Name this car....

[pippy]

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25 minutes ago, Rona!d said:

Indeed not. But we will wait for hektor who was first.

I agree completely. It's a small point and I'm sure we would both allow Hektor to accept the win in any case but if he fancies tying it up 100% for the 'Tick and a Star' he is most welcome to do so!

Philip.

EDIT : Just to dispel any lingering doubt - and as Craig and Charlie would say;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHYjDw-Yizo

Oddly enough I was listening to the album on Saturday evening...

Edited November 29, 2021 by pippy

[pippy]

9 minutes ago, Rona!d said:

pippy, seems your message box is full or you have switched it off. Maybe check if full.

Thanks for the head's-up, Ronald, and I've cleared up some space!

Philip.

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[wlaidlaw]

I assume you are all talking about the Austin Westminster Van den Plas Princess 3 litre a tarted up Farina body A110/Wolseley 6/110. After this car, British Leyland then made a horrible error (surely not) and chose the B60R Rolls Royce military engine instead of their own Series 292 4 litre 6 cylinder petrol engine for the replacement for the 3 litre Princess. The 292 was regarded as being too agricultural for their new flagship, the Princess 4 Litre R. However it was bullet proof reliable, powerful and torquey and would happily chug on for 200,000+ miles, being originally a commercial vehicle engine, with nothing other than routine servicing. Many were in use in the older Vanden Plas Princess limousines, as wedding and funeral cars, well into the 2000's as well as in the Jensen 541/R and S cars.

Dave Jennings who worked for me as my foreman mechanic in the late 60's and early 70's, had worked as a trainer at Rolls Royce (in Crewe where I think the military engines were made) in the mid 1960's, after leaving Aston Martin. The 3.9L B60R engines were apparently assembled by apprentices in their first year at Rolls Royce and to say they were just slung together, would be an understatement. A significant number were missing bolts in various essential places like those holding the flywheel to the crankshaft. The result was that they were yet another BMC reliability disaster. If only they had stuck to the homegrown 292 and gone for the proposed independent rear suspension, which was cancelled due to cost, the car could have been a real success for them instead of another flop. It was outsold by the 3 litre and later 3.5 litre Rover P5's, the Humber Super Snipe and Jaguar Mk.10, its competitors. 

Wilson

 

Edited November 29, 2021 by wlaidlaw

[pippy]

39 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

I assume you are all talking about the Austin Westminster Van den Plas Princess 3 litre...

Hello, Wilson, and yes; the Vanden Plas Princess 3-Litre and not the Rolls-Royce engined variant.

Interesting story re; the Princess R and the issues it endured! There was much going wrong with BMC / BL around that time and this seems to have been merely one more chapter in a woeful tale.

I'll post a couple of snaps showing the whole thing. As mentioned earlier the rear-light treatment is almost the only way of differentiating the 3-Litre from the Princess R which had horizontally positioned clusters rather than the vertical fin-capping ones seen on the 3-Litre - and also the rest of its Farina-styled siblings - and so the R featured vestigial fins in place of the lamps.

These cars were assembled on the square outside Winchester Great Hall in September. There were quite a few very nice things on display...and a De Lorean as well(!) whose open gull-wing doors can be discerned reflected in the rear-passenger door of the Daimler;

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As far as the next challenge goes then it's a toss-of-a-coin between Hektor and Wilson. If one of you gentlemen would care to decide who gets the honour?

Philip.

Edited November 29, 2021 by pippy

[wlaidlaw]

I will pass the baton to Hektor, as I have nothing to post. The one thing I think they got right on the 4 litre Princess was taming the rear fins quite a bit. Whereas these sort of fins look good on a 1950's Cadillac or Chevrolet, they just looked pretentious and silly on the Farina body B and C series BMC cars.

I recall going to the launch of the Farina Wolseley 15/60 cars at a dealer in Elgin, Scotland in December 1958, while recovering from pneumonia, so not at school. The dealer was part owned by our solicitor, hence the invitation. My father was not impressed by the "flashy" new body, in comparison to the reserved and quite elegant earlier Wolseley and Riley cars (familiar as police cars in 1950's films, both the small 15/50 and large 6/90). 

Wilson

[pippy]

22 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

...My father was not impressed by the "flashy" new body, in comparison to the reserved and quite elegant earlier Wolseley and Riley cars (familiar as police cars in 1950's films, both the small 15/50 and large 6/90)...

I can only imagine his horror on the first occasion he was confronted by a Vauxhall PA Cresta with its decidedly Mid-Atlantic styling!...

It's strange how for so many of us these cars are invariably linked to The Boys in Blue; a situation modern TV series' such as the Morse/Lewis/Endeavour franchise only serve to reinforce.

Philip.

Edited November 29, 2021 by pippy

[wlaidlaw]

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In 1957 my uncle was given a Vauxhall Victor F series, as a company car, which replaced his quite nice privately onwed 1948 Sunbeam Talbot 2 litre saloon. He was proudly showing it to my father while on a visit to us but my father, who enjoyed teasing my rather po-faced uncle, pointed to the weird "upside down" front quarter light window and said: "They didn't do that on both sides did they George?"  The Cresta is fine as it is US inspired as a coherent whole, whereas the sole US features on the Farina cars are the fins. 

Wilson 

[pippy]

1 hour ago, wlaidlaw said:

...The Cresta is fine as it is US inspired as a coherent whole, whereas the sole US features on the Farina cars are the fins...

Funny about your uncle and the Victor!

As far as the Cresta goes a girlfriend bought a nicely sorted one around 1990 and I have to say I loved its character. But I love '50's Beetles and 914s so what do I know? I remember reading a line by Mr. J. Clarkson where, discussing the much-hallowed Porsche 911 he said something along the lines of;

"...If rear-engined and air-cooled is such a good idea then why isn't every other car on the market rear-engined and air-cooled?"...

...and, unfortunately, I have no answer to that question!

Philip.

[wlaidlaw]

25 minutes ago, pippy said:

"...If rear-engined and air-cooled is such a good idea then why isn't every other car on the market rear-engined and air-cooled?"...

...and, unfortunately, I have no answer to that question!

Philip.

I suppose the answer is that Porsche were the only company who persisted until the rear engine's benefits exceeded its downsides. I have had 5 of them and some were plain dangerous (1972 2.6 Kremer and 996 RUF Turbo), one was ordinary (1992 964 C2) and two were superb (997 Turbo S with Code 50 550 BHP engine, which I kept for 11 years and my current much improved, 1977 3.3L RSR). Autocar were testing the latest GT3 against a Lamborghini Huracan STO at the Angelesey circuit and both testers chose the GT3, if they were to be buying for themselves. 

Wilson

Edited November 29, 2021 by wlaidlaw

[hektor]

Good morning gentlemen and sorry for the delay but as you will appreciate being on the other side of the world and upside down I was asleep.

What I have never understood about the Princess R is its engine.  When I had a Bentley or two they were serviced by Kellow-Falkiner, the RR agent in Melbourne back then.  The Prince R was also serviced there.  There were many pleasant evenings spent at the local with the service manager and foreman discussing cars and in those days the "characters" who were their clients.  I remember a chauffeur driven Silver Wraith complete with two old ladies behind the division and so on.  Anyway to get back to the Princess R they told me it did not have a good engine and was a "pig" to tune which is what I can't understand as it was derived from the F Head B60 motor common to all the post war six cylinder cars.  Anyone got any idea as to why?  In the meantime I will find a photo.

[pippy]

17 minutes ago, hektor said:

...Anyway to get back to the Princess R they told me it did not have a good engine and was a "pig" to tune which is what I can't understand as it was derived from the F Head B60 motor common to all the post war six cylinder cars.  Anyone got any idea as to why?...

G'day, Hektor!

I cannot comment from personal experience but Wilson touched on the subject of the B60 in post #16523.

Philip.

[hektor]

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[wlaidlaw]

The B60R engine is a whole different family to the F head post war 4.9 RR/Bentley engines. It resulted from a UK war office specification of 1943 for a modular engine with 4, 6 and 8 inline cylinders for use in military vehicles. They are pretty horrible engines to work on. They were designed for maximum torque not power, for heavy vehicle use. I have worked on the B40 in an Austin Champ 1/4 ton 4x4 and the B60 in a Ferret Armoured car. The design philosophy appeared to be: Never fix something with one bolt/stud, when you can use 6 smaller ones. The spindly head bolts, where there are a myriad of them, are prone to stretching and head gasket failures. The cylinder heads were prone to warping and cracking around the valve seats and the blocks around the exhaust valve seats. Most of these problems have now been sorted by increasing the pressure in the cooling system and my brother has B80 and  B81 engines in a pair of Vintage Racing Green 3/8 Bentley specials. These have been tuned with 4 x 2" SU carburettors and the one I was driving in South Africa (B80 straight 8 engine) was a lot better than I expected and sounded wonderful. My wife's godfather owned the prototype Bentley Mulliner Continental Convertible with a B81 engine, known as Scalded Cat #2 (#1 was I think, a Bentley R type saloon with a B80 engine). Rolls Royce decided not to use this engine to replace the 4.9 six cylinder as it was too rough with distinct crankshaft torsional vibration periods in the middle of the user range. Vintage Racing Green seem to have cured this issue with a viscous silicone fluid crankshaft damper, a technology not available to RR in the 1950's. Torsional vibration problems were common to many straight eight engines and Alfa Romeo cured the problem by making their engine two four cylinder engines joined in the middle where the camshaft and supercharger drives were taken from. 

Wilson

Edited November 29, 2021 by wlaidlaw

[hektor]

Thank-you Wilson. You are an encyclopaedia.

[hektor]

6 minutes ago, wlaidlaw said:

The design philosophy appeared to be: Never fix something with one bolt/stud, when you can use 6 smaller ones.

That concept started with Henry Royce.  I assume you are familiar with the rear axle and particularly the differential of a 40/50.

[wlaidlaw]

I know the puzzle car well, having sat behind it for many miles on a early car rally, in our 1909 London to Edinburgh Silver Ghost, so I will leave it to others to name. 

Wilson

[hektor]

Thoughtful Wilson.  How about a photo of the Ghost some time.

[wlaidlaw]

James,

Your wish is my command. This is a lovely car to drive as it weighs so much less than most Ghosts with its narrow and minimalist aluminium body. We had to remove the well based wheels and tyres after we got it and put back the correct beaded edge wheels and tyres. The steering is not designed to work with low pressure well based tyres, otherwise it was near perfect

Wilson

 

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[hektor]

Thank-you Wilson.

As there have not been any suggestions to the last mystery car, see if this helps:

 

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Hallo,

Look here: Interesting Leica gear

[stuny]

Wilson -

The cars on either side of the Ghost look very interesting.  May we see them?