advertisement


Thatcher Statue

Up to a point, but the E-Type was never a mass-market car. My uncle drove a Humber Super Snipe, which was a lovely car, but my father’s first car was an Austin 1100, which was a bag of shite. Were many British cars much cop in the 1960s?
 
gintonic said:
our doubt it somehow. The inevitable happened.
Click to expand...

It is widely acknowledged that during the darkest days of BL, profits from Truck and Bus- until 1978 the second largest builder of vehicles over 16 tonnes- were used to prop up the ailing former BMC operations.

This had the effect of starving the Truck and Bus Division of funds to develop new models.

It has to be acknowledged that the Fixed Head 500 Series Diesel was a disaster, although with more funds, perhaps the project would have been successful...

Trucks- and especially- buses are on the road a lot longer than cars in general. The service life of a Bus is around 15+ years.

It is a fact the Spare Parts operations were highly profitable.

Of course many words have been written about BL's demise; I believe it started with political interference causing the merger of Leyland Motor Corporation and BMC.

Some excellent resources I use include Beyond Reality The twilight years of Leyland Bus by Doug Jack, a former Leyland Motors employee. :cool:

*Edited to include the Leyland Series 500 debacle.
 
Cheese said:
I thought the 3.6 litre engine built into the first E-types was already age-old in 1961 ?
Click to expand...
Yes (it was a 3.8 by the way) the engine wasn't new, but it was ahead of its time when it came out, and still very advanced for its day when introduced in the E-Type. But the E-Type also introduced other innovations, such as hydraulic disc brakes, which hadn't been seen on regular production cars at that point.
 
Monitor Gold 10 said:
It is widely acknowledged that during the darkest days of BL, profits from Truck and Bus- until 1978 the second largest builder of vehicles over 16 tonnes- were used to prop up the ailing former BMC operations.

This had the effect of starving the Truck and Bus Division of funds to develop new models.

It has to be acknowledged that the Fixed Head 500 Series Diesel was a disaster, although with more funds, perhaps the project would have been successful...

Trucks- and especially- buses are on the road a lot longer than cars in general. The service life of a Bus is around 15+ years.

It is a fact the Spare Parts operations were highly profitable.

Of course many words have been written about BL's demise; I believe it started with political interference causing the merger of Leyland Motor Corporation and BMC.

Some excellent resources I use include Beyond Reality The twilight years of Leyland Bus by Doug Jack, a former Leyland Motors employee. :cool:

*Edited to include the Leyland Series 500 debacle.
Click to expand...


:rolleyes: it is history, gone past, never to be resolved - time to move on......they were making such rubbish vehicles - Ford and the Japanese were so much better.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Yes (it was a 3.8 by the way) the engine wasn't new, but it was ahead of its time when it came out, and still very advanced for its day when introduced in the E-Type. But the E-Type also introduced other innovations, such as hydraulic disc brakes, which hadn't been seen on regular production cars at that point.
Click to expand...
Perhaps my ignorance is showing, but was it really so advanced? It was, I thought, a fairly conventional 6-cylinder with DOHC. This sort of technology goes back to the Peugeot 1913 Indianapolis motor that revolutionised Indy:

https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/...ts-technology-revolutionizes-racing/80726522/

And regular use of disc brakes on production cars was introduced on the 1950s' Citroën DS19, quite possibly the most innovative car ever made.
 
tones said:
Perhaps my ignorance is showing, but was it really so advanced? It was, I thought, a fairly conventional 6-cylinder with DOHC. This sort of technology goes back to the Peugeot 1913 Indianapolis motor that revolutionised Indy:

https://eu.indystar.com/story/news/...ts-technology-revolutionizes-racing/80726522/

And regular use of disc brakes on production cars was introduced on the 1950s' Citroën DS19, quite possibly the most innovative car ever made.
Click to expand...
When was the first? is a favourite pub quiz for car buffs. You get all sorts of anomalies, generally iterations that didn't really work at the time of cost an absolute fortune. In the case of the DS disc brakes, it's probable that they wouldn't have worked without the high pressure suspension hydraulics, which was great but added huge cost and complexity.
 
Discussed this statue with my old Dad, I cannot repeat what he said about the person it involves, but it revolved around a wall & men with guns lined up, then a can of petrol. As for the actual statue, he said straight away, belongs down a mineshaft.
 
Joe Hutch said:
Up to a point, but the E-Type was never a mass-market car. My uncle drove a Humber Super Snipe, which was a lovely car, but my father’s first car was an Austin 1100, which was a bag of shite. Were many British cars much cop in the 1960s?
Click to expand...
Two favourite cars, that I owned, from my yoof were a Rover 3500s and a 1969 Midget. Both deeply flawed, both fondly remembered
 
there is a person who drinks in my local saying that whilst he hates the person and everything she stood for, he finds the statue dribbling with broken eggs strangely arousing.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Yes (it was a 3.8 by the way) the engine wasn't new, but it was ahead of its time when it came out, and still very advanced for its day when introduced in the E-Type. But the E-Type also introduced other innovations, such as hydraulic disc brakes, which hadn't been seen on regular production cars at that point.
Click to expand...

Disc Brakes were fitted, to the front only, as standard on the Triumph TR3 in 1956, the first British production car to have them. Jaguar fitted them as an option from 1957 on the XK140 and as standard on the XK150 as well as the MKII in 1960. Jaguar always fitted discs on all four wheels unlike most other manufacturers.

The E type was very advanced for it`s time but like most Jaguars of the fifties and sixties (and most other British cars) it suffered from insufficient funds to develop it properly in the first place.
 
B.L. was always doomed to failure. Despite taking in virtually all of the "spare" UK car companies it simply wasn't big enough to enjoy the economies of scale (both in terms of buying components/raw materials and in development costs) to compete with giants like Ford and GM. When you add mis-management and a range where several models competed against each other that just sped up the decline.
 
Back to Thatcher's statue, I caught the tail end of a conversation on Radio 2 dinnertime saying that someone had also had a go at chipping the plinth away with a hammer too - A few thousand quid's worth of damage I think he said.
 
Joe Hutch said:
E-Type dates from 1961,
Click to expand...

I have the very dubious distinction of being in one of my more spectacular crashes between an E type Jag (the other one) and my E type Morris at the Swiss Cottage intersection. He was too fast off the lights and I was too slow through the lights. I ended up sitting in my seat but outside my car on a traffic island, having decapitated the sign.

Although he hit me amidships, I was prosecuted and fined after acting as my own defence. However, the Jag's owner and friends clubbed together and paid my fine. A most bizarre occurrence in about 1964. My girlfriend who I was en route to wondered where I'd got to. Bought the car for £7.10s in 1963; sold for scrap for 15s after the accident. E-types by gum!

As the chap said to his wife whilst reversing down his drive, " y'know, dear, this takes me back"
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top