Exec Class car review 1977

[B16YUG]

Came across this looking for details of scale models from the Sweeney - seems they had some #HK ford press cars here.




HK regional identifier was allocated to Essex on the old system, I wonder if this was a supplying dealer that Euston or Ford UK used at the time or a place to register. Does anyone know the history associated with this?

Regional Identification

[B16YUG]

I haven't managed to confirm why all the Ford Press cars of the period were registered with VHK plates but this thread (excuse the site name)


link

Has a good open history of other cars from the period.

I presume that Ford Marketing/Press company had an affiliation with (or owned directly) a dealership in Essex and ordered/allocated or did all the pre-delivery inspection checks at an Essex based dealership at the time.

[D.C. Burtonshaw]

From vague info I have, HK was part of the Essex area for the Department of Transport who allocated the registration numbers to dealers and manufacturers. The press cars were probably directly registered at Ford UK, and didn't necessarily go through a dealer to registered to them as press/fleet/company cars.

However the local Ford dealer was Dagenham Motors for the local people who weren't Ford employees to buy their cars and they were conveniently next door to the old factory. I saw them once when I went on a factory tour in 1995. Many of the ex fleet cars ended up there as secondhand cars.

A story I remember from the previous forum was the poster said his friends dad actually bought NWC300P the white MK3 Cortina GT squad car in the Sweeney, in 1978 when it was 2 years old. But he was shocked to see it being screeched about in a series 3 repeat episode (sounds like Pay Off - where it got put through its paces!) and went back to Dagenham Motors and blew them up about it not knowing what it had been used for! They staff there didn't realise apparentley, but agreed to check the car over much more carefully for anything damaged and would replace anything free of charge, which satisfied him in the end!

Notice the Jupiter red (maroon) Granada Ghia MK2? That is actually the first of the two maroon Granada Ghias used by Cowley (Gordon Jackson) in The Professionals and here appears with its real life plate. It got false plates of YHJ766T for that series, the episodes being filmed the following Spring after its "Drive In" appearance.

As for registration numbers for regions of the country, the gold "Oh pell" as Tony Bastable pronounces it (!) Rekord, although an early LHD demo car, has a Bedfordshire area number, as British sister company Vauxhall probably registered it to themselves and were by now handling imports of Opels. The German model, predated it's British built droop snoot cousin the MK1 Carlton by about 9 months. Both cars are now much rarer than the rival Fords too nowadays, but I thought they were nice cars too.