Most Unworthy Successor...

Jon Tilson ( snipped-for-privacy@nsblueyonder.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Lynch mob volunteers, please form an orderly riot behind me.

No bickering between the 2cv and Moggy fans, please. Save it for the heretic......

SteveH ( snipped-for-privacy@italiancar.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Eh? That's not due for release for another ten years, mate.... You been snooping around the styling studio again?

Erm, yes. *Exactly* that gap.....

Richard Kilpatrick ( snipped-for-privacy@dmc12.demon.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Typo, surely? That's a bit bloody quick, even now. A google seems to suggest that's about what the current Vectra GSi will do - with a 3.2 24v v6....

That was completely out of any logical sequence, probably because it started as a way of using up odd bits that they found on their hands when they took over Chrysler UK (Rootes as was).

Ron Robinson

Having had several P6s and SD1s, they're so different it's not really possible to compare them. I'd have one of each.

An EFI SD1 with the trim quality of an early P6 would be the ideal.

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Just curious - I never drove one - but why so bad? I ran an 1800 Landcrab and appreciated its good points but struggled a bit with the awful driving position. I thought the Princess/Ambassador looked rather nice - why did it fail? On the same tack, why is the Riley Pathfinder so hated? Looked good, wonderfully old-fashioned right-hand gear change - again, never owned one, so would really like to know why they are so reviled.

Geoff MacK

Most cars seem to be better in their first incarnations. Thereafter they become bigger, fatter, don't handle too well and are cosmetically overdressed often with plastic surgery.

Bit like wives, really.

Geoff MacK (once divorced, now widowed from wife who was younger than my car...) Sorry, sounding a bit bitter now.

As I said, they canned it. The fuel injected VX2300 GLS/VX490 models (actually 490s, but the 2300GLS was much the same car) were prototyped and almost made production - several of the last VX490s with 5-speed boxes have F.I. on their logbooks - were astonishingly quick cars. They didn't, as far as I know, have the 16v head either. Vauxhall could have done that, though - FE VX490, 16 valves, injected, 5 speed box - in '78.

Wouldn't have looked good for GM if the 7 year old, 2.3 litre older car was rather quicker than the 2.0i (0-60 in a fraction over 12 seconds) Carlton range topper that replaced it. The Viceroy (2.5 I6) and Royale (2.8 I6) were almost as slow; for decent performance you needed a Monza, since the Vauxhalls were carbed.

Even then - the Ventora could muster 0-60 in 8.5 seconds, and was faster than the Capri 3.0 at the time.

Richard

That's not a Peugeot, it's a Talbot.

Richard

I always thought it was a stretched 205.

Well, not really. The 309 is a messed with 205, and was planned to replace the Talbot Horizon/smaller Alpines. Bit of bodge, erm, I mean, badge engineering. As it was the 305 looked painfully dated (although I wouldn't turn down a 305GTX saloon with a 205 GTi lump in it) and Talbot was a dead duck.

Richard

In article , Geoff Mackenzie writes

I believe the early cars earned a reputation for evil handling, so much so that they were dubbed "Riley Ditchfinder." I agree, though, that they should be highly rated; handsome cars, with the last of the true Riley engines, and a reasonable turn of speed for their era. ISTR reading that the handling problems were sorted out fairly early in the cars life; even more reason to rate them. The Two-point-Six which succeeded the Pathfinder would surely qualify for this thread, though, being far more closely related to the Wolseley 6/90 than the Pathfinder ever was.

Ah. A man who knoweth not the tin snail. Those who do respect the beast (I do still remember a conversation with Graham Walker who'd just wrapped a BMW 6 series around a hedge after being foolish enough to take a corner at the same speed as he'd got used to doing it in the 2CV I'd part-exchanged with them.. Come to that, I've got fond memories of picking off a Ferrari 326GTB just south of here in a deux cheveau. It was a wet night :)

Reporting for duty - SAH! I have the prototype Mk.2** Troll Pike to hand..

The Moggy should be given credit - when new it was probably the joint second-best small car ever built (joint with the Topolino). The best, of course, was the 2CV[1]

Parked my Scimitar next to a new Golf last sunday. I have to say I'd not realised how hideously large and bloated the now Flog was until then..

The real shock of this week, though, was the sight of a new BMW

really

ideal.

Not to mention the addition of the engineering and sophistication in design that the P6 possesed. De-dion rear suspension and anti-dive front suspension, to mention just 2 of the most radical differences between it and the SD1. Mike.

had enough

not a good

thought they

Ah, but were/are they really a hatchback. IMO that is a misnomer. Fair enough they do have a hatch, but my concept of a hatchback is one where the hatch is nearer vertical. I think the angle of the SD1 hatch makes it more correctly, a fastback. The same as earlier cars with a similar profile. Maybe a fastback hatch?. :-) Mike.

You may like to enlist VW beetle fans too in said lynch mobs. They may also moan about the lack of a successor...dunno why? Morris 8...moggy thou...mini...Metro. Vw Beetle...Golf...

C'mon guys the world moves on....

We dont all still live in mud huts so why would we want to drive a 2CV?... Or go about in a horse trap? Mind you they do go places a car cant I hear...and steer with voice activated commands too.

Note all those cars are cheap utility transport for the poor....or in other words crap... Why anyone would choose to own one or preserve it is beyond me as they are enough to put anyone off driving even. Still they do and its a free world. Now we are all rich a Smart seenms a much nicer proposition Scuse me while I pop out in the Bentley.:-)

Jonners

The new MINI(TM) for example. So big it can't possibly justify the name.

Jon Tilson (jpt snipped-for-privacy@blueyonder.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

No, thanks. Beetles are crap.

Have you?