Most Unworthy Successor...

dashboard

Snip,

The R5 was a pretty neat small car for it's time. In the UK it was very popular with lady drivers, but because the engine space intruded into the front foot well, anyone with a larger shoe size than a four would find that in right hand drive form, because there was no space between the clutch pedal and the bulkhead it was a pretty awful thing to drive for any distance. Both the R6 and R16 suffered the same problems in right hand drive forms but to lesser degrees.

My sentiments exactly.

Yes; the Lancia Dead Rat, as it was known in the Motor Trade

PJML said the 60s Imperial shared its mechanicals with the Snipe and hence had the Armstrong Siddley hemi engine, trouble was the Snipe manual gearbox wasn't up to much. The OHV series Hawk was generally a better motor, only engine problems, the engine had a truly wonderous ammount of low speed torque. The only engine troubles I ever encountered on them were burn't valves and on one car a worn crank thrust washers. In the hands of some drivers who couldn't use a column change the Hawk gearbox could suffer but as the Hawk shared its gearboxes with the Minx and Arrow it is quite easy to convert a Hawk to a floor gearchange using parts from an equivalent series of Minx or on the later square roof 4sp synchro cars a Hunter gearlever remote..

The 180 was quite nice to drive a lot nicer than the 2litre Mk3 Cortina but the reliability and build quality on the 180 was truly awful mainly due the bits the Simca factory did after it was over handed to them, I suspect it would have been much better car as it was originally designed for prioduction in Coventry with british electrics and a V6 version of the Avenger engine..

I think it *was* a Peugeot engine - wasn't the 14 one of the products of the Peugeot-Renault-Volvo joint venture where they were trying to pool engine-building. That rather dubious

90-degree V6 was the best-known (most notorious?) product, but IIRC the transverse OHC slant-four was another?

ANDREW ROBERT BREEN ( snipped-for-privacy@aber.ac.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

The 14 was more than that - under the skin, it was the same car as the

104/Samba/Visa.

The joint-venture Douvrin engine plant, near Lens, was the source of the V6 (was it really that bad?) and the alloy 2.0/2.2 four used in some CX/505/20 etc, definitely. I'm not sure about the smaller lumps, but it probably was.

Yep. The 14 was platform shared with the Visa, IIRC - a very strange beast. But looking back, compared to Renaults other offerings, it was quite advanced and modern looking.

Some people think that the Volvo 340 was based on a Renault 14!

Richard

Huh? Looks under desk and contemplates size 10 feet, recalls no problems fitting them into the front footwell and working the pedals of the original-type 5GTL I had a few years back. Only problem I ever had driving it was when the clutch cable broke and I had to drive it sans clutch, which was amusing in heavy traffic (just as well mine had a 1.4 engine as a result of some conversion work by its previous owner).

In article , ANDREW ROBERT BREEN writes

Ooo no, 'fraid I'm a purist. An 850 in good knick is about the most thrashable engine I've ever driven, and could reach some silly speeds (with drum brakes, must exciting)

Soluble, unfortunately

I quite like the twingo too

Cheers

In article , Richard H Huelin writes

Similar to the 4 - the box starts just behind the front bumper and the engine finishes by your knees - crumple zone? Don't crash it!

Friend of mine did - luckily the bulkhead was so rusty it didn't come back with the engine, which ended up between the front seats. Demolished a Rover P6 though :-)

Agreed the 14 had links with the Visa, but are you sure about the 104? Citroens version of the 104/Samba was the LN/LNA (glances outside to see one rusting quietly away)

Woof ( snipped-for-privacy@talk21.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Underneath, they're the same thing.

The LN/LNA was just a 104ZS (the swb version, like the Samba) with chevrons and (in some) the twin-pot 2cv motor. The Visa's on the lwb 104 platform, same as the 14.

Not really - the donk was common (being a PSV creation) but the 14 had an odd transverse-arm rear end which was, as far as I know, unique.

Shame the UK never got the most interesting (least uninteresting!) LN, the one with the longitudinally-mounted 602cc flat-twin. It needed some fairly fierce modifications to the LN to get it in, and IIRC the wheelbase was 10 or 15cm longer than the other models.

between

Perhaps the amount of discomfort caused depended on driving conditions. There certainly was no room to rest your foot between the clutch pedal and the bulkhead, this left two choices the preferred one (by Renault dealers) was for the driver to rest their foot on the clutch pedal, the other was to bring your leg back and rest your foot under the pedal, in heavy traffic this was pretty tiresome after a short while. The lay out was never a problem across the channel where the pedal alongside the bulkhead was meant to be kept down to the floorpan.

Apart, I think, from that very odd back suspension.

Wasn't it a Pininfarina design, body-wise? Farina were going through their banana-car phase around the time the 14 appeared, and it did have that very unusual concave sill line.

When ani fule kno it's a reshelled DAF 66 :)

There's a car you don't hear much about these days. We used to use one for hauling juke boxes and ciggie machines. A very practical vehicle, but the 3-speeders *never* seemed to have a suitable gear for the traffic conditions.

Had a Super Snipe Series III with the column change 3 speed auto (though it pulled off in second on anything but a hill start), bench seats, and power steering. Very comfy for a long run (and 23 mpg on the same run - Amiens to Cambridge holding a comfortable 80/85 most of the way - which can't be that much worse than similarly speced contemporaries). Cornering, even in 1960 was only described as adequate. Parts availability nowadays is poor.

Engine was a strange design, hemi head as mentioned earlier, with the plugs vertically mounted (like an old side valve) and twin rocker shalfs either side of the plug holes with the longest pushrods you have ever seen :o)

Andy Dingley realised it was Fri, 30 Jan 2004

00:43:30 +0000 and decided it was time to write:

Lancia is very much alive, though, and making classically-shaped cars.

See

In message , Ben Mack writes

The Twingo is a lovely looking little car. Don't know why they were never on sale in the UK.