Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

He had a battleship grey one with grey velour interior and grey plastic.

It was quite grey.

a grey Vauxhall Carlton

All it needed was a Lotus badge slapped on the side to flip the reputation.

To counter all the "my parent's car was shit" chat, first car I got to drive was my dad's Capri 2.8i.

Into a hedge?

Into a hedge?

Their natural habitat.

Dad car engage!

Yes, his did have a vinyl roof

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^i saw animmaculate one of these in kings langley on thursday. same colour, roof & wheels

/csb

On a beach thankfully!

neil:

it even has the right number plate for a merc..

Think of the possibilities!!!!!

Hah, crap dadmobiles, my collection. Austin 1100, Austin 1300 which was sold for house deposit, 1100 mini which with a prophetic nod to @Dammit died of subframitis. Finally, the Maxi in babyshit mustard, gear change like stirring rocks in a bucket, my first car!

Yes. That was amazing.

Normally it's all water under the bridge, but you could feel the awks over the air waves.

It's a shame because the 7G is very good, they've beefed it up now I think to cope with the high torque AMG models.

Scooby-Doo vibes.

Was it a euro spec or Uk?

We had the QV, and it was interesting. Horrible at low speeds and parking.

Or the older ones of shit cars we have owned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000lz6n

BBC R4 The Reunion British Leyland

Have you owned one?

Think we had one that was 7-8 years old one owner and full dealers service history. Cills on both sides and floor pan rusty. It was beige....

It started well:
My dad had a red Mk1 Escort 1300GT, followed by a blue Misubishi Colt Galant 2000DX.
Both are sought after these days.
Then it all went downhill for a bit when the Colt's reliability made him buy more Japanese cars and we had to suffer a Toyota Corolla 1600 DL followed by the next model Toyota Corolla 1300.

Getting over this blip he recovered well, with a black Citroen BX 19GTi, and he got promoted into company car territory around that time so my mum's red Fiat Uno 55 was sold and the Citroen was accompanied by a white Peugeot 405 SRi.

They were replaced by a 'Morello Cherry' (i.e. dark red/brown) Citroen ZX Volcane 1.9 which I hated and a red Rover 416GTi which I loved, then a dark green Citroen Xantia VSX and a British racing green Rover 620Si which looked lovely but was rather sparsely equipped.

After I left home and he retired he bought dull stuff like Nissan Terranos, and inexplicably, a Transit camper van.

Now he lives in Oz and drives a Holden Commodore 50th Anniversary.

Well that led to some extra reading, I always just assumed that automatics had some form of automated clutch.

Are you on a retainer from the “visit Romania” tourist board department?

My old man built his own kit car: A ginetta tora which used a Hilman Hunter as its donor.
He loved it: We were less keen with the homemade back seats and chipboard that dug into the back of your legs on long journeys.
It looked something like this

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I found some pictures!

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At least that has 4 spoke Revos. Giving some real Matra Ranchero vibes

Some do, look up the cvt 'box. Some auto boxes are manual boxes with hydraulic gear change mechanism.

Cycliste's father built a car when Cycliste was a child using, I think, a Triumph GT6 chassis and running gear. He then built a bodyshell out of wood, a 2+2 cabriolet kind of thing, and the interior and dashboard. It was called the Delarbre. Ho ho ho.