Commonplace Rarities

I saw a Mark I Cavalier the other day.

It made me smile.

 

Not because I ever owned one.

 

Or even knew someone who owned one.

 

Possibly because it reminded me of my childhood.

 

This story in The Telegraph got me thinking about cars from that era.  Not for the first time, but today's post will be a bit more Hegarty-ish.

 

Hegarty are an insurance company that seem to specialise in classic cars but also produce a magazine for classic car enthusiasts.  I always thought Hegarty were American.  I was right.  They usually have an article at the weekend on the Fox News car page listing 5 or 10 classics in some context.  But they also have a British arm.

 

Lead story at this time is "London to Lisbon in Little George", the story of the triennial (happens every three years) London to Lisbon Rally organized by the Historic Endurance Rallying Organisation (HERO) with Hagerty International as both sponsor and competitor in a barn-found 1930 Austin Ulster (Little George).  The article is interesting but feels like it was written by a Year 7 student doing a "What I did in the Summer Holidays" essay.  He must have been a bit behind with his homework too because the Rally happened in Spring 2013.

 

Anyway, as The Telegraph article points out, Hegarty are also sponsoring The Festival of the Unexceptional, subtitled, "Concours de l'ordinaire" inviting you to "Celebrate Your Mundane Classic".  A car show for once mass-produced cars that you wouldn't look twice at twenty years ago but are now virtually disappeared from our roads.

 

I would love to go but it's just too far away.

 

Probably not welcome would be the Top Gear Team. 

Is The Jaguar an Endangered Species?

Well, it doesn't appear in the list of 20 most endangered.

The BBC and The Telegraph both pointed me at the Honest John site today where this story can be found.

I must admit that I got a bit distracted by the adverts to the right...

where two different men seem to own the same wallet with the same picture of the same car.

But I digress.

The story looks at the survival rates of mass-produced British cars particularly from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

The car that seems to be faring the worst is the Austin Allegro...

...with 642,340 built and 291 remaining in the UK, for a total of 0.0453% left.

The BBC report concentrates on the 1980s and is particularly worried about survival rates of cars from that decade.  It is quite scathing about the Scrappage Scheme of a few years back and, speaking as someone who didn't get to take advantage of it, I wholeheartedly agree.

This got me thinking about the car I owned from that decade, my 1980 Triumph Dolomite 1500HL in vomit yellow.  The Honest John site lets you look up just about any car right up to modern ones so I checked out The Dolomite and found some nice charts and, basically some good news:

In December 2007, there were 2,373 registered

By December 2011, 2,159 of those were left

On average, 53 were lost each year, or 2.3%

At that rate, it will take 29 years until half of those left today are lost

I guess that once a car reaches a certain age, people will look after them.

I then got distracted by Top 20: Fastest disappearing cars from UK roads.  This list contains a few non-surprises like Daewoos and Fiats, one fairly surprising entry - the Vauxhall Cavalier and car I actually don't remember - the Sao Penza.

In case you're wondering, Sao Penza. Population in 2007: 13, population in 2011: 3, for 23.08% of '07 cars remaining.

I'll alert David Attenborough.

The Americans Are Interested in Vauxhall

Or are they?

Most of the American sites I follow are very interested in the Vauxhall Cascada - they are even showing photos of right-hand-drive cars with British Number Plates.

Although the Google images that stood out for me when I searched were this one of the Cascada's early predecessor, the Vauxhall Cavalier Convertible:

and this one apparently of a Singer Cascada:

I remember Singer cars from my youth but don't remember one that pretty - actually - I'll take that back - the later (1970s) Singer Rapiers were nice. Singer were part of the Rootes group who eventually found themselves under the ownership of PSA Peugeot-Citroen.

But I have digressed somewhat. Or have I?

The reason that America is so interested in this Vauxhall is that it may well get re-badged as a Buick Regal over there. Here is the Fox News story on it.

The Buick Regal, of course, should not be confused with the Reliant Regal:

Vauxhall, or as it is known in the rest of the World, Opel, is GM's loss-making, European arm - hence the interest in the Cascada being the new Regal soft-top. The GM accountants, however, are more interested in the loss-making part of that sentence - and a possible solution has been mooted this week. This Autocar story covers it quite well. It talks of a possible merger between Vauxhall-Opel & Peugeot-Citroen although GM would only own 30% of the new organisation.

I don't like the sound of this - it sounds more like a take-over and given the model-range overlap would probably lead to some factory closures - and probably not in France.

The article states that "According to Automotive News Europe, this tentative plan is said to have been one of a number of ideas being considered by the management teams of PSA and GM, including selling Opel outright to PSA or GM buying PSA’s automotive division"

I guess it will all come down to whether or not the Americans are interested in Vauxhall.