Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[MikeEdwards]

A lovely day on Saturday at the Vauxhall Heritage Centre in Luton, and a great turnout of 13 HP Firenzas, and a lot more. Anoraks such as myself enjoyed poring over the selection of folders full of photos displayed by Andrew Duerden, with some very interesting unseen stuff in there. Roy Cook made a short speech covering the development of the car, and took questions from the floor who included Barrie Williams and Gerry Johnstone.

Anyway, some photos. Blue sky has not been added.





When did you last see this many?



Silver Bullet, Silver Aero and Colin Burton's unique Astra Quicksilver



Roy Cook cuts the Firenza cake:

[Rick]

I kept the cutting from C&SC magazine (Aug 14) that shows your car in it, do you want it or have you got one already?

RJ
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[MikeEdwards]

I wouldn't mind it if it's going spare Rick. I don't get most of the classic car mags now as I can't bear to throw them out and don't have any spare space.

One of the advantages of being one of the last to turn up on the Saturday morning for this (most had travelled Friday afternoon and stayed locally) was that I was parked in the front, so my car appeared in all sorts of stuff, even some of the official Vauxhall photos for the event (http://media.vauxhall.co.uk/media/gb/en/vauxhall/news.detail.html/content/Pages/news/gb/en/2014/vauxhall/05-28-back-to-roots.html).

[Rick]

[MikeEdwards]

Cheers Rick.

[BigJohn]

One of my favourite cars, and that's some accolade from a Mk1 Escort owner. My Old Man had a Magnum Coupe, I think the Firenza shell was much better looking than the Capri.

[Richard H]

Nice pictures Mike, and a decent turnout considering the rarity
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Richard Hughes

[MikeEdwards]

Cheers all. Amazing how much difference that fibreglass nosecone makes to the overall shape of the car. We were pleased with the turnout, 13 cars out of 200 original production and possibly 20 left roadworthy. There's still a lot around, but trying to persuade people to get them back on the road is a challenge.

[Richard H]

There was a droop snoot rotting for years on this driveway, half under a tarpaulin. It disappeared about 3-4 years ago. A long shot, but you don't know what happened to this one do you? I can't remember the reg unfortunately, and never managed to get a picture because it would have been very difficult to stop there.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5704729,0.6327669,3a,75y,234.23h,83.95t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1spf_VGfZ30K-vOa3eKbuStQ!2e0
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Richard Hughes

[MikeEdwards]

There was one under a tarp for a long time, but I don't know the exact location unfortunately. It was actually WXE266M, the original brochure car, and was rescued in 2003 (or the rescue was reported in our club magazine in 2003, at least). For a minute I thought it might be this one, but the photos have different houses and a shorter driveway.

I'll have a dig around on the forum and see if I can find anything.

[MikeEdwards]

A chance remark on a Facebook posting suggests that the Firenza left rotting on the driveway that Richard mentioned above was actually a K-plated car with a nosecone and wide arch "Old Nail" kit. It wasn't a genuine HP Firenza because of the age (that's too early), but it was at one point fitted with one of the mechanical fuel injection kits that factory used to experiment with FI on the slant four engine. It hasn't been heard of in the club for some time.