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Well done, John.  A model 810 at the Franshoek Motor Museum.  Your turn

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Sorry Stuart, can I bounce this back to you?  My photo catalogue is a mess which I haven't cleared up yet - I probably should not have responded, but couldn't resist.

 

Silly thing is I have seen two very beautiful McLarens in the last two days, but no camera with me!  I'm sure you have lots more beautiful cars in NY than I do here.  If not, I will try to get out and find something interesting in the next few days.

 

Cheers

John

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John -

 

We'll be in Auckland before long and will watch out for cars, and if lucky, perhaps you (stuart.nordheimer@opco.com).

 

Let's try this one:

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I don't know if its real or a copy (they only made 70, and James Dean died in his), but imagine driving this in Manhattan?  One sold at auction this year for abut US$5MM.  Your turn

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The 550's are lovely cars but very fragile and expensive to run. The type 547engines, with 4 gear driven cams, need a full overhaul about every 15 to 20,000 miles road use or about a tenth of that, if used for racing, which will set you back around $50,000 to $70,000. The very few folks who can rebuild these engines properly, do not sell their skills cheaply. Capricorn can supply new and somewhat more reliable 547 Type engines (modern materials and machining techniques) for a mere $140,000 or more depending on spec. When we changed from racing a Porsche 904GTS with the 4 cylinder 4 cam engine to a 904/6 (originally built as a 904/8), with a Type 906T flat 6 cylinder titanium engine, we actually found our running costs went down (slightly). 

 

Here is your next one. A much better car than you might suspect. Seen on a recent trip, near our hotel. I have a much better photo (properly in focus this time) of the exterior of the same car, the next day, when it was not pouring with rain but now parked in the middle of a field, so I did not get a better close up of the interior. The exterior looked superior to the interior, which had seen better days. 

 

Wilson

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It does look rather disreputable with the aftermarket, user installed steering wheel cover, two sets of dangling wires, terrycloth seat covers, and a faux geothermal landscape dashboard.  All the painted surfaces in the car suggest early to mid 1970s at the latest.  For some unknown reason I'm thinking French.

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It does look rather disreputable with the aftermarket, user installed steering wheel cover, two sets of dangling wires, terrycloth seat covers, and a faux geothermal landscape dashboard.  All the painted surfaces in the car suggest early to mid 1970s at the latest.  For some unknown reason I'm thinking French.

 

Not French but European. I suspect it may literally have been in the wars!

 

Wilson

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The 550 seems to be a copy. Rims too shiny, wipers too fat and some more body details. But better driving a copy wih proper brakes and a similar powerful but much more reliable engine. In modern traffic its dangerous enough to drive but with the risk somebody could hit you and ruin an untouched original these days you loose the wish to drive it.

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So many makers of this FIAT based vehicle all over the world:

 

SEAT, SOMACA, ZASTAVA, NASR, SHIGULA, ALCONI, PREMIER, TOFAS, ASIA, PIRIN etc.

 

Do we see the Neckar logo in the middle of the dashboard?

 

Could be branded as NECKAR (german FIAT-daughter Neckar Automobilwerke AG Heilbronn which had nothing to do with the maker NSU who made the Prinz, Ro 80 etc.) although the strange green does not fit to 1968, more a 1970/80s color. The simple interior and the switches design is so close to Polski Fiat, so I´d guess it´s more or less "eastern" or other less luxary made.

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Ronald, 

 

I will give it to you. It is a Zastava 1500, photographed in Mostar last week. From the state of the for sale sign at the edge of the field, I think it had been for sale for a very long time with no takers. I suspect the lurid green may be a later addition. In the outskirts of Sarajevo to where we took the train from Mostar, leaving our car parked at the hotel there, there was a large scrap yard full of bullet riddled cars, that had been stacked up as protection at the edges of trenches for protection against sniping, dug during the 1400+ day siege of Sarajevo by Federal/Serbian troops. There was little petrol available during the siege, so the cars had no other use. 

 

When Fiat offered their Fiat 1300/1500 to Zastava in the early 1960's, Zastava felt it was too fragile for Yugoslavian conditions and weather. Zastava modified the floor pan, using a heavier gauge but lower carbon steel (for increased corrosion resistance) than Fiat used, with more reinforcing corrugations. Both the suspension and engine were also modified to a more robust specification. Inevitably the ride, handling and the noted sprightliness of the Fiat engine (used as the basis of many 4 cylinder mid size racing engines from the likes of OSCA, Abarth, Stanguellini and others) were impacted. However Fiat were sufficiently impressed with the modifications that Zastava developed, that they were subsequently used in various other eastern European Fiat clones, like the Polski 125 and Lada Vaz 2101 and in other third world country Fiat-ish cars. 

 

Zastava were an armaments and military vehicle manufacturer who turned to car manufacture with the assistance of Fiat in the mid 1950's. They finally went bankrupt as recently as 2017. 

 

Wilson

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Thanks Wilson for the Zastava background. Most interesting.

 

Andreas, indeed a while. I‘m fine, the last year I was heavily active in restoring my wooden sailboat and dived deep into sailboat history like I did the last decades with Automobiles. There is SO MUCH to explore and so many stories to listen to if you have an ear for them. Good to be back, I‘ll check what I can offer as the next car this weekend.

 

Ronald

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