Enough horses?

Which is what most British cars and motorbikes had at the time. It was the Europeans who had high revving, short stroke engines. The RAC formula favoured the long stroke lump for tax purposes. The French fiscal horsepower favoured short stroke engines, and still does, as far as I can tell.

John Williamson gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

The French system's now solely CO2, as with the rest of Europe.

Before that, it was all horribly complicated, and varied from time to time - but hasn't included bore since 1978.

'Orribly complicated indeed.

Must keep up with changing rules.

The FNS wheel fell off on mine. The thread on the studs was no longer there. I had had A pint.

Only the bore/stroke ratio was effected by the old RAC rating. And the trend towards vastly oversquare engines was reversed by emission regs.

Column gear change? The one that used to snap off?

it was 4 speed column (with a bench seat) and never gave me any grief, I only ever encountered one zephyr 6 with a floor change, but I suppose there must have been a few and presumably (I can't remember) they had two front seats. Horrific fuel consumption was my biggest bugbear with it. I removed the engine and box and fitted a 3.4 jag lump, which was slightly better on fuel. Plus two front seats out of something or other, perhaps the jag, the worst problem I encountered was getting a working floor mounted handbrake that would pass the MoT. Stopping it was problemmatic too.

Small Indian ladies, not western Burger King customers...

This is the ambassador - the one that usually has blocks of wood retro-fitted instead of springs - it takes four including the driver. That's if you want everyone sitting down. If you don't care about elfin safety, it take up to a good dozen I guess.

I had my only crash in India in one of those, within 5 minutes of leaving the airport.

The original UK version had a bench front seat and column gear change - so could take three in the front too. The seats were probably thinner than today giving more room.

Column gear change was considered a luxury, as inspired by US models. But motar journos demanded the stick to go back on the floor.

Column changes are fine for autos, but a bit rubbish for a manual.

they were not a problem and widely used for a seriously long time pre-ww2 and up till the 60s in the uk AFAIK, but engines were softer, speeds were lower and three forward speeds was often enough. Even light commercials were column change.

Yep; Ford Thames 10/12cwt had 3-speed column change, with no synchro on

The CA Bedford of the same era was also 3-speed column change, but all- synchro, and had electric wipers. It was slightly less powerful however.

It would be interesting to see how younger drivers, brought up on fuel- injected cars with ECU control, and all the other things that make driving so much easier, would cope with something of that age.

Chris

Lift off the accelerator to see where you're going....

From the way that the local car thieves failed to get my 1991 Panda with a manual choke more than a couple of hundred yards down the hill before giving up, not too well.

Another reason to keep using the old Land Rover. Manual everything....

the Alvis station wagon my dad owned was interesting , on the steering wheel, arranged around the middle were controls for advance, mixture and throttle. It would be interesting to see a modern driver make use of those.

It really depends on the engineering. It's obviously a lot more expensive to engineer a column change well - and most weren't. But then the same applies to any gear change.

With a RWD, the gearchange can be pretty straightforward. Since the linkages can be short. With FWD, the problems become similar to a column change.

Three speeds were never enough. ;-) The small sidevalve Fords were ruined by it. It was merely a way of saving money.

Fine on a 'massive' engine with lots of torque but no power, though.

RWD with transaxle at the back.... that's a whole new problem, and I don't think anyone has made it work particularly well.