I've been brought up with British cars my entire life (I rebuilt my first pair of SUs before I could drive). I get the impression that here in the US, variable-jet carburettors are considered a bit of a black art, whereas the fixed-jet carbs that are common here are considered well-understood (although I suppose that…

It has been said that the names of the Alfa 75 (and the contemporaneous Alfa 33) were marks out of 100.

The problem that I had when I lived in NZ was that I'd slow down for EVERY Falcon or Commodore. Of course, same goes for Crown Vics over here in the US.

That and the hidden camera vans. I've since moved to the US, and still instinctively slam on the brakes when I see a van by the side of the road.

I wouldn't be surprised. I have heard rumours that, during the Bush administration, the US Consulate in Auckland, NZ had the 'Jesusland' map on the wall in the back office.

I love the front-end treatment – there are certainly some influences from the Civics of old in there.

I used to have a Citroën BX 16v – even without the turbo, the 16v XU9 was a great engine. I remember reading somewhere that they kept on using it in their rally cars for quite some time after their production cars had moved on to the XU10.

The Peugeot/Citroën XU10 (which I presume the engine was, given that it was a 2.0 with 136bhp) is a pretty tough engine, though – the related (and legendarily tough in their own right) XUD Diesel engines apparently share many components with the smaller XU9.

Ha. That was admittedly one of the reasons why I'm glad that my project-car-hell Beetle has been off the road since the mid '70s. Flaps, 'stat and vacuum advance all intact and in working order! Now just to get the rest of it going.

Oh yes, I've seen that. I suspect that the door incident was fabricated, though. They may have had an appalling reputation for build quality, but the bodyshell itself was pretty strong – it was the trim that tended to fall off.

Ha. My (dearly missed) SD1 had very similar plates - the previous owner's doing, but I went with it.

Ha! Having owned one, I can say yes. The doors-falling-off issue may have been slightly exaggerated, but the interior trim panels did have a tendency to fall off if you looked at them funny.

I've always had a soft spot for SD1s. When I was a kid, my uncle had a 2600 in metallic blue, and I thought that it was the coolest car ever.

The Triumph sixes weren't that bad, were they? They certainly weren't powerhouses, but the impression that I had from mine (I had a 2500 and a 2000) were that they were thoroughly civilised and fairly reliable.

Two of mine are still in the family, each with over 320,000km on the clock.

I had several Triumph 2000s and 2500s, and they're magnificent cars. That said, I never ran into the 'massive overheating' mentioned into the article – the Triumph straight-six was fairly free of major flaws. Is it being confused with the similar looking Stag, which had a notoriously overheating-prone 3 litre V8?

Mmmmm. Yes. Very yes.

It does depend on placement, though. My Citroën BX had the most ridiculous arrangement of window controls that I have ever seen. The driver's window control was in a relatively normal position, just above the door grip. However, it had four buttons – two for normal up/down, and two for auto up/down. The 'remote'…

My VW Scirocco gets put away in the winter due to its ability to turn into rust at the slightest provocation, and persistent cold-running issues that make it a challenging proposition for winter driving.

I still use mine on a regular basis. I've never quite found an adequate replacement for its superb built-in calendar, and no compact device has even come close to being as good for typing. It's remarkable what they could do with some pretty limited (although very clever) hardware.