Car Spotting

[broadrun96]

Old School 4x4 discount McFly edition

[joeb]

Beautiful

[joeb]

Old Jeep

[joeb]

First Crown spotting

[fieldodreams79]

Moses' Sandals. Still his work truck.....

[fieldodreams79]

Originally Posted by broadrun96

Old School 4x4 discount McFly edition

I'll be dipped

[fieldodreams79]

Originally Posted by joeb

Old Jeep

Pretty cool. There's a joke regarding My Cousin Vinny and distance here....

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by joeb

First Crown spotting

A bit different to any of the three Crowns I had in the 70s and 80s.

[Adam43]

That last one! Slammed!

[joeb]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

A bit different to any of the three Crowns I had in the 70s and 80s.


Attachment 77104

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Attachment 77106

I prefer all of the ones you had vs the new one!

I had a decent car spotting day yesterday, finished with this beaut.

[Adam43]

Picking up flowers for the wedding?

[Mike Harte]

The history behind my buying the Crowns is that in 1976 I went to my local Ford main dealer because I was after an estate which could easily pull a 24 foot caravan which my wife wanted so that she could go off for the summer with the kids.

After over an hour and a half in the showroom, I was not much nearer purchasing a Granada 3 litre estate than when I walked in. In those days, Fords, Vauxhall and probably all the major car manufacturers selling in the UK were selling the concept of creating a car to the specification that the customer wanted. You had the obvious choices such as which engine, whether manual or an automatic, but it then got really stupid. You could choose your paint colour and finish, what type of seat, what radio and even type of ariel. Oh, not forgetting what type of seat belt and down to what style of registration plate!

To top it off, of course they needed to build the car for you, but the salesman couldn't tell me when it would be ready for delivery, not even the year! So I walked out to consider my next option.

This was all local to my office, and I had told my wife that I was going to do this that day. It then so happened that she took my boys to the dentist after she picked them up from school and she had passed a Toyota dealer and she had noticed the Crown estate sat behind the front window and so she phoned me up about it.

I then called up the dealer and arranged to go and have a look at the car myself and they happily agreed to stay open about an hour after they normally closed. I duly turned up, and straight away they asked if I would like to test drive the car that evening. The exterior look of the car and the colour was exactly what I would have chosen, but inside it was far, far better than anything that Ford could have provided including air-con.

We did a deal there and then. It actually cost about two thirds of the base price of the Grenada and they gave a much better deal on the part exchange on my old Mark 3 Cortina GXL. And it ran faultlessly for about 12 years, covering about 250,000 miles just requiring normal servicing. When I bought the Crown saloon in '79, my wife took over the estate and even kept it when we divorced in 88.

As to the last one, it was just one of those models out of maybe a handful that were brought in to the UK by the importer. I know for a fact that Rolls Royce had one or two because they wanted to reverse engineer the air conditioning because it was far more sophisticated than anything else on the market, or so I believe. One of the options one could choose when driving was to have different heat or cold zones. For example, you could have different temperatures back and front or even cooler or warmer in just one zone. This was partly because they actually had one air-con unit for the front and another for the rear.

There was also rumours that Ford also purchased one to examine it's technology.

[Adam43]

Brilliant story.

Just been reading up on the crown and its development. Sometimes Toyota think of a type of car and just nail it.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Adam43

Brilliant story.

Just been reading up on the crown and its development. Sometimes Toyota think of a type of car and just nail it.

A little bit more about that last Crown.

It was one of the best cars ever I've had to drive, far far superior, even now 40 years later, than the BMW 5 Series I currently run. It had a straight 6 fuel injection lump with a 4 speed auto box that had incredible torque; it would more than happily pull from about 20 mph in 4th, but at the same time it had a top speed of over 145 mph.

In 1989/90 I spent the skiing season in the Deux Alpes resort which is south of Grenoble, and every few weeks I would drive back to Blighty just to show my face in the office. Just for fun, I acted as a ski guide one of the package holiday companies, and on a changeover day I would jump in the car at the same time that the guests were leaving in the coach to go to the airport to fly back, and I invariably got back home before those guest did.

I used to love driving on the Autoroutes in France, especially the toll roads which weren't that expensive. Back then, they hardly ever had police patrols on the toll roads as they relied on the timing devices at the toll booths to automatically calculate the average speed of cars over the distance travelled. Very kindly, the always had signs prior to the booths telling one that you were approaching the last service area before the toll booth, so I would usually set the cruise control to140 mph and settle back and then pull into the last service area for a quick freshen up and coffee, etc before toddling to the nearby booth.

But even at that sort of speed, it was quite possible to carry on a reasonable conversation with a passenger, or to listen to the radio without having to have it blasting out. One anecdote that I saw in a motoring magazine back then, that when testing a straight 6 Crown, that they were able to stand up a 50p piece certainly on tickover, but I can't now recall whether the revved the engine as well.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

A little bit more about that last Crown.

It was one of the best cars ever I've had to drive, far far superior, even now 40 years later, than the BMW 5 Series I currently run. It had a straight 6 fuel injection lump with a 4 speed auto box that had incredible torque; it would more than happily pull from about 20 mph in 4th, but at the same time it had a top speed of over 145 mph.

In 1989/90 I spent the skiing season in the Deux Alpes resort which is south of Grenoble, and every few weeks I would drive back to Blighty just to show my face in the office. Just for fun, I acted as a ski guide one of the package holiday companies, and on a changeover day I would jump in the car at the same time that the guests were leaving in the coach to go to the airport to fly back, and I invariably got back home before those guest did.

I used to love driving on the Autoroutes in France, especially the toll roads which weren't that expensive. Back then, they hardly ever had police patrols on the toll roads as they relied on the timing devices at the toll booths to automatically calculate the average speed of cars over the distance travelled. Very kindly, the always had signs prior to the booths telling one that you were approaching the last service area before the toll booth, so I would usually set the cruise control to140 mph and settle back and then pull into the last service area for a quick freshen up and coffee, etc before toddling to the nearby booth.

But even at that sort of speed, it was quite possible to carry on a reasonable conversation with a passenger, or to listen to the radio without having to have it blasting out. One anecdote that I saw in a motoring magazine back then, that when testing a straight 6 Crown, that they were able to stand up a 50p piece certainly on tickover, but I can't now recall whether the revved the engine as well.

Great story Mike.
Obviously the 50p piece is a popular Toyota measurement tool (or marketing device).
I seem to remember them using one to show how smooth the Lexus V8 engine was what that came out!

[Adam43]

Another Toyota spot! This time on Eurovision! https://twitter.com/berlinflo5/statu...yWILSZ0DMY7C-g

And the band giving it the extreme William Woollard too!

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Adam43

Brilliant story.

Just been reading up on the crown and its development. Sometimes Toyota think of a type of car and just nail it.

Another thought about the Crown is that I would hazard a guess that at least 75% of all the taxis in Singapore, Hong Kong and at least Tokyo, if not the whole of Japan, were all a type of entry level model of the car during the 80s. I know that there were some in Bangkok as well as the Tuk Tuks (which were always exciting to ride around in) and I've got a feeling that there were also some in both Seoul and Tapei, but I can't say for sure because I didn't spend much time in either of those places.

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by Adam43

That last one! Slammed!

Or did the air break and they said that'll do

Teach me to catch a quick glimpse and assume busted MB suspension since I was looking at it on the phone

[broadrun96]

Originally Posted by joeb

Old Jeep

A REAL Gladiator and much better than the new one

Originally Posted by fieldodreams79

Moses' Sandals. Still his work truck.....

That truck is a VERY particular look and time. And looks damn good on the think Ford called it Sportside. Ford made 9 beautiful trucks and then 5 uglier than the last, although 10 was BAD BAD. I left high school and they fired their design team it seems

Originally Posted by fieldodreams79

I'll be dipped

I had to try to keep up and catch him in the lane next to me to get those sweet graphics cause I knew everyone would enjoy it

[joeb]

Some two-tone magic, or is it four-tone in this case?

[S griffin]

Either way it's a wonderful colour scheme and nicely shaped truck

[Gerard C]

You can find the '78 Lincoln Continental MarkV model:https://www.modelcarworld.de/fr/MCG/...CABEgJf0PD_BwE

I very much doubt the louvers on the front wings, which are probably fakes, feature a brake cooling system. As to the rear trunk, this kind of design inspired many european productions. Funnily enough, it was called "kit continental" in France and "Sportsman kit" in the UK, even the tiny Ford Anglia 105 could have one.

[joeb]

There is enough Fahrvergnügen in this picture for that guy to be given a life sentence in 38 states.

[Adam43]

Are you hiding behind that car so he doesn’t see you?

There was a van in a car park with a guy asleep. I so wanted to take a picture, but I didn’t have your PI type style.

[broadrun96]

The response in the office was