Cars of Coolhaven

I can appreciate a nice Pony on the streets, but whoah! This rusty old horse could use some good old-fashioned TLC…

The Mach 1 designation makes this the performance version of the Ford Mustang, but if this is still the case remains to be seen… I know little of the Mach 1 versus the ‘normal’ Mustang, so all comments are welcome!

When you spot an old Bentley, you have to take some pictures of it. Sure, the weather is grey and wet, obviously the car isn’t parked in the best spot to take pictures, and hey… let’s snap away with my crummy cameraphone! Unfortunately, the nice Canon Eos 40D is in the shop, so what are the alternatives Anyway, we have ourselves a S3 Bentley and I quite like it. And how nice to see a car like this not used as a wedding car, but still in use as a commuter’s car!

The last Bentley to be built on a separate chassis, the S3 was really no more than a facelifted S2. Bentleys were now becoming the poor relative in the Rolls-Royce family, bodies and engines were no different from the Rolls-Royce versions. In comparison to the S2, there were minor differences; most were aesthetics appearing near the front of the vehicle. The front panels had been restyled, twin headlamps had been fitted, and a smaller bumper was used. The interior’s split bench seat was now replaced by individual seats.

The S3s interior now had individual front seats in place of the split bench seat found in the S1/S2, most cars had air conditioning, electric windows and front seat belts. The S3 was the final iteration of the S-Series. It was replaced by the T-Type, a derivative of the Rolls-Royce Shadow. During the 1970s many S-Types were converted to “Rolls-Royces”, due to their perceived added status.

Some pics from my crummy camera on my phone. Unfortunately, that was the best I could do besides drawing this car in pencil Oh well, maybe it is not unbecoming for this ’small’ US car. I actually like the looks of this Corvair, but if the sources are to be believed, this is not the best automobile ever to roll out of the Chevie facturies.

This Chevrolet Corvair was considered a compact car in its days. The US customers started to take a shine to the new small, fuel-efficient European imports from manufacturers like Volkswagen and Renault. Why drive a big boat if you can drive a sporty little hotshot? Unfortunately for Chevrolet, the imported small cars were designed by people who already had designed small cars since the beginning of the century, whilst Chevrolet more or less did it as a marketing gimmick.  As a result, the car wasn’t really good, and more important for Chevrolet: way to expensive to produce giving its max price tag. Nonetheless the Corvair sold quite well, and its sporty handling eventually inspired the development of the Ford Mustang.

What I like about the Corvair is the wide varieties of body versions, there even was a small van based on this car! And of course, if you get into hot water because Ralph Nader writes a book on how immensly unsafe the car is, don’t you kinda want to like the car anyway? I know I do…

A very nice article on the car can be found here and I just couldn’t resist adding this vintage Corvair TV commercial as well. Enjoy!

I have experienced some trouble with this site. After moving from one host to another, suddenly I was unable to upload pictures. Some CHMod-ding later, I still was unable to upload pictures, but some friendly fucker was able to take over the site. Amongst other things, he thought it funny to disable Akismet, the little plugin that blocks spam comments, and he made it very hard for me to enter my own files.

Luckily, having just moved the site, I had a crisp and clean back-up, so I threw the whole site out and started again. And we are back! And it seems that I have overcome the upload problems as well. Let’s hope the joy lasts….

Oh, and please: just don’t hack this site, will you? It’s a nuisance, and what good does it do?

The Opel Speedster is a nice car, albeit still an Opel. They are nice to drive, affordable, and not half bad looking once you get used to the boxy back. These cars aren’t that difficult to find for a spot, and basically I have never bothered. Let’s face it, at the end of the day it is still an Opel, isn’t it? In the UK, all Opels drive around with the steering wheel on the other side of the car, and they have fitted a badge which says ‘Vauxhall’ instead of Opel. Still, nothing really exciting…

Why oh why then a post about this car? Well, this car was parked here in Dordrecht, which is a city in the Netherlands. Therefore, it should have Opel badges. Surely, you say, somebody struck a deal and imported a Vauxhall from the UK. Fair enough, but this is a left-hand drive car… Granted, no hot car news or a stop-the-presses scoop, but the car intriged me and that is basically what car spotting is all about. So, pictures!

Well spotted, a new image gallery due to some upgrades in Wordpress. I am not too sure if it’s an improvement but what are you gonna do?!

The Speedster/VX220 is internally basically a Lotus. It is built in the Lotus factory in Hethel in the UK, shares the chassis with the Elise and has an internal product code ‘Lotus 116′. With its low weight, mid-mounted engine, high torsional rigidity, and ample horsepower, the car is extremely quick and agile. Maybe the Vauxhall/Opel badge won’t turn many heads, many motoring journalists claim that the Speedster/VX220 is better than he close cousin the Elise.

Let’s embed some old Top Gear material on the Elise-Speedster-VX220, if Google Video will let me…

I have driven none of the mentioned cars, and would love to hear some comments on the Elise versus Speedster. Anybody?

I am no big fan of the DAF motoring brand, but since I live in the Netherlands I am bound to run into the little buggers every now and then. In my mind, these cars are in the same category of ’slow, boring and boxy’ as old cheap Volvo’s. What a pleasant surprise to see this funny little DAF 44! It almost looks nice! What a charming little eyebrows over the headlights, I like it. For a DAF, that is LOL

Under the bonnet with the fancy eyebrows we are still talking DAF though. A whopping two cylinder 0.8 liter engine delivers no less than 34 bhp, obviously the car is equipped with the famous Variomatic transmission and … ehm. Well, is is a DAF. The car is designed by Giovanni Michelotti, who drew some nice Triumphs as well. Unfortunately, after this DAF 44 he ended up designing the boring Volvo 66…

It has been a while, but finally I spot myself something new, sporty and nice! The lines on this GranTurismo are great, and if the rumours are correct the convertible version is going to be a looker as well. Aah, something to look out for! This GranTurismo, officially designer as a long-distance cruiser, is equipped with a very nice V8 engine that doesn’t particularly make it slow… nor particularly fast, for that matter. But who cares?! Officially it does a whopping 285 km/h top speed, how many owners would have driven it that fast? It is a car to look at, a car to enjoy driving without the ride being too hairy to handle. Great car!

Some cars just speak to you, and this is one of those cars. Normally, the big American boats mainly look kinda ridiculous in my eyes, but this Newport is nice. Obviously it is the small car in the Chrysler range of the time… that explains something. It is always amazing to see the specs on old US cars of the era, enormous V8 engines which generated a very poor power output for its size. Oh well, they are nice to look at

What I wouldn’t give to see a first generation Chrysler Newport two-seater roadster! Obviously it doesn’t help that there are like six of them ever made. Pic from Flickr:

41 Chrysler Newport dual cowl phaeton
Originally uploaded by carphoto

Is that a cool  Chrysler or what?!