Two more questions for those who know vintage cars!

You seem to specialise in nitpicking. I'll explain in simple terms so that even you can't misunderstand. I accept that there is a difference between car makers who build cars on an existing chassis, and those that manufacture everything to make a complete car. I'd be a fool not to.

AFAIC they still qualify as car manufacturers, or makers. In as much as they have created something that is different from the original. Something they hope will appeal to a different type of buyer, even though it has the same chassis and mechanics as the car it's based upon..

Coach building as such was/is not the same thing at all.

Coachbuilding as done by Co's such as Hooper and Mulliner was something special. It often meant a hand crafted body, with an interior crafted to each customers particular specification. Cost was less important in most cases, than the quality of the finished product.

Hardly comparable to building a common body onto a baught in chassis, aimed at selling to the average car buyer of the day.

I don't think any one would call an Austin 7 Swallow coachbuilt, or any of the other similarly produced cars. Mike.

The original had a Coventry Climax unit.

Well you must be a fool then because you don't accept it, otherwise your message would have finished here !....

They have not built a car, they have built the body this even go for the coachworks that 'build' funeral hearses or stretched limo's, they do all sorts of wonderful things but they are still a Volvo 850 or what ever. They are not a 'Bloggs & Sons coachworks Ridgeway 3lt special'.

So it would be a Bloggs & Sons bodied Austin 7. It''s still an Austin.

Coachbuilding is coachbuilding, it a process, now days mostly the preserve of special vehicles or commercial vehicles, the vehicle still takes it's identity from the chassis and not the body.

It's a Swallow bodied Austin 7, not a Sallow 7.

Do you ever think that there could conceivably be a POV other than your own? Mike.

Somewhat earlier, MGs were simply slightly modified Morris. Then Morris mechanicals with a different body. And really continued like this throughout the time MG was MG. Should they be called MG Morris?

What you mean is, do I ever accept that others are correct because they say they are - No.

The point is, MG and Morris were basically the same company (in effect), what so you think MG stands for [rhetorical question, Dave].

In the 1930's Jensen made several cars based on Ford V8 chassis and components. As did Railton with Hudson parts. How would you class them?

Ron Robinson

Were they built completely from components or just bodies place on a ready built chassis ?

That's how they started.

Geoff MacK

Huge contention here - Swallow Sidecars, Super Sports, Soda Syphon - even Lyons would not be drawn on this. Simple answer is that no-one knows.

Geoff MacK

And just to muddy the issue further, the Swallow Doretti (sp?) a rather nice rebodied TR was linked to Walmsley, who parted from Lyons in the early days.

Geoff MacK

Ford Jensen, and Hudson Railton? :-) Mike.

By re-bodying, not building complete cars. That is the point.

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Geoff Mackenzie" saying something like:

Something Sinister.

No, that was the Third Reich (sp?) and their 'SS'....

Stunningly Sexy.

Suits Spivs.

Early post-war ones were sometimes called "Wardour Street Bentleys". A little later they were only owned by bookies, publicans and chaps with yellow waistcoats and cloth caps. Enter the 3.8 Mk 2, beloved by villains (I think the Police were running Westminsters and Wolseleys at the time). I'm not a marketing man, but what a fantastic job Jaguar have done at re-inventing and re-branding themselves.

Geoff MacK

Think you might have to thank Ford for that...

The message from "Geoff Mackenzie" contains these words:

When I was young (and ISTR I am almost exactly a contemporary of Geoff) Staffordshire Police were running Mk 2 Jags on the little bit of M6 that was open at the time. (I was chased by one returning from a pub crawl in

1963 but not on the M'way. It had been parked on the roundabout on what is now J13 but was then the southern end of the M6).

The MD of the company I was working for at the time had a Mk 3 Jag. Well that was what it said on the back. I believe it was a Mk 1 that had been upgraded to mk 2 spec.