computedshorty Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Classic Cars. > I had mostly Austin 1300 Automatic or the Van Dem > Plas in the 70s, I wonder if there are anybody > here who had any of these? _________________________________________________________________ Computedshorty These were both "Classically rubbish " cars usually supplied in Brown with a tan cloth & leatherette interior, driven by men in brown clothes, who smoked a brown pipe & who lived in a dull brown pebble dashed house on "Chantry Grove" or "Ivy Way" or even "Cherry Walk". Men who on any given Sunday meandered the B roads of Dorking & Epsom at sub-20mph pointing out nothing whilst talking drivel to their long suffering wives, surrounded by a haze of their own steamed up fug. Ironically driving the drivers of real "Classics" like the "Daimler Dart" or the "Sunbeam Tiger" completely bloody mad, as they built up a procession behind them. The supposedly superior but equally dreadful "Vanden Plas" was an Austin's marketing mans dream. A piece of post war committee driven design paired with laudably average British engineering, this too was also upholstered in swingingly dull brown. It's point of difference was the V.P moniker which harked back to the once great Belgian coach builder "Vanden Plas" though now sadly fobbed off with a touch of brown walnut veneer. Thus rendering the dreary interior more mind numbing in its Brown & Tan palette. Think Vesta curry & beef rissoles, polyester trousers and Watney's red barrel & Sunday opening hours of days gone by. It the "VanDen Plas of the 70s" had more style in common with the telephone table, the 50's cocktail cabinet and the caravan in Pagham than of the fine coaches & cars of the past it alluded to. It was in short the equivalent to the long service carriage clock. It marked the beginning of the end,in short something that said "This is it" "Classic Cars" are Jaguars, the D types & E types ,Mk 2's of the sixties. Cars that were engineering masterpieces with aluminum engines, cars that broke the mould not your spirit. Cars we dreamed about not dreaded and if through nostalgic rose tinted specks. We see still see brown ? Then wake up & pass the travel sweets, pop open the thermos & keep heading for Eastbourne W**F