"The good old days?" Many years BC (before Corrado

[craigowl 0]

My picture was taken at the Prestwick (Scotland) airshow in 1972.

 

It shows a veteran Avro Lancaster bomber (4 Rolls Royce engines) with a gallery of cars of the time looking on.

 

Rather poignantly a mixture of European makes are on view, ("we are all friends now")including about four Germans at the right and the original Mini at the extreme left.

 

Our first ever new car, an Opel Manta 1.6s - is 2nd from the right. It was one of those cars you regret selling on, for years afterwards. It cost £1450 on the road, including underseal applied on request by the supplying garage. There was no good rust protection whatsoever in those days. I ended up making my own wheel arch inserts after scooping out handfuls of mud from behind the headlights. I first read about the inserts in an advert for them in Practical Motorist or Car Mechanics. Needless to say they were a Swedish product - our industry was not in favour of giving the working man a car that would not rot away as quickly as possible. Many vehicles in those days were held together by paint, plastic padding and the rustbugs holding hands. You could easily poke your finger thro the rust below the paint on the top of the wing of many 3-year old British cars. Our previous car - a 1966 Austin 1100 - even collapsed on the tyre jack in 1969 as its rotten sill disintegrated at that age!

 

Anyway, guys, dont take the build quality of today's cars for granted (particularly our Cs) - it was a long hard and exasperating wait for ordinary drivers to get the benefits of the revolution.

 

Indeed, on my death bed I will not be saying

"I wish I had spent more time carrying out pointless and endless rust treatments on cars I have owned!",

 

but rather

 

"I wish I had spent more time croozing the rural roads of the UK in my Corrado!!!"

 

"Enjoy" folks, but take care.

[vr6storm 0]

must say.........I just Love Manta A's 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) 8) damn sexy 70's coupe