back into the London area on a Sunday night there are sometimes 20-30 mile queues, crawling along at 30mph, but its not always that bad - and of course, we have great country roads so thats ok. When we were in US we found the country roads and Interstates were great, but I couldn't cope with your town traffic, because it felt really slow, I suppose you all obey the speed limits more, or something. Probably a good thing though as you all drive on the wrong side of the road(!). Is it true you don't get roundabouts? - we didn't see any the whole time we were there.

michaellno

Ah, but I am in the minority as I own a 2.0 Zetec 5-door hatchback. We originally bought it with the intention of having my daughter drive it, but she never took to the stick shift so she drives my Saturn (cousin to your Vauxhall Vectra).

We specifically were looking for the hatchback due to its added versatility; that, plus the daughter didn't really like the looks of the sedan.

Don't know about the rest of the country, but here in Colorado there are some small roundabouts popping up in lieu of traffic signals. I know that the Vail area has a few, and there are a couple in towns close to where I live.

Funny, because in New Jersey (where I used to travel frequently on business), they made a big effort to get rid of the major roundabouts that existed in the state.

andys120

You are correct re: the Hotchkiss Gregoire. Hotchkiss was also a maker of automatic weapons and military vehicles.

andys120

imidazol97

1955 Chrysler 300.

andys120

1955 Chrysler 300.

That's correct up to a point. IIRC the correct nomenclature for the '55 is Chrysler C-300.

It was in '56 that they started the escalating sequence of letters:
330B=1956
300C=1957
300D=1958
300E=1959
300F=1960
300G=1961
300H=1962
300J=1963
300K=1964
300L=1965 (last of the 300 letter cars until the 300M of the late 90s).

Go here for more on the mighty Chrysler 300s.

And don't feel bad about forgetting the "C", the very knowledgeable folks at Fantasy Junction got it wrong in their ad and called their '55 for sale a "300C". :sick:

http://www.hemmings.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/dealers.detail/hmn_vehicle_id/22858- 0&CFID=17040543&CFTOKEN=30024044

lemko

Wonder why they skipped "I"?

gsemike

Probably because it would look like a chrysler three thousand and one.

navigator89

Might be a tough one....

fintail

Some kind of weird 80s Toyota maybe, those houses are very Aussie so it might be for that market.

ateixeira

I'll guess it's one of the variants of the 626 platform, there were many!

-juice

andys120

It lookslike a 1980's Sentra or a Mazda 323.

stickguy

the front fenders look like a late 80's 323. The back doors also remind me of a 323 for some reason, but not the taillights or trunk area.

imidazol97

C300 or 300c? You're right about the "C". (I knew that--3 lashes, wet noodle.)

I like the link from Hemmings. Some complain about plastic in cars tht doesn't meet their personal expectation in some discussions here on Edmunds; imagine how they'd complain about the _metal_ on the old dashes!!! That one had lots of knobs for injury on the metal dash.

firemanjack

Interesting...Did they invent the Hotchkiss drive...driveshafts, too? Jack

navigator89

You're quite close, it's a 1986 Toyota Corona, and yes the picture was taken in Australia.

andys120

Interesting...Did they invent the Hotchkiss drive...driveshafts, too? Jack

I don't know but then again I don't know what a Hotchkiss drive or driveshafts are. :confuse:

andys120

fintail

The badge on the Toyota gave me the biggest clue...I remember some cars where the rear badge was in that format.

The silver beauty in 5402 appears to be a Ferrari 250GT SWB ca. 1959

andys120

Yep, it's a '62, the last year for the Short Wheelbase Berlinetta.