I don't know about that. Only 60 odd itals on the road. Wouldn't be surprised thats there are sixty odd Bentleys left. You do mean one of these because I've seen one of these driving in the last year whereas I seen no Itals.
Sure it was actually a 'Blower' Bentley? They only made about 50 to qualify for racing, and the surviving ones are worth a fortune, although a few non-supercharged cars have been converted. AFAIK there are a few hundred vintage (i.e. pre-1931) Bentleys still about, but given how much they're worth it's no surprise they're not exactly an everyday sight. Someone mentioned the Ford Sierra above. I did a lot of miles in a Sierra when I was a delivery driver, and I liked it. Seeing a very tidy one recently started me musing on this sort of subject, and I spun a wee theory about the stages of a mass-market car's life cycle: Stage 1. They're the latest thing, they sell in large numbers, and they're a very common sight. Stage 2. A few years on they become a popular choice for second-hand buyers and they're still everywhere. About then they go out of production. Stage 3. A few more years down the line every banger dealer in the country is inundated with them, they're worth very little, and many go for scrap. Stage 4. They start to get uncommon and a few good examples begin to be bought by enthusiasts, although they're still worthless. Stage 5. The old bangers disappear completely, but the survivors are treated as classic cars. Prices stabilise or even start to rise, and most examples you see about are owned by enthusiasts. I reckon the Sierra (Cosworth excepted, which was an instant classic) is just getting into stage 4. The days when every banger dealer in the country was full of rusty Sierras are gone, and good examples are beginning to pass into the hands of enthusiasts. Conversely, the Cortina has now hit stage 5 - even the later variants, the process speeded up by how quickly the banger racing fraternity has killed off many examples - whereas the early variants of the Mondeo are at stage 3: they're just old bangers. Anything in that, you think...?
Bentley was going North up A3 follwed it into Wisley services. Massive, and had a supercharger on the front, normally livesa at Brooklands Museum apparently
i liked them because they had such a good chassis, and the 2 litre was quite a lusty engine. if you had a 1.6 you didn't have to slow down for corners
Yes, the old Sierra was nice to drive, although the 1600 version I drove wasn't exactly fast. That's a good thing because I was 17 at the time, hadn't long passed my test, hadn't driven anything bigger than my instructor's Hyundai, and wasn't used to rear-wheel-drive. The first time I drove it up a tight side street I nearly got stuck trying to back out, and I had more than one tail slide before I learned to treat it with respect on a wet road. I also had one big spin, but that was down to me being silly. The owner offered me that car for £200 when he wanted to get rid which, given that it had just had new tyres and a cylinder head rebuild (after he cleverly put diesel in it by mistake), would have been a good deal. But I was young, and it was too expensive to insure... Sierras are still reasonably common, though, whereas its great rival from the 80s is not: Apparently the MkII Vauxhall Cavalier is the most scrapped car in Britain. They always used to say the Vauxhall's engines were better but the Sierra had the better chassis. Judging from how few Cavaliers are still about, it seems that the Sierra was probably better built too...
i'd agree with that. the 2 litre, 16 valve vauhxhall lump was a corker. with carbs and mounted in a westfield or caterham 240bhp was commonplace and it remains that way still. fords have better chassis, are better built, vauxhalls have stronger engines
There's a chap on Detailing World with a Cavalier. Looks better than when it came out of the showroom. http://www.detailingworld.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=215153 Don't just read the first page - he cleaned the engine!
There is some seriously impressive work on that forum. The G reg MG Maestro looks like it came out of the factory this morning.
ooh i imported one of those, back in the day. wished i'd kept it for a later gf. if they had been rwd, i might have kept it myself, but plumped instead for a celica gt4 in the same colour which turned out to be a lemon...'luckily' someone fell asleep at the wheel on the m1 and drove into me, writing it off. so then i imported one of these:
