We see an exquisitely mid-80s British couple having a Silvia-style rendezvous, he with the silver manual-trans car and she in the slushbox red one. Sure, they'd both have looked a lot cooler in TVR 280is, but he'd probably have ended up sliding off the road and into a drainage ditch, while she'd have been incinerated by the inevitable electrical fire.

Duster_UK took these shots a couple months back. What a find!

Got some Lancia porn for you - I took the attached pictures yesterday (Sunday) after leaving the Barbican Arts Centre in the City of London. The car was parked on Chiswell Street EC1. I should explain that the City of London is the financial part, where all the banks are, the oldest part of London. There are some residential properties there, but as you can imagine it is seriously expensive. Being a Sunday the parking restrictions are relaxed which might explain how this Lancia came to be parked there (it also means I could take my own car into town - new Fiat 500 by the way).

On to the Lancia, which is of course a Lancia Fulvia 1600HF. The registration plate suffix is 'L'. which means the car was registered between the 1st August 1972 and the 31st July 1973. However as you can see the licence plate is black with silver letters in a non-reflective material, and only cars built before 1st January 1973 are permitted to still use this old style colour scheme. It's clearly badged as an HF, although I thought all the HF models had the larger inner headlights, I'm not a Lancia expert. The car looked to have a nice used patina but was in fine condition overall.

I also have a literal metric fuck-tonne of photos I took from a local classic car show last weekend. There is about 400 in all, although I have not yet sorted the good ones from the dross. However I do have some Jalopnik money shots in the form of a working Lucas coil under the bonnet of an over restored MGB GT, a mint TR6 with the bonnet up and jump leads attached, and lots of Lotus Carlton shots (including the under bonnet VIN plate identifying it as a Lotus model). There are various Rovers (a P4 and a P6), an Escort Mexico, some Triumphs (including a Herald and TWO Stags), various porrigdey Austins named after quaint English towns with cathedrals, an NYPD P71 Crown Victoria, a Buick Skylark (70's, I haven't identified the year yet).

Those of you on the other side of the Atlantic might note that the Kent was installed in plenty of beloved British Ford machinery, including the Anglia and Cortina. In fact, the Kent qualifies for our upcoming Longest-Lived Vehicle Engines Of All Freakin' Time feature, being manufactured from 1959 until the present day. Variations of the Kent (some with overhead-cam heads) were used in cars ranging from the Fiesta to the Lotus Elan to the TVR Vixen.

[Wikipedia , image source: Burton Power]

We provided four early-50s-vintage Lucas Electrics ads, and contestants could modify one or more of them. We got some bonus remixed ads that weren't among the four; they don't count for winning the prize, but we'll include them in the gallery for your enjoyment. Now, here are the finalists. Vote early and often!

1. 13,383 Dollars In Debt, by Brickyard

2. 1351.83 Failures An Hour, by The Triborough Organization

3. 131.83 Miles In A Jaguar, by lumpyone

4. Making The Japanese Look Even Better, by Brickyard

5. New Friends Every Day, by Beni

6. Now My Car Won't Run, by Zachary

7. Better Buy A Case, by Brickyard

8. I'm Filing For Divorce, by Stuntdriver.

This all started when I got an email from the captain of the Dai Hard 24 Hours Of LeMons team, who will be bringing the first-ever LeMons Daihatsu Charade to Thunderhill in a couple of months. He'd just bought a '69 Morris Minor woody wagon and had it shipped over here, and he lives a few blocks from me. Did I want to come check it out?
It's not really supposed to be on the street quite yet, what with the utter lack of California-legal paperwork, but what the hell- we put it on the street for this photo session. He's already into the Kafkaesque ordeal of the California DMV Experience, but feels confident that it should be fully legit in the near future. The car is very solid, with hardly any rust (though some of the rotted woodwork will need replacing). And hey, check out the Lucas battery!

Lucas Electrical Components advertised heavily in Autocar magazine in the early 1950s, so I've scanned a quartet of their ads from that era. Your job: to modify one or more of the chosen ads in the most entertaining fashion you can manage; I've primed the pump with a lame-o version that took me all of 45 seconds to create (see above). Don't worry about the challenges of extracting the images from the clutches of the Gawker Server Hamsters' galleries, because you can download hi-res versions of the ads from the MurileeMartin.com webserver.

So, what do you win? Hey, when we promise fabulous prizes, we deliver; the best Prince Of Darkness Photoshopper (or GIMPer, or Irfanviewer, or whatever image-modifying tool you prefer) will get a copy of this fancy coffee-table book about Dean Jeffries! Email me your entries, and I'll put the best ones in a post later on.

Fellow Jalopnik writer Ben Wojdyla was in the Bay Area to hoon some Audis, and so he dropped by Alameda to get some lunch and see a bit of the legendary ITRF for himself. I figured I'd show him the pink '60 Mercury Commuter, or maybe the '66 Lancia Fulvia Berlina GT, both of which live in my neighborhood, but then we happened upon this elderly British immigrant. I tried to play it cool: "Yeah, Ben, MG TDs are as common as Nissan Sentras around here! Move along, nothing to see here!"

Actually, I was pretty excited about this jaw-droppingly awesome DOTS find, which beats out the '60 Triumph TR3A and the '56 Morris Minor for the Oldest Street-Parked British Car In Alameda Down On The Street History. We hung around for a few minutes, hoping the owner would show up and enable us to get the full story on this car, but eventually gave up in order to grab some Caldo Tlalpeño at La Piñata.

The '53 MG TD came with a 54.4 horsepower pushrod four-cylinder engine (yes, that extra 4/10th of a horse was so important that MG included it in the power rating) and was priced at $1,945. That was about $1,500 less than The General's new sports car, the '53 Corvette, but 200 bucks cheaper (and orders of magnitude better-looking) than the Triumph Mayflower. Budget-minded car shoppers who wanted to go a little less sporty could buy the bargain-basement '53 Ford coupe- which probably outperformed the prewar-technology MG TD in just about every category save parallel parking ability- for just $1,734.

The Triumph Mayflower ad, for a car James May condemns as the Ugliest Vehicle Ever Made, is especially puzzling. Did Triumph think that associating their products with some hookwormy clod pounding on a wagon wheel was a good idea?

Not only was the A- which was such a frugal engine that it needed but three main bearings instead of the five that squander-prone fools prefer for their four-bangers- built from 1954 through 2000 and installed in millions of Minis, Midgets, Minors and the like, it served as the basis for many of Nissan's engines of the 1950s and 1960s. Available in displacements from 803cc all the way up to 1,275cc, the A put postwar Britain- which was still under food rationing well into the 1950s- on wheels and kept it there into the new millenium, winning plenty of racing glory along the way.
[Wikipedia]

When you're done here, you might check out our favorite VW ads, then go right on with the Datsun, Toyota, Renault, General Motors, British Leyland, and Chevrolet ads.

1990 Ford Festiva	1932 Ford Model B	1980 Ford Pinto
1984 Ford LTD	1977 Ford Capri	1979 Mercury Zephyr
1980 Mercury Cougar	1982 Ford Granada	1992 UK Fords
1983 Ford F Series	1958 Lincoln	1970 Mercury Monterey
1955 Ford	1986 Ford Taurus	1991 Ford Escort RS2000
1984 Mercury Topaz	1981 Ford Escort	1973 Lincoln/Mercury
1978 Mercury Cougar XR7	1974 Mercury Comet	1969 Australian Fords
1991 Ford Escort GT	1978 Ford Granada	1969 Ford Torino
1989 Ford Taurus	1984 Ford Ranger	1989 Ford Taurus
1986 Ford Sierra XR4	1997 Mercury Grand Marquis	1970 Mercury Comet
1970 Ford Pinto Squire	1986 Mercury Sable	1980 Mercury Capri
1984 Ford Tempo	1977 Ford Thunderbird	1971 Ford Torino
1978 Ford Futura	1972 Ford Pinto	1982 Ford Cortina
1981 Ford Capri	1963 Fairlane Squire	1990 Mercury Topaz
1965 Ford LTD	1968 Ford Torino GT	1966 Lincoln Continental
1978 Fords	1975 Mercury Cougar	1990 Ford Falcon

Autocar has been around forever- since 1895, in fact- and even has the distinction of having fired James May (for inserting a secret message in an issue reading "So you think it's really good yeah you should try making the bloody thing up it's a real pain in the arse"). I'm definitely looking forward to some enjoyable reading with this haul; just a quick flip through the stack produced this sextet of PCH Gold machines, including the 1951 Hillman Minx Magnificent, the 1950 Vauxhalls, the 1962 Triumph Herald, the 1951 Singer 1000, the 1957 Daimler One-O-Four, and the 1961 Wolseley Hornet. Whoa, it's a red-letter day for Wolseley Hornet aficionados! Enjoy:

Just click on any of the thumbnails below to jump to the original post about that car.

1937 Beardmore	1953 Citroën	1956 Morris	1959 Morris
1960 Peugeot	1960 Triumph	1961 Morris	1963 Land Rover
1965 Austin	1965 Alfa Romeo	1966 Jaguar	1966 Lancia
1966 Volvo	1969 MG	1969 Volvo	1969 Volvo
1969 Citroën	1970 Volvo	1971 Volvo	1971 MG
1972 Triumph	1972 Steyr	1973 Volvo	1973 MG
1974 Jensen-Healey	1975 Citroën	1975 MG	1977 Fiat
1977 Volvo	1978 Jaguar	1978 Saab	1980 Volvo
1981 Fiat	1982 Fiat	1984 Jaguar	1985 Alfa Romeo
1985 Saab	1985 Peugeot	1986 Jaguar	1988 Renault
1988 Peugeot	1989 Ferrari	1989 Alfa Romeo	1991 Peugeot
1991 Alfa Romeo	1991 Rolls-Royce

If you prefer being a nitpicker to being merely observant, you might then point out that the British Leyland name existed only from 1968 to 1986, and thus several of these ads fall outside those boundaries as well. But here at Jalopnik, we defy categorization of obscure European machinery!

When you're done here, you might check out our favorite VW ads, then go right on with the Datsun, Toyota, Mustang, Renault, General Motors, and Chevrolet ads.

1972 Triumph TR6 (USA)	1981 Austin Rover (UK)	1966 Austin Mini (Australia)
1975 Triumph Spitfire (USA)	1970 Hillman Hunter (Australia)	1975 Triumph, MG (USA)
1980 Austin Metro (UK)	1977 Leyland Princess (Germany)	1976 Triumph TR7 (USA)
1973 Triumph (UK)	1976 Leyland Princess (UK)	1974 Triumph Spitfire (USA)
1981 Triumph Acclaim (UK)	2003 MG ZR (Spain)	1977 British Leyland (UK)	1970 Simca 1000 (Spain)

Yes, yes, we know that the "Umpimp Your Ride" commercials were hilarious, the Beetle-dropped-from-helicopter Corrado ad was a winner, and some folks even mentioned the ad that used that annoying song. We'll get to them on Classic Ad Watch, eventually. Then we heard about this collection of UK-market Volkswagen ads over on MotorTorque and decided it would be best to post it right away. You see, it was so shocking to see that VW's marketers dared to get all eggheady and put a goddamn Dylan Thomas poem in a car ad that we had to share this outrage with y'all! Why, if General Westmoreland hadn't'a kicked Archdude Franz Ferdinand's ass in Grenada, those warm-beer-drinkin' Brits would all be speakin' Afrikaans by now! Anyway, here's the ad, which we're forced to admit is pretty cool… in the same geeked-out-yet-useless way that the Apple Cube was pretty cool. When you're done with that, go watch the other 15 ads.

The majority of new cars being sold in Great Britain right now are still equipped with FM radio receivers instead of the DAB systems necessary to receive a digital radio signal. Since the entire analogue signal will be switched off by the end of 2015, those radios will be completely useless.

Converting to a digital receiver is estimated to cost in the neighborhood of $500, factoring in not only the price of the new head unit, but also the labor integrate it into the complicated wiring harness of a modern car.

While some cars like the Audi A8 and BMW 5-series already come with DAB radio, popular models like the Ford Mondeo and Vauxhall Astra do not. Manufacturers were reluctant to spec the new radios until an exact date for the transition was made, the 2015 date was arrived at earlier this month. It's believed that the market for used cars will now respond to the transition, driving down the price of and demand for vehicles equipped with analogue receivers. It's not known when manufacturers like Ford and Vauxhall will upgrade their models with digital receivers.

As and added kick in the pants to UK consumers, it's expected that the analogue to digital transition will cause months of disruptions to signals and even station availability. No word on whether or not Members of Parliament will be able to expense upgrades in their own, publicly funded cars. [via The Daily Mail]

I spotted what appeared to be a London cab parked in front of the hardware store, just around the corner from the '69 Citroën DS station wagon, the 1973 BMW 2002tii, and the 1953 Packard Cavalier. Naturally, I wanted to meet the owner of such a beautiful machine, so I hung around until he emerged from the store.

It turns out that he's the owner of Bear Paw Fiddles, an Alameda shop specializing in vintage violins and mandolins, and this cab is his work vehicle (those of you who drive Taurus or Lumina company cars, feel free to experience pangs of envy). This '37 Beardmore Taxi was built by the the William Beardmore Company in a factory converted to Spitfire production a couple years later, and it survived the London Blitz. It was brought to the United States by a Bay Area Jaguar dealership in the late 1950s, received a Nissan engine swap a decade or three back, and now calls Alameda its home.

This may be the roomiest back seat ever made. The Beardmore has proven to be quite reliable, but it can't really be driven on the freeway; the engine has sufficient power, but the windshield tends to implode at speeds greater than 40 MPH.

As Davey Johnson has made very clear, there's something special about brown cars, and as for a brown British Leyland product... well, it's very much of its time. For reasons we have a hard time understanding, May's woman
lacked enthusiasm for the gift, so now the Triumph is part of his own fleet.
That brings up the question: What Detroit vehicle is the counterpart to the brown Triumph 2000 MkII? The vehicle the well-intentioned American or Canadian car geek would buy his or her S.O. in order to share not-quite-ironic-enough appreciation for such things? Perhaps a two-tone 1975 Mercury Cougar XR7?
Telegraph.co.uk

Scientists researching the matter hypothesize that the urge to acquire personalized number plates is a mating behavior equivalent to that of the male peacock’s display of tail feathers. The larger and brighter the feathers, the more appealing the male peacock is to females.

Since the average British male lacks both feathers and the typical external signs of human male virility: height, a full head of hair, a single chin and a winning smile, he’s forced to compete for mates with gratuitous displays of bad taste and a fat credit card.

English numberplates differ from their American cousins, Vanity Plates (which can be commonly spotted adorning the walls of theme restaurants) in that they're sold at auction for huge prices rather than licenses at a token rate on a first-come basis.

Rare personalized numberplates are demarcated by their number of figures and the ability of those figures to spell out something clever. In addition to displaying wealth, they disguise the age of the vehicle they’re attached to (standard issue British numberplates contain the model year), a further boon to attracting gold digging slappers. So, for example, a plate reading “8110X” or “80085” would be quite valuable in contemporary British society.

The “1 0” plate is exceptional both for its use of only two digits and for the symbolic importance of the number “10” which could signify a perfect automobile, a perfect driver or both. As such, the plate, which will be auctioned on Friday, will be given the highest ever reserve: 10,000 of Her Majesty’s Pounds or $14,221 in freedom credits. It’s expected to achieve a far greater price, maybe even challenging the current $500,000 record. [DVLA via Press Association]

Queen Elizabeth the II, who lives rent free in several state-owned mansions and castles — the poorly insulated kind that are a bitch to heat in the winter — travels by a state-owned private jet and requires a security detail that uses many fossil fuel powered cars, trucks, motorcycles and helicopters, has decided to do her bit for the environment. The biofuel conversion is estimated to increase the fuel economy of her two, scarcely used, Bentleys by a staggering 40%. How? By burning some of her tiny island nation’s food supply in place of gasoline. Bentley is expected to introduce a similar system for its range of luxury cars by 2012, allowing similarly well-heeled individuals to feel better about themselves while dining on imported fine foodstuffs.

Last summer, Prince Charles, the Queen’s doting son, converted his Aston Martin DB6 to run on ethanol produced from surplus wine. It’s not known which fuel source the Queen will use to power her Bentleys. [via The Daily Mail]

Well, he has called fixed speed cameras “arbitrary” and “unfair,” preferring instead the far less arbitrary and unfair average speed cameras. You know, the ones that record your speed over a large distance then send you a ticket in the mail should your average exceed the posted limit. He’s also proposed that drivers could lose their licenses after only two speeding offenses. Why?

No, not because speeding is dangerous — it seems that even the Ministry of Love Labour Party has lost faith in that lie — but, get this, because the faster you drive, the more you pollute. Coincidentally, Geoff Hoon has just approved an extra 23,000 flights per year at Stanstead and who supports a third runway at Heathrow.

Despite his anti-car policies, Hoon has had the gall to have himself described as “car mad” in newspaper interviews. Ignoring his car-hating policies for a second, let’s take a look at the Hoon fleet: a Ford Galaxy minivan, a purple Mini and his Government issue Prius.

What’s most interesting about Hoon’s appointment to the position isn’t the cynical policies or spin however, it’s the resigned acceptance shown by the English press. Writing in The Times, former CAR editor Jason Barlow cites all of the above offenses but doesn’t move on to present a cohesive argument for either Hoon’s dismissal nor the repeal of his policies; instead moving on to a tired and trivial Clarkson imitation, calling for people with stuffed animals in their cars to be banned. For this ex-resident of Blighty, it’s sad and frightening to see the degree to which the British are prepared to roll over and accept the slow progression of Orwellian rule. The United Kingdom used to be a bastion of reasonable laws and personal freedom. Not anymore. [via The Times]