I’m not sure of the percentage, but I have read about the problem of defining originality in a vintage car being determined (by vintage car clubs or asociations in Australia) by there still being a certain % of original parts remaining, which was from memory a fair bit less than 50%. This apparently has led to a…

One of our cats (a cantankerous 16 year old Balinese princess - “The Empress Poffertje”, also known as Pikelet, or more recently Pickle) requires half a tablet twice a day for a thyroid problem. Having gone through the fun of administering tablets to cats before, we were lucky enough to find a 100% effective and easy…

In my first car (MKII Cortina) I fitted a nice solution to the problem of being tailgated by someone with their high beams on - a pair of 400W spotlights on the parcel shelf pointing out the back window!

280C wagons ( and the earlier 240C and 260C wagons) also had an electric roll-down side window on the left side of the luggage area, so you could load shopping from the kerb when parallel parked, without having to open the tailgate. It’s more obvious on the 280C than the earlier models since the left window is split…

The Nissan Z Series engines were eight plug in most passenger vehicles, but a lot of the commercial applications used 4 plug heads. It was to some extent a development of the L Series, with a nearly identical block.

The sign and the gantry it’s mounted on are less than a year old, as that section of freeway has recently been widened. The news report was saying the authorities did not know why it failed, but it was immediately obvious to anyone watching the news footage that the small struts with the square mounting plate you can…

At one point I had so many cars even now I’m not actually 100% certain how many I had - I was sharing a house with 2 other car nuts, both of them had 2 cars each, and all the rest crammed into every corner of the yard were mine. I think there were about 30-35 in total.

At one point I had so many cars even now I’m not actually 100% certain how many I had - I was sharing a house with 2 other car nuts, both of them had 2 cars each, and all the rest crammed into every corner of the yard were mine. I think there were about 30-35 in total.

This might be only relevant to an Australian reader, but the Ford BA Fairlane Ghia.

This might be only relevant to an Australian reader, but the Ford BA Fairlane Ghia.

The Holden six in a Bedford van was a 186 cu in straight six, not a V6. Transit vans had a V4 in Europe I believe, not sure what other options were available. In Australia Transits had a Ford straight six. Other slightly earlier Australian Bedfords had a 214 cu in English GM straight six (I’ve got one in a small…

To my mind it can be a restoration even if the end result is not completely original. The ‘restoration’ part to my mind really refers to the idea of doing all the work ‘properly’ with the intent of ending up with a car you can keep forever if you want, including a thorough rebuild of the shell, removing all the rust…

My parents had a 1976 VW bus, which I drove a fair bit once I got my licence. I have also found a Fiat 900 van at a wreckers and sat in the driver’s seat, and while I’m not exactly small (6'1"), I suspect even Jason would struggle to get comfortable behind the wheel, since the roof was pressing my head down between my…

Mazda R100 - simple yet sporty.

A bit of trivia - the original styling for the Valiant sedan had the little windows in the C pillar in the style used on the wagon (wide bit at top) rather than the shape that eventually made it to production.

Want a Valiant of that era that is even more out of the ordinary?

Peter Brock Marlboro Commodore - the orange/red was almost fluorescent in bright sun, and it stood out in a sea of other cars whose livery seemed much ‘busier’ and less ‘pure’.

Wow. Now I know where the weird 2 door mini-Monaro shaped oddity with a GTS badge came from that I found in a wrecking yard here in Melbourne (not Florida, the other one) in the early 90s. Over the years there seems to have been a steady small trickle of cars privately imported from South Africa to Australia, some as…

I nearly killed myself and my best friend by falling asleep at the wheel. Had been out all night getting up to random mischief behind the wheel and was heading home on a country freeway at 4 am. Coming down a long downhill run into a long sweeping right hand turn, I remember being woken up by the steering wheel…

I remember the pressurised reservoir in my parent’s 1976 Microbus, especially the time the hose ruptured inside the steering column, sprayed water everywhere and helped cause the failure of the indicator stalk switch contacts. By that stage the Bus wasn’t worth much, (although it was a somewhat rare 2 litre auto…