The rise of foreign cars | Common Market | Vintage cars | Drive In | 1974
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- Опубліковано 26 вер 2024
- Thames TV's 'Drive in' investigates the rise in popularity of foreign produced cars.
First Shown: 31/07/1975
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Quote: VT11307
The Japanese had this radical concept where when you turned the key in your ignition in the morning it started the engine ,BL thought this should be an option ....👍
Llllllllllolllllllllll
🤣
Too true!! Remember a string of British cars that gave nothing but trouble…then we bought a Datsun Cherry and it worked like a charm for years
🤣. So true. My first car was '77 Datsun 100A aka Cherry . It has a heating system that could be compared to Saab and Volvo . A very good feature when you live in Finland
😂😂…..so true!!
You simply couldn't do an interview in the mid 70's without a random Womble walking into your shot.
6:09 Wellington!
He was looking a bit sad
Oh, that too, Simon. Ha haaa.
cos he'd just bought a Morris Marina
genius!!! very good..
that golf looks so amazingly fresh. funny how good design lives on.
its also amazing how VW got away with a car that rotted so badly in the eraly days and in the mid 2000's still rotted away round the front wheelarches ( as did most VW/Audi's of the era - only Merc seemed worse ) yet still tried to advertise fundamental quality. No better than a Ford KA mk1
The semi estate body really seals the deal.
@@darrenwilson8042 I can't speak of other brands but my first car was an Audi (1998 model, built in 2000). The chassis and other relevant parts were galvanized. After driving it almost 14 years in southern Scandinavia, where the roads are salted every winter, after a good washing, the think was as good as new without any hint of rust. American built cars in this environment rust away in 5 years. Mercedeses rust too, but Mercedes had a policy of replacing rusted parts free of charge, no questions asked.
@@darrenwilson8042 crap quality cars mate, appear to be well made but they aren't
Except for the skew-whiff front bumper ...wtf
My late uncle overhere in the Netherlands started as a BMC dealer. And because British cars in the late fifties and early sixties were quite good they sold well overhere and were rather popular.
He was proud of the motors he sold and spoke of ''English class and quality products.'' But later on the BL nightmare began and the previously acknowledged build and engineering quality of British cars went down the drain. In 1977 he finally had enough of selling what he then called ''filthy junk'' (gore rotzooi) and switched to.....Datsun.
It sounds like the same argument we had here in the United States. To some people if you bought a Toyota, Datsun, Honda, Volkswagen,etc you were called "unpatriotic", "communist", "anti-American", "traitor", etc. I simply told them that I needed a car that accumulated more miles horizontally than vertically.
I bought a Chevy Colorado new back 2005 and 3 years later I had to replace the dang engine, then other components started going out. I tried to stay loyal to American made vehicles. But In reality . Japan makes way better vehicles. Plane and simple
I agree and I don't understand why you are getting called anti-american for normal economical bahaviour. The american cars are so bad that all US manufacturers withdrew from Europe, because nobody was buying their products for notorious unreliability and cost of services. But Japanese cars aren't really dominating either in Europe, unlike in the US. Here in Europe the best selling brands are European, most likely because the Japanese cars are much more expensive here, than they are in the US.
Renaga You don't by from a new line of cars with a new first gen engine. You buy the third year of a new platform after they've worked out the kinks.
@@tea_and_crumpets6919
I am American but have been a regular reader of the British magazine CAR for nearly 50 years. In the 70s the magazine was EXTREMELY anti-Japanese, but they weren't blindly pro-British either. If anything, they were quite conscious of brand / badge value. When a Ford, BMW, M-B, and Volvo were tested, the M-B got the nod...or the BMW, with the higher initial price excused by the higher equity at trade in.
In very short time, the Japanese concluded that for many reasons, they wouldn't get a fair shake from CAR, and consequently stopped allowing the magazine to test their products. For nearly 2 decades, no Japanese car was tested except for an occasional Honda. Had such a noteworthy magazine widely tested Japanese cars, instead of constantly denigrating the products en masse, Japanese cars might have a bigger " footprint " in Europe.
@@Reynaga2012 The funniest thing is that Japanese cars in the US are WAY more American than American cars, because Honda and Toyota (and Nissan trucks) are all made in the USA, whereas the American brands are made in Mexico, South Korea, and so forth.
Interesting the the concept of a "hatchback" wasn't yet firmly established. They kept referring to them as "mini estates" or a "sort of estate".
Cars built in Britain in the last century include the Nissan Bluebird near Newcastle, the Honda Civic at Swindon, Toyota Carina at Derby, and Peugeot 405 at Coventry. Foreign cars were the Ford Fiesta and Vauxhall Nova in Spain, the Ford Granada and Capri, and Vauxhall Carlton and Senator in Germany, and the Ford Sierra in Belgium.
Nissan Bluebird from 1981 was UK built. Some Fiestas, Granadas and Capris were built in the UK, though think it was 2 out of 3 capris were German built.
In the days when cars used to brake down about once a month (if you were lucky), people bought the Cherry in large numbers because Datsun had worked out how to make cars ultra-reliable. It wasn't flashy, but it worked.
Brilliant. A Womble walking by in the background at 6:11. Made my day. Uncle Bulgaria by the looks of him.
No it was Wellington. I used to have his poster!
looks like wellington. uncle bulgaria had glasses and a waistcoat?
Definitely Wellington. He had a blue cap.
Uncle Bulgaria out looking for a new car, just not a british one.
70's had the best looking cars. Clean interior and so simple.
Took surprisingly long for the "semi-estates" to overtake saloons. I think they are much more practical, but still people prefer saloons in some parts of the world.
Easier to hide a dead prostitute in a booted car than a hatch back.
And then it took about 5 minutes for SUVs to kill the last "semi-estates" and move into their territory.
"What makes more and more British car buyers go foreign?"
Gee I don't know, maybe they wanted a car that would actually start in the morning..
I love the Womble wandering by at 6:08 ... In case we were forgetting it's the '70s!
:o)
Everyone was on drugs in the 70's
Owned an early 1970s Datsun in the 1990s - it was as reliable as a claw hammer, ran on fumes...wish I still owned it!
Impossible. They were made of very cheap steel and they've all rusted away. My cousin had one in 2001 and was a complete rust bucket. He welded straps to support the frame because it collapsed on him.
I worked for a Leyland dealership, the cars where appalling nothing but faults and returns for warranty correction. Then the boss got a Datsun franchise, what a difference reliable modern cars. They sold like hot cakes. On one weekend 16 sold!
@@abergethirty ... Yes they were terrible for the rust.
*The last guy had the balls to say it the cars start when you want the cars to start.*
Lotus =Lots Of Trouble Usually Serious
@Ricsi bacsi Or Fix It Again Tony
@Ricsi bacsi Well yeah. But where is British Leyland now and where is Fiat and Ford now ?
I can tell you.
British Leyland is Dead like most of British Car Brands and Ford and Fiat are pretty popular in Europe
Dead right, I once had a Lotus Excell. Great car to drive, but I could have assembled it myself way better.
I've got a '75 Datsun B210, the version of the 120Y that went to the States
Loved the Womble walking by in shot at the back ha ha ha
so british!
Think we may have destroyed its habitat now!!
That Womble in the background just walking past was pure hilarity!!!!
Thank you for uploading these videos! I was born in '95, but it's so neat to see these old news reports. Please keep them coming!
“Put together properly “ not 3 words ever used at British leyland 😂
Kudos to Sue Baker for not reacting to outrageous sexist remark! Great to see the models of the time.
I always thought the Datsun Cherry was a nicer looking car than most of its competitors.
Wait, was that a Womble at 6:10?
Seed_drill Yup, Wellington to be precise.
There were a lot about in the seventies!
Get it shot.......!
That was a time traveller spy.
Just did
I haven't smoked weed for years but i'm sure UNCLE BULGARIA just walked by....
I think it was Wellington in that hat....
I thought it was uncle 🇦🇱Albania at 6:10.
It was his nephew you fool!
The best part about this video was the womble casually walking by hands behind back..
Already spotted of course, but Wellington at 6:10 is probably the best photo bombing of a TV interview I've seen in 50 years. Priceless.
Interesting that the Datsun 120y had essentially a BMC A series engine with the bugs worked out. My father bought one as a first foreign car, and never went back.
Sure it was cheap and tinny, but it ran like a Swiss watch with NO issues!
Yep, ran like a Swiss watch. A $5 Swiss watch that barely kept time, for sure, but a watch made within the borders of the country nonetheless.
My dad also had the same experience after having a heap of junk called a Hillman Hunter - that car was a disaster. The 120Y, although simply engineered - which was a cue for sneering by some motoring scribes, never missed a beat - the complete antithesis of what he had before.
I think the 100a was A series too? Certainly my 79 Cherry was. It kinda sounded like a morris minor.
Foreign or not, they are proper, 'lap-top' technology free cars. By today's standards watching this could almost be mistaken for a classic car show. One car featured was a Renault 16, which first my Dad had & later my Mum inherited when he went on to something newer. It was an automatic so the column shift gear-lever didn't matter so much.
@King Brilliant With the Japanese ones, you didn't need to do any of that.
Though many of them quickly fell to bits with rust , Japanese cars were mechanically excellent and you got tons of extras for your money . Many new immigrant families in the 70s had to be prudent with their money and that's why they drove datsuns - reliable and good value .
The Datsun cars of this era were more reliable than anything made these days. even though the smaller cars had Bmc derived engines.
"What makes more and more British car buyers go foreign?" Answer - because British cars were crap.
Top level brands are a different story. But if you're comparing (for example) a Rover SD1 against a Mercedes W123 or BMW 5 Series of the time, then it's obvious that the German cars were superior!
@@aaronhussain3873 Not obvious to someone who had an SD1 and a BMW 525...
@fifthof As I drove and still drive British cars every day, cars which started every day and did precisely what I wanted them to do and did it very well, your point is moot.
@@aaronhussain3873 the SD1 was only let down by the build quality, the design was good enough.
So were French, I rember my father's Peugeot failing to start, as did the volvo. SOME British cars were crap but so were the Europeans aswell. Datsun weren't that much better. Look at the cars that are classic today and stood the test of time? Jags, triumph etc.
Auto journalism at its finest unlike crap propagated by today's auto journalist who behave as if they are running a entertainment TV show
Correct thats why I stopped watching top gear those three really weren't funny all I want to hear about is cars.
@sk54931 I think you are being excessively generous when you call Top Gear 'entertainment'.
That Toyota Crown is nice. I wouldn't buy any Toyota today except for the Century.
Lol at the front bumper fit on that Golf. I'm presuming it's had a smack already, as I can't imagine they let it out looking like that!
Renault 12/Dacia 1300 everyone had it in the 70s 80s 90s 2000s even now in Romania, goes to show that French cars really are reliable.
Seeing the engine in that Renault 12 brings back memories.
Very easy to work on and parts easy to get... Thanks for the video.
I paid £90 for a 12 in about 1985, added engine bits from a scrap 5TS and rallied it for two years. It only died because I hit the scenery rather hard one night.
My brother blew up his Renault 12 trying to race a Porsche! The block cracked and you could see the centre main bearing. After it cooled down it still got us to the pub and back that evening. Brave car performed one last vital mission even though it was mortally wounded.
Crazy to think that this broadcast is from almost half a century ago...
Love watching these, more please👍
Cars of 1975: "Even if it is slightly more complicated ......"
Cars of 2021: Hold my beer.
Made in Japan was quality...( Except the rust in the 70s)
I owned a Datsun Cherry and the engine run like a Swiss watch but the body rusted away in 3 year's !
0:23..........."What makes more & more British car buyers go foreign?" Um, 2 words.........BRITISH LEYLAND!!!!!!!
Doesn't explain Ford or Vauxhall.
I miss the 1970s
I miss the 70's women......🥰
@@terryjacob8169 Yeah.. all natural for the most part
The green VW Golf in this video has a wonky front bumper, but it doesn't look like its been hit or damaged in an accident, more like its fitted badly
What about the Renault with cracked indicator/park light lens ?
Numberplate looks fake
Legit , you went to auto shop and had them made too spec
@Julie.. Definitely a real plate.. HJJ was tested in various magazines at the time
I remember those bumpers, sometimes you just sat on it and it could have ended up like this.
Renault 5 looks like it was made over a weekend in someone's garage using random car parts.
My mum passed her driving test in a Triumph Dolomite.
My mum got whiplash in a Triumph Dolomite.
I passed my test in a Sunny, first time. too. Only had 6 lessons, incredibly forgiving car for a learner.
Yup, half dozen lessons in a Cherry for me confirm that.
passed in a 1976 120Y
I got my car licence in a Datsun Sunny too, back in 1981. It was a lovely car to drive. All the controls were very light to use, with no power assistance required. Sadly, steel bodywork didn't last long though, even in a country where roads don't need to be salted in winter. Greetings from Qld, Australia.
Good to watch I remember all of those cars I've had some of the cars lots of Datsuns and I still got a Datsun blue bird and still happy with it 👍
"The French are a very practical people." Said no one ever.
What he meant moron was they don`t have high end manufacturer's like Ferrari, Porsche etc, They simply buy over the border for those that can afford or want them, The overwhelming number of French made vehicles are conventional basic transport
Spare wheel under the car... really easy to reach. not.
@@Natashahoneypot it's way easier to reach to the spare wheel under the car compared to spare in the trunk, if you have a full trunk.
Especially if you carry some huge cargo, like a small sofa.
@@GetToHellOut much easier to reach a spare wheel on the back of the car , like the Jeep, Range Rover. Or if the car is not designed that way, take the spare wheel and put it with the luggage in an easy access place. There is absolutely no need to keep it under the car where the bolts get rusty and it's a nightmare to get it off in the middle of nowhere on a cold rainy day.
But better than not having one at all
I learned to drive in a turd brown Datsun 120Y station wagon!
In 1974 my father & his business partner bought a yellow Cortina 1.6 XL for company use. After the first of many drives to Marseille's on business they realised they had the wrong car, anything above 70 mph on the French Autoroutes was torture ! Yet his own Renault 16 TS breezed it. Only Citroen DS & SM's could out pace the TS over such a distance. He had 3 in a row, the last a TX, I drove it, lovely !
The TS was a superb motor car, way underrated. 90bhp from a 1600, way ahead of its time. Renault didn't make big cars at the time as the French Fiscal Ratings were somewhat punitive - so they made cars like the 16TS and the 16TX. The 16 is the same colour as mine was, but that was a facelift model with a plastic grille - mine was pressed bright metal.
I bet the Ford was Daytona Yellow I had one too it had a black vinyl roof ! 1600cc cross flow engine …...It was CRAP it was scrapped in 1982 with 80k on the clock just an 8 year life span Volvos at that time were averaging 18 years
@@philbarnett9274 Yes Daytona yellow Cortina.
As the time shows, it is not about the price (unless really high) but it all about whether the car is going to start next morning.
That's why Germans and Japanese won this time.
Well…. It did take them decades to win (in the uk). The British stuck to their home brands (even if they weren’t actually British owned and the product manufactured abroad). Remember the Marina was actually one of the best sellers for years despite being a truly cruddy car in every respect.
@@AnthonyNewman-lp5qq Yes Marina looked cool. Germans are now going same way and their faith will be similar.
The old datsun was my parents first car, as i`m told like all nissan / datsuns of that era rust killed it!
Fun Fact: During the making of this documentary, each Datsun shed approximately 7 ounces of rust 😂
@@raysage2290 you used to see them in the 80s just turning into rust on many a street. My first car was an 85 Cherry and it was rather good though it must be said.
I love the wonky bumper on the Golf. The left side sits higher than the right.
qUaLiTy
When you compare the quality and equipment of the Toyota Corona and the rest of European cars, you quickly understand why they took such a large place in the automotive market. The same thing happened here in North America.
The Womble In The Shot Had Just Put A Deposit On A Datsun Cherry. (A Womble Knows A Reliable Car When He Sees It).
Just look at countries like Spain, Italy, France all have there own national manufactures within there own country's ... all we have here in the U.K. is foreign owned manufactures as the U.K. has sold its sole in so many industries that were the backbone of this country.
All we have now is nail bars, take away fast food places, cafe's, restaurants and pound shops
sad isn't it.
At 6 mins, a Womble walks past
Trevor Smith Difficult to take old Frank seriously after that!
so hillariously random. laughed for 15 mins.
Born in 76 these cars were what I used to walk past, rotting on the side of the road on my way to school in the early to mid 80s. People took advantage of the fact that road tax was not really enforced, well not were I lived anyway.
I also remember the sweet smell of leaded exhaust fumes and starter motors ringing out loud repeatedly on damp and frosty mornings as the frantic adults tried to get them going, as they were late for work, and the common sound of a carburettor fed engine puffing and spluttering away on full choke.
Womble at 6.11 - Love seeing those old cars...
Great period piece.
Love the womble at 6'10" as well!!
love the look of the renault 12, i always thought they should have been called the renault eclair for some reason. but out of them all only the golf stood the test of time.
The 12 was an extremely successful car worldwide, and it was sold under multiple names, so doubtless it was called the eclair in some markets haha. It's also the car that made Dacia the famous budget brand that it is today.
Yes the VW golf. *** Later came the VW 🐇rabbit.
Renault 12 was assambled or manufactured under licence in a few countries.
"What colour's that Datsun over there? That's 120Y brown mate... Hmmm, very attractive. Come on Shep!"
So not to be able to fit a roof rack or a more expensive bumper are the reasons not buy a foreign car! Never cease to amaze the British.
Within a year, VW gave us the Golf, Austin/BL gave us the Allegro.
Golf was showing the motoring world the way forward, Allegro was still stuck in the past; should have been a hatchback and less dumpy-looking.
@6.12 the character in the background lololol
In 1973 I bought a secondhand Renault 16TS, possibly the best car I have owned of the 34 cars that I have had till now. ( British, French, Japanese, American, Swedish and Australian) My Father was very strongly against foreign cars until then, his next car was a Peugeot 504GL, another very good car and the first of three 504s. Each succeeding 504 was of poorer build quality than the one before, however they would do 50,000 miles before the suspension needed work while the Fords that went before would only manage 30,000miles. We lived in the country along a stone road which was hard on some cars.The Volvo 244 was also reliable and able to cope with this road.
The British car industry in the 1960's and more so in the 1970's produced some very badly built cars. Google Red Robo and you will see that the aim of some was to make the UK into a communist country. All UK industry suffered then from strikes, poor quality and 'don't care attitude' and much of it has been lost since.
The Japanese cars were not particularly good to drive BUT were reliable.
so the french having just as many strikes..but still made good cars, and is a far more socialist country than the uk, how do you answer that then?
@@jusb1066 Maybe the French govt invested enough money into the French manufacturers to allow them to do proper developments? I don't know. BLMC had some good design engineers, but after the 1960s just about every new model ended up severely compromised due to hamstrung developments that always had to be done on less than a shoestring. Or maybe it was the coagulation of different marques, resulting in bad blood and infighting: Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Triumph, Rover all in one big pot in the 70s, while Citroen, Renault, Peugeot, Simca were still separate companies. Then later, I believe some bits of Simca got absorbed by Peugeot, and then they merged with Citroen. And Renault linked-up with Nissan. The reliability of the 16 and the 504 have not been seen since...
It seems that Peugeot has (or had) a habit of cutting cost during the lifetime of their cars. I remember three 406's that went worse with each iteration.
Superb quality vid for 1974
Probably they where using 1" tape (which I think had better image the U-Matic low band). And with good natural light some old video cameras had nice image.
When you had strike ridden UK car factories with unions calling the shots turning out build fault ridden cars, is it any wonder the public become wary of anything we can make and bought foreign?
You cannot blame Joe Public for buying cars that were better made, more reliable and built right.
Its only taken me 35 years to latch onto this idea and buy a nissan. Bloody glad i did.
I switched to Japanese cars 20 years ago and it's saved me a fortune!
The Womble in the background at 6.10😝
The Renault 5 looked very modern for its time.
Pale blue Datsun 120y looks great even today
Very much in British Style: to talk over European & Japanese cars and Ignore Soviet.
Clients at the background showed what they really interested in: cheap&robust Russian fiats.
Shame they overlooked the Ladas on display; they would have been new to the UK market at the time.
I've always heard that Canadians appreciated Ladas more than most westerners; they probably held up to Canadian winters better than a lot of more advanced cars. Early Hondas were know for having problems in the cold.
Ladas????? Soviet cars?......you're smoking something special!
An interesting moment on the slow death of the UK motor industry.
This was filmed before the Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan was agreed.
British manufacturers had taken their eye off the ball... They built for the home market as it had been a decade earlier.
Fiat, Nissan (Datsun), VW and many others built for export.
Very interesting to see the Fiat/SEAT 133 here. It represented the first sniff Seat had of the UK market.
…and now in 2023 we have not a single British-owned car manufacturer left (Rover was the last). Shameful.
Anyone notice the indicator sidelight bulb lens on the “New” Renault 5 is cracked and broken. !!!!
Ray Brewer
I saw that too.
Some of those cars look a bit worn to me to be considered brand new.
Unless I missed him saying some are older models ?
Worked at a Vauxhall dealers , we had a Datsun branch up the road , Datsuns were more reliable but rot boxes , even working on new ones you would always snap a wing bolt or 2 .
2:39 that front bumper is so pissed!
Looks like they threw it on to fit it. Honestly, I hate 2020 but the cars of the 70s were hilariously bad sometimes.
Was waiting for Tony to turn around at the end and shout “Shut up” at the cars racing behind.
Even as late as the mid-80s foreign manufacturers were giving customers what UK manufacturers only started to give - like cloth seats - in the upper ranges of any one model.
Moreover, whilst some of the foreign cars were odd by design, they listened to what the customers wanted - and gave them it.
Sure, we had the Rover SD1, what a gorgeous car that was, and what a car it could have been. But unreliability and shocking build quality of biblical proportions, when you had foreign manufacturers designing and building modern, reliable and better equipped cars than the UK, what did we expect? There they were, producing exciting new shapes and a whole new world of performance and reliability, and what were we dong? Still producing the Morris Minor that farted every time you changed gear.
Yup. My father bought a Jag in 1975 (after numerous British cars) and as a consequence it was the last British car he owned until his death nearly 40 years later.
Is it me or do some of these cars look like their still in primer?
Yes and that Renault 5 indicator light was cracked too.
Tony's voice becomes louder and louder toward the end
Yes, there were racing cars buzzing by in the background, didn't you notice?
The Seat 133 looks like a Fiat 126 knock off
BL should've had the Metro out at this point, but it took them another 6 years. Such a shame.
And it wasn't worth waiting for..............
British Car Plants suffered from years of under investment, a make do and mend attitude was not enough for their future survival, as for the work force they were on a sinking ship, it was just about getting as much as you can before it sinks.
My mum had a 120y until 1998 when she upgraded to a new Nissan Pulsar, we live Australia so it was nice to have Air conditioning. My first car was a 84 Nissan Bluebird. Which I got in around 2001, lol.
I still keep my first car the datsun 120y which I bought in 1977. Although it is not running but the engine can easily start up!
I've got a 1998 nissan bluebird u14. Never failed me once
Shameless people not wanting to admit
That the Japanese cars were and are more reliable..and still wondering why we have no car manufacturers in the uk.
Old man at 1:44 blows his nose with such enthousiasm that snot covers his entire face. He's been cleaning it off for 2 minutes.
1:31 in 1974 I was a five year old lad interested in cars, my parents every week would get a visit from this loan repayment dude named Ted Heath who owned one of these Datsun's... Ted used to allow me to sit in the front passenger seat and play with the ( wait for it... wait for it... ) knobs on the dashboard... I remember the smell, that new plastic excitement... the flick of a switch and a light would illuminate... amazing, it was such a fascinating machine to me at the time, yet I never learned to drive in later life... which is odd... yet I often wear a dress and swish around the house singing moonlight & roses... which is odder.
Hope it wasn't the Ted heath who later went on to become prime minister. He loved children that liked to play with nobs haha.
@@kneetrembler3249 oh God... I've just realized... well I was lucky then... I wasn't fiddled with by that Ted chap... and I didn't blackmail him to try and join the UK to a byzantine style authoritarian dictatorship like the EU or something :)
What's the European union got to do with it
all these cars are so much better than the shit we get today with over tech and no DIY choice
4:49 - white RX3 coupe in the background. 150k cars now
It's Raining Datsun Cogs.Tony Bastable's Flares and Kipper Tie are hilarious.
As is the Womble walking past at 6:11!
6:10 even the Union of Amalgamated Womble Workers representative hadn’t a clue how to solve the slump in British car sales
I always thought the renault 12 and 16 looked very classy back in the 70s
Japanese cars always started, had a radio, tinted windows . How did they catch on ? Fiat's fell apart with rust .
Love the Womble at 6.09!!!
Omg I had flares like that!
The 120Y was called the B210 here in the US. Learned to drive a manual transmission in one of those.
sue baker.. what a hottie back in the day
British Motor Industry - Where Did It All Go Wrong?
My first ever car was a bright green 1975 N reg Datsun Cherry that I acquired before I could even drive. I swapped a rather nice Fender guitar for it from an RAF colleague who couldn't sell it in time for his posting to Germany the very next day. I remember being in it when a grim sounding BBC announcement came over the radio to declare that John Lennon had been shot dead in New York.