Classic cars forum & vehicle restoration.

[Rick]

Looking back, what project cars do you remember spotting as a youth that, if you'd had the facilities/time/money, you should really have rescued, one way or another? Let's keep this to the years prior to passing your test and becoming a driver.

Within a couple of miles of where I grew up, I knew of 3 Lotus Elans from the 1960s. One was a couple of roads away, the paint had been part-stripped but otherwise it was "as parked". I've a feeling that the son of the homeowners may have been in the armed services, hence his lack of progress with the Elan. It was certainly parked in the garden for many a year and I was often tempted to go knocking at the door.

Another mile or so away, there was a garden and in it was another classic Elan, alongside an Elan +2. Again this was in the 1980s, during my cycling days.

Our next door neighbour had a Mk1 Consul in her drive. It had belonged to her brother who died a few years earlier. In about 1985 she sold it to someone for £48 - this for a running car.

RJ
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[Old Wrench]

[Rick]

[baconsdozen]

I wish I'd somehow been able to hang on to my dads Austin 16. He bought it when I was thirteen and it was first registered/made (can't remember which) on the day I was born.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).

[Ellis]

There was an elderly gentleman who lived 100 yards from my home and he had a Ford Prefect 100e which he had bought new in 1957. Two tone in blue and cream.

He passed away and in 1973 his daughter had sold his house to a local businessman who wanted to convert it into a shop. My late father offered to buy the Prefect for me if I passed my A level exams and go to university. It had been in the garage since 1969 unused.

An 18 year with a 1950's Ford Prefect? No way.

I needed my bottom smacking didn't I?
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Starting Handle Expert

1964 Jaguar Mark 2 3.4 litre
1962 Land Rover Series 2a 88"
2002 BMW M3 E46 Cabriolet

[lowdrag]

A Riley Pathfinder that I knew in a barn not far from me. I can still smell the interior and loved to sit in it.

[BigJohn]

As a sixteen year old when out on my pushbike in the summer holidays I found a complete, with a pile of spares, Austin Heavy 12 in a barn. I told the owner I would come back and buy it in 2 days, Saturday afternoon. I convinced my dad to take me up and he would bankroll it. We returned to find it had gone for scrap that morning!!!
It still hurts over 40yrs on.

[Peter_L]

I was about 16. On the housing estate a guy had a Lotus Elan. Something went wrong with the engine and he worked on it, kerbside. The story goes that he dismantled the engine and put all the small parts in a cardboard box. At some point the box vanished. Weeks later it was moved into the front yard and 2 years later, when I got my first Mini, I know it was still there, but minus wheels. Then one day it was gone.

[Bitumen Boy]

It was a fairly smart example, and I suspect it went to a good home in the end, but when I was 16/17 and cycling round the Vale of Berkeley, I lusted after a Humber Sceptre that was parked up at Sharpness Docks with a "for sale" notice in the windscreen. It probably would have been a better bet than the cheap but terminally knackered old Mini that I ended up with

[Old Wrench]

I used to travel around quite a bit in Essex, when I left the City (shock horrors from parent, relatives etc) however I wanted to become engaged with things car. Managed to secure a local job as a trainee HGV salesman and was given an almost rural virgin territory.

There was an old wooden weatherboard filling station with a large plot besides: on which reposed Bentley sports cars from the 1920s and slightly later. Invictas, Aston Martins. etc. Year: 1960.

No one wanted them then very much and they were peanuts.

One day I was on showroom duty - 1961 - and a guy called in, the scion of a local bakery family with his Jaguar XK120 Roadster. He was going to buy a new Vauxhall Victor Estate (What??) and the local distributers had offered him peanuts in P/X. yet it had an almost brand new Jag works recon engine; price?

What was fun was the guy ran the Jag with a "C" license on the Windscreen: for er um delivery of goods; nice tax scam.

£120. I was then earning circa £12-14 with commission. Mother refused to allow me to keep it at home (two large basically unused garages)........

Guy P/X'd a Jaguar MKV, which was going to be traded out; again, peanuts.

Fast forward to 1966. I was working for Ford Europe and wanted something much more interesting than my new (teabreak!) GT Cortina which suffered endless problems...

In Basildon, Essex, a young plant hire guy was rapidly expanding and had no time; he was offering a Jaguar XK150 Drophead SE, white black hide, chrome wires, quite nice nick, but the engine was in bits, all degreased and had been rebored, crank gound plus all the new bits (pistons, crank bearings, oil pump gaskets, timing chains) impressively laid out on a couple of benches) for which he wanted the princely sum of.............£125.

I could go on; I won't as I am feeling rather sick already.
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Well, apart from that, did you enjoy the play, Mrs Lincoln?

[roverdriver]

I was told of a 'Brass Radiatored' Ford. Cycled several miles to see the car on the property of an elderly lady, a Mrs Cole.

"Yes," she said, "the car is over in this shed."

It took me quite a while with mattock and shovel to clear the earth from in front of the shed, and when the doors opened it revealed this-



Not a brass radiator car at all (pre 1916) but a 1927 nickel radiator one. It had only about 4,000 miles on the odometer, but Mrs Cole could not sell it to me.
"We had a chap working on the farm and the car belongs to him," she said. "He went off to Melbourne one day in 1929 and hasn't yet come back for his car. I've still got his last week's wages that he has to collect too!"

That was in 1961. By 1964, I found that Mrs Cole had died, and the car had been sold in spite of the 'actual' owner never having come back for it.
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Dane- roverdriver but not a Viking.

[JonV2]

I remember being a youth of 6-7 and spending time at a neighbours farm where I used to muck around with a similar aged urchin.
At the back of one of the sheds was a collection of old damaged cars, and we used to pretend to drive them; bouncing around on the front seats and trying to turn the steering wheels.

One of the cars was a big square shaped thing with this funny cartoon on the front guards. the rear was all smashed up, and the wheels were missing, but it was still my favorite...



I went back years later but it was long gone...
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Jon
1950 MkV Jaguar Saloon (On the Road)
1968 MGB
1959 XK150

[Richard H]

Three. An early Metro that had been PX'd to a local Ford dealership, up for sale for £20! Unfortunately I was 14 at the time and had no money.
And when I was 16 I came across a very early MK1 Vauxhall Carlton in a scrapyard. It was one of the "shovelnose" front ones that are extremely rare. Unfortunately it had been registered as scrapped with the DVLA so couldn't be sold on. Such a shame, but I am on the lookout for another one of that shape!
My dad also had a very low mileage, mint one owner Montego estate when I was about 12 that ended up getting run into the ground by the subsequent owners and eventually scrapped. That was another tragedy.

Not quite in the league as most of you but unfortunately I was born too late to remember the joys of Model T's for £20 and so on
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Richard Hughes

[goneps]

[baconsdozen]

When I was just a teenager a pal living on the east coast had an old Standard in a shed. It had been his late fathers and left there a long time ago,old cars were then worth next to nothing and the nearest scrap yard was twenty miles away.One day we got it running and drove it round the fields,the seats were as rotten as the rest of the car but we still parked it round the front of the shed and placed a large "Taxi" sign in the window. Insurance and licence formalities were of interest only to adults we thought and just obstacles to the spirit of free enterprise.
Our first 'customer' was the local bobby who confiscated out 'taxis' keys and ordered it to be locked up in the garage by my mates mum,but he was quite impressed by our efforts to get the thing going and let us off with a 'fizzer'.
Only a few years ago I met up with my pal,now a person of considerable importance and respectability (well,to him anyway) he made it abundantly clear he did not want reminding of this episode.
I think,possibly,this little incident is what encouraged a lifetimes interest in cars and machinery,also and more recently via my ex pal it taught me a bit more about people.
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Thirty years selling imperial hand tools for old machinery(Now happily retired).