MOTOR-BLOG from Coventry

As you’ve probably all heard by now, our wonderful Festival of Motoring has been cancelled due to bad weather. This is especially bad as I was entered in it again this year and it also puts pay to the saying - ‘it never rains on the Shakespeare run’, because up until this year, it hasn’t.

I’m sure some smart alec will pipe up now with a ‘I think you’ll find it did rain last year, we had 0.00001mm of precipitation that day…’ (there’s always one) but genuinely, I’ve never known it to rain in all my years of attending this event. It’s usually suncream and Pimms all the way.

So this leaves me with a spare weekend. This is fine, but I can’t help feeling a little disappointed, what with another fairly lousy summer behind us. So I’m sitting here, typing this drinking tea and watching One of our Dinosaurs is missing. I have chocolate and crisps in the flat, and may just crack open that bottle of cider in the fridge. Twenty to five on a Saturday afternoon seems like a reasonable time to get started on the sherbert.

I’m due to attempt a rescue on my 1958 Austin A55 Cambridge tommorrow, but this will be a premliminary attempt - I’m going to free up the brakes so it will roll come towing time. To that end, i’m going to have to buy a trolley jack tommorrow morning, plus copious amounts of Duck oil…

I’m also going to take my spare from the Vitesse to see if it will fit. My plan is thus: to put the wheels and tyres from the Vitesse onto the Austin so it will roll easily (the Austin’s tyres are withered and flat, and I don’t want to go buying new ones if I don’t have to!). Basically, I’m feeling pretty excited about it, and am looking forward to having a Coventry based winter project to play with.

Things have been moving forward with the 2000 estate (known as the mighty estate). A new rad recore from the ever-helpful and classic friendly J and J radiators Coventry means that it doesn’t leak anymore, and a new Pacet fan and thermostat kit from SVC (Staffordshire Vehicle Components - www.s-v-c.co.uk) means that overheating shouldn’t ever be a problem. I’ve also got some NPG waterless coolant from Rustbuster (www.rust.co.uk) so the new rad shouldn’t get rusted up again.

So things have been going well - except - with my unexpected extra time this weekend, I’ve been looking at the dreaded eBay. There is a rather nice Avon Acclaim with tax and MoT for just £495 buy it now, or best offers. This is very tempting… Also there is a TR7 with long MoT and tax for buy it now £795. Bloody hell. Ok, so it’s a FHC (which I prefer) but it’s still no money when you think about it.

Plus it has had a five speed box conversion, and an uprated rear axle and appears to be as rust free as a good TR7 should be. If that isn’t a TR8 conversion in the making, then I don’t know what is. As I happen to own a 3.5 Range Rover with LPG, alarm bells are ringing…

I’m not saying I’m technically savvy enough to attempt such a conversion myself, but in reality it shouldn’t be that hard, and it has certainly been done many times before and I’d give anything a bash. This is all crazy talk though - I must get the Saab fixed first and recover the Cambridge. I’ll be welding up the 2000 next week too…

The fun continues…

Yes I know it may seem crazy to travel almost 300 miles round trip to go to a classic car show, but hey, that’s what lifes all about isn’t it? I jumped in Susan (with repaired gearbox - see staff car sagas in the upcoming October 08 issue of Practical Classics) and headed on my merry way.

Now I’m not one usually to praise the hellish road that can be the A14, but first thing on a Sunday morning it isn’t all that bad. So with a four speed 1596cc Vitesse at my disposal and a large straight empty path of tarmac ahead of me, I thought I would see what she could do.

Now I’m not recommending that anyone ever breaks the speed limit, but eh, what the hell - no-one was around and it was perfect conditions. Having taken a Triumph Acclaim (manufacturers claimed top speed 92 mph) to over a hundred on the de-restricted autobahns of er, France, I was keen to beat Triumph’s claim of 89 MPH top speed for the Vit 6.

Mission accomplished. I have no idea of how fast I was actually going officer, as Susan’s speedo gives what can be best described as an approximate indication of velocity between two given speeds - i.e. ‘How fast are we going Neil?’ Answer? ‘ Well between 55 and 75 mph according to the speedo.’ You get the picture.

Anyhow, obviously I didn’t maintain such heady speeds for long. This is beacuse of many reasons. Firstly, the rapidly rising temp gauge, secondly, the obvious danger to my personal health and thirdly, speeding tickets and all of that boring legal stuff that the constabulary seem to be so interested in these days.  

So what have I learnt from this experience? Well not much really, except that Triumphs PR men were obviously gentlemen, or blind, or not very good at their jobs. While every other manufacturers at the time my Vitesse was built were giving wildly innaccurate claims about their products (Jaguar, I’m looking at you. 150 mph out of a standard production E-Type? I don’t think so…), those lovely folks at Fletchampstead Highway were being all coy about the performance of their cars.

Oh and one more thing - the 1600cc Triumph straight six sounds great when you get it over 5500 RPM. Grin!

The Boston Classic car show was good too - if you’re around the area for the next one - or if you’re not like me - I can heartily recommend it. Roll on next year…

As I’m sitting here writing this the rain outside is coming down so hard that it’s making little bubbles as it hits the ground. Then it’s sunny again for 10 minutes. Then it pours again. No offence, but rather than sitting here and typing this, I’d much prefer to be at Hatton Country world attending the Club Triumph National day.

Not only am I a member of Club Triumph, Hatton is only about 25 minutes drive from here. However, it is teeming down, the National is outdoors on a field and it finishes in two and a half hours - so should I stay in? Or should I attend?

I wanted to be there this morning, but it is my future Mother in Laws’ Birthday today, and we’ve just come back from a meal out with Helen and her family. Very nice it was too - but now I feel a bit full and desire a couple of glasses of Red whilst watching the Wimbledon final.

So perhaps I won’t go. I’m not sure if there will be many people still there after all of this rain anyway, and the Vitesse leaks like, well, like a Triumph in the rain, and my legs always get wet in these conditions. Before you all start calling me a lightweight though, here’s something to think about. Since Susan passed her MoT last Saturday, I’ve been to three car shows in it, driven it to work, Met the Saudi Arabian Ambassador in it, burnt two tanks of fuel and put over 300 miles on the clock…

So no, I’ve decided to stay in, drink wine with my gorgeous girlfriend, and watch the tennis. Who knows - if the match finishes quickly enough, she might even allow me to watch the GB Grand Prix too before I have to do the washing up. So come on Federer, or Nadal, or whoever - just finish the game quick so I can watch the racing!

Yep we was there, if you’ll excuse the poor english. The Auto Italia Magazine Italian car shows are always a great affair, but this one really was tops. Why? Well because unlike last time, we actually went in an Italian car. I say we, I mean myself and Jim, our Italian car corespondent.

The show is also good as it is at Stanford Hall - a great venue, and not far from the greatest city in all of Britain. Well Coventry, but you get the idea. So with this show on the doorstep, Jim fired up the Monte and piloted it to his first show in his dream car. I followed on in his everyday car, an Alfa GT JTD. Yes it may be modern, but I actually like it a lot, it’s very stylish and it’s true what they say - driving an Alfa really is a special experience.

The attendence was cracking too - perhaps because the public were show starved last year with all the poor weather we had? Perhaps. I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Top Gear were doing one of their adventure pieces and driving three Alfas to enter in the concours. Shock horror - some broke down and they kept bashing into each other…

I’m sure when they edit it all together it’ll be very amusing, but it did make kind of a mockery of the concours - and people were quite disrespectful to the ‘proper’ cars entered - some of them sitting on very rare top condition motors to watch the filming. Were these people really car fans? I suspect not - a real petrol head wouldn’t sit on and risk damaging a car at a show. No, a lot of these people were celebrity chasers…      

Still, it brought the punters in, and the car selection were great. The many Ferrari’s in attendence left me cold (as they always do) and why do the owners all insist on wearing red Ferrari branded T Shirts to match their cars? I’ll keep my opinions to myself on THAT one I can tell you, but an ISO Griffo? Yes please. Maserati Khamsin? Yup, I’ll have one. Alfa Romeo Montreal? Well, if you insist…

Also present was the Lea Francis club with a fine display of fine Coventry built cars to round the day off. Oh, and Jim was interviewed by Jeremy Clarkson and James May about his Lancia Monte Carlo, so a good day was had by all, and Clarkson was quite nice about Jims car, so that won’t make it into the show then…