There’s one left!! back in the seventies, Ron and I worked together and the company had a pool of dire seventies cars. One of which was a Hillman Avenger a bit like this. Others in the fleet comprised a pair of Austin 1300’s and an Austin Maxi - the one with the seats that folded down to make a bed. Quite useful when one was in one’s 20’s! Our challenge was to drive them as fast as possible and all would show over 100 mph on the clock (probably 75 in reality) None achieved more than 20 mpg, which always surprised the transport manager. I can confess now that I did have the Maxi airborne for a good two car lengths once, over the hump back bridge near Market Bosworth. Sorry.
5 comments:
That looks in rather good nick. I have a bit of a soft spot for the Avenger - it was astonishingly rugged. When I was a spark plug man, I did some pre-launch plug tests on them, and was on the chassis dyno in an auto version, w.o.t. at about 90mph, when the daft Rootes Test Engineer said: "these have got a funny gearbox fault - you can go straight from D4 to reverse without hitting a gate-stop" - and promptly grabbed the lever and shoved it into reverse! There was an appalling scream of tyres on rollers, clouds of smoke, and then he shoved it straight back to D4...and both he and the motor carried on as if nothing had happened!
Blimey!!
Great stuff. I had two company Avengers. One was an olive green estate that I had a big hole cut into the dashboard in order for it to take an 8-track stereo,the other was a revolting lime yellow saloon with a tarmac-ed roof. I too got very raised eyebrows when I took them back at the end.
Marvellous, thank you. Ah, those twin headlights! Actually, the one in the blog looks in a darn sight better state that those that we had 'new' at the BU. Keep it in second was the watchword then, I believe.
Ah yes Affer - i had a '70s Rambler American Straight Six in Australia and the D to R problem was evident there also - it had the effect of making traffic light races great fun, if you got it wrong the opposition would roar off into the distance as though rocket powered !
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