Re: Talbot Horizon

dont be so rude it must be worth at least £35.01

It won't increase in value until there's a collector demand for it which could be some time yet. Cars in general are worth very little now - a mate was selling a pretty good N-reg Vectra with 78000 on the clock and could only get £500 for it - and although some classics hold their value, it's stretching the point to call a Horizon a classic. But, the Morris Minor hasn't always been a classic (or has it?) and recently I've seen clubs for Allegros, Marinas and all sorts of stuff that would have been junk a few years ago.

Mike.

Schimerak waffled on in a quite bewildering manner to produce...

In alll seriousness, to someone that wants it, it's probably worth £500 - £600, maybe even more. The problem is finding that someone. Owners club? ( Is there one?)

To anyone else, £35 is being generous. The Horizon may have been car of the year, but they were never marvellous machines.

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car of the year... LOL look at history and see what happend to cars that were votes car of the year

thanks for your views guys I think I 'll just drive it as a spare car for a bit and see what happens

I was once lent a Talbot Solara for a day while my own car was having theft damage repaired. People kept stopping next to me at the traffic lights and saying "Oi, mate, you know your caravan's fallen off?"

The Morris Minor, like the Morris 8 will never will never be a classic just an old car. Any old car that is in runing order is work preserving and looking after the crunch is when is an old car worth restoring ? I shout "fekking eejot - get a life" when I read of somebody rebuilding a true basket case Austin Shearline or Vauxhall Wyvern. The Horizion was just a "me too product" Polo copy if anything a step backward from the Simca 1100 which was a ground breaking product. However if offered an immaculate fwd Alpine 1500 (but not a Solarra) I might be very tempted.

The Horizon was one of the first attempts at a "world car" by the Chrysler empire - it was built in Europe and also in the USA where it was sold as the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon - initially with a Volkswagen-derived engine.

[Sadly we didn't get in Europe the turbocharged 2.2-litre Carroll-Shelby-Enhanced 'GLH' versions which enjoyed a brief popularity in the USA as a sort-of home-grown alternative to the VW Rabbit [Golf] GTi - apparently the torque-steer on these was frightening!]

The Euro-Horizon/Alpine/Solara was blighted by the truly horrible Simca engine whose rocker-shaft wore at a frightening rate - the engines sounded like a bag of nails after very short mileages.

IMHO Simca/Chrysler-Europe's last decent car was the old

1301/1501 RWD Simcas and the Avenger: the CHrysler 180/ 2-litre could have been a nice car if they'd done like they did in Australia and offered a six-cylinder or V8 version [and sorted out the fatigue-fractures in the front chassis legs].

I also rather liked the V6 Talbot Tagora - but then again I find cars-with-definite-edges to be aesthetically more appealing than the "round blob" designs of the 80s and

90s.

Unlike the Chevette it wasn't designed as a world car it was adopted by Chysler US as a pannick measure to gain some kind of small car xpertise -- Chrysler Europe was never part of the Chryler master plan. -- They robbed Chrysler Europe of any fwd car design expertise they could before dusposal.

The performance depended to a large extent on which versio of the engine was fitted --- the models with twinchoke Weber carbs were quite quick -- The Solarras were nearly all french Solex carb equiped and weren't great performers.

Chrysler-USA had done the "small euro-import" thing before though - the Hillman Avenger was sold in the USA in the

1970s as the Plymouth Cricket. People from Chrysler-USA were quite closely involved in developing the Avenger (which was the last basically-British product - shame they decided to build it at Linwood rather than Coventry - I guess they saw it as something to fill the production lines when the Imp was dropped]

S'funny - I had two Solaras (1981 and 1983), both 1.6 and *both* had the twin choke weber. For someone who'd just passed his driving test they were quick - easily cuffed mates in their minis, escorts etc. Wasn't it the 1.4 and 1.5 that had the Solex thingy? Book BHP on both Solaras was 90bhp - quite respectable for the displacment, even now.

Aaah, those heady Talbot days....always fancied the Tagora myself, but then I'm a sucker for cars that fit into they "who were they going to sell that to?" market.

Arguably better than the Scirocco I'm breaking (see Scirocco and metal fatigue thread) at the old towing game! ;-)

DocDelete waffled on in a quite bewildering manner to produce...

My dad was a salesman for a Peugeot - Talbot main agent at the time of the Tagora / Alpine / Solara / Horizon. IIRC the Solara 1.6 was quite quick, the Alpine was the first european car with a trip computer as well.

As for Tagoras, I don't think I've seen one of them since about 1986.

I always fancied a Peugeot 604 myself. Hmm..

Nothing wrong with the Linwood plant, major y problem with Chrysler UK was it was used as a dumping ground for US managers who had caused problems in US Chrysler plants.

The Hunter assembly moved to Linwood at the end of 1969, the Avenger in

1972 the bodies always having been produced at Linwood - the Imp was still around until the end of 77. The Avenger shell was designed from the start to fit on either Hunter or Imp body pallets. The main reason was to avoid shipping bodies in white from one end of the country to the other -- which had a a disasterous effect costs on the the quality of Rapier and Arrow estates which were the only two UK models not built on the Linwood line. The other reason was Coventry was actually busy building putting together CKD Arrow range kits for Iran making a lot of money but most of it went directly to Chrysler US.

Sorry, but the Avenger was made in Coventry, not Linwood, unless they shifted production towards the end of its life to make way for the Alpine to be made at Ryton?

There was a classic auction a couple of years ago where someone ( in Birmingham I think ) who bought 1960s and later cars he thought were classics, included a Tagora with about 5k on the clock. I sem to remember at the time, one of the classic Mags took the mick a bit and mentioned that there are fewer than 10 Tagoras left in the UK. Always liked them myself too.

What I did have, which no-one has mentioned, ( as well as 3 different Alpines - both 1500 & 1600 - the LUXURY model with POWER STEERING) was a Rancho. This was also based on a stretched Simca 1100 floorpan. Took 6 of us ( 3 adults, 3 children) from Scotland to St Tropez & back in summer 1982. Went like a ( tappety ) dream, cruising at 80mph. This was really Matra's precursor of the original european people carriers and only when Peugeot took over Chrysler Europe did Matra go to Renault as part of the deal. Otherwise the Espace ( and presumably Megane Scenic) would have been Peugeots!

ken

"Chris Bolus" wrote

Small, no, not as I recall - it was a Sierra-sized hatchback. Underpowered, yes - I was used to a 1.6i Orion and that was waaaay quicker. The Solara got up to 30 quite well, but from there to 60 you needed a calendar rather than a stopwatch.

Very popular in north Wales for some reason. I used to do 40,000 a year around there on business in the 80s. Whenever I came up behind a slow-moving line of traffic 30 cars long, it was always caused by one of two things. It was either Farmer Jones pedalling his John Deere along at 4 miles a fortnight, or it was some bloke in a Talbot Solara pulling a caravan. Always. Really.

The other reason was Coventry was actually busy

...And the Iranians are still making the Hunter today...OK, they were 2 months ago when i was at the factory there. Made with a lot of Peugeot-derived bits now, though

Surely that credit goes to the original Fiat Multipla ?