One of BMC s finest
- Thread starter Alan Slade
- Start date
Prefer the black z4
Morris Oxford?
No, it's the Wolseley version the posh one back in the day.
It's the Wolseley 15/60 version of the Austin Cambridge / Morris Oxford / MG Magnette / Riley 4/68 These were the days when they built one car and sold it under every badge they owned. A real barge of a car. Heavy, under-powered, poor brakes, wallowing handling. Comfy if you accept that it can't be driven anything other than sedately. Nine inch drum brakes all round - wow! Top speed 76 mph, 0-60 in 26 seconds. Mind you, to have that car in that condition is quite an achievement. It would certainly turn heads.
Wolesley 15/60. My dad had a dark blue one. Have to say I don't think it was one of BMC's finest. Comfy seats, but that's about where it ended...
I loved the Rolls Royce engined version of this. Was amazing and not underpowered at all. The issue was you had to stop a lot of car on drum brakes.. ahhhhh drop the anchor...
That was probably the Vanden Plas version, one of our old school teachers had one if my memory serves me correctly
The Vanden Plas R was based on the larger 6-cylinder version of the Farina bodied cars, eg the Austin Westminster. BMC resytyled the rear and front ends to make it distinctive, and also raised the roof to give a feeling of more space. The R-R engine was an old design dating back to the 1940s and the car was meant to compete with top model Jaguars and Rovers, but it never took off and wasn't a success.
Sorry to be a pedant, but that pic is of a Vanden Plas 3 Litre, rather than a 4 Litre R. You can tell by the fins. The 3 litre had vertical tail lights mounted in the fins. The 4 litre R had much flatter fins and horizontal tail lights. As they say, no one loves a smart*rse....
Lovely car though, much like its contemporary, the Humber Imperial. A nice way to be wafted around, like a gentleman's club on wheels. Unfortunately neither could compete with cars like the Jaguar S Type for performance or the Zodiac/Cresta for flash on a budget. Sadly there are no modern equivalents, although I'm told that Toyota still make a 60s throwback for Japanese digintaries - the Century?
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