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See Homepage. This page: Original images of Ford's post-war V8 for the British market, the Pilot.
Original transport photographs
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Ford Pilot at Christmas time, 1953.

The first V8 Pilot photo on this page is from my own collection. The Ford has several people stood alongside it, celebrating Christmas. A note on the rear of the photo confirms the date as 1953, so the Pilot was at least two years old at the time of this image.
(Please click the thumbnail to view full-size image.)
A Ford V8 Pilot

Another V8 Pilot, alongside a 1950's caravan.

Adrian sent over this second shot of a V8 Pilot. The car belonged to his parents, replacing a Vauxhall 14 as the family's tow-car. It was registered JYU 121, a series first used in 1948. Adrian takes up the story:
Ford Pilot and an old caravan
"The Vauxhall (14) expired completely and gave way to a Ford V8 Pilot (JYU 121), with which my father towed the caravan at very high speeds, sometimes to Cornwall, sometimes to South Wales. On one occasion he forgot to wind up the jockey wheel and we were followed for miles by a pall of smoke, before the tyre caught fire. My mother learned to drive in the Pilot, and my father would let her practice, with the four of us jumping on the back seat shouting, "Don't let Mummy drive!" . Quite how she ever learned I don't know."
"The Ford V8 Pilot had a built-in hydraulic jacking system and, on the one and only occasion I can remember my father doing any work on a car, I had to pump the handle under the bonnet so that the system didn't leak and squash him while he bolted the exhaust together. I must have been all of seven years old by then, and had to stand on a wooden crate to reach into the engine bay. In time even the 3.6 litre V8 succumbed to the weight of the caravan, and a Series 1 petrol Land Rover (YYB 193) replaced the Ford."
Thanks for the photo and the story! It's interesting that you should mention the hydraulic jacking system on the Pilot - some time ago, Roy emailed over a potentially very scary story about someone who was working on a Pilot, when the jacking system failed on him. The story though has an amusing twist to it, click here to read about that particular encounter.

More V8 Pilots on oldclassiccar.

Although these are the first "vintage" photos to feature Pilots on the site, mentions of this model do crop up in other sections of OCC. In addition to the workshop story mentioned above, this page features a black Pilot belonging to a site visitor, and this page in the free classifieds section, might help with sourcing parts to use when restoring a V8 Pilot.
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