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Post by Dirty Epic on Jun 28, 2021 8:16:19 GMT
It's interesting that a fair few of the (West) German manufacturers died off post war like NSU and some of the ones who merged into Auto Union then VAG. VW owe a lot to British/Allied reconstruction too in enabling them to become the success they were from the 60's on and GM heavily backed Opel in the 60's - 80's period too. Not sure what the future brings for Opel in the PSA era I'm sure some of it's R&D will remain but whether mass manufacturing in Germany will is debatable certainly PSA seem to be improving the look of Vauxhall/Opel cars after a lot of neglect from GM in recent years. Also VW, BMW etc. do a lot of manufacturing even for it's own brand outside Germany too so it's a bit like how our car industry was at a cross roads 20 odd years ago.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on Jun 28, 2021 10:28:08 GMT
I can't see the Opel Vauxhall brands lasting unfortunately. The cars have developed a reputation for being unreliable over the last 15 year or so and the public don't tend to buy another after experiencing this kind of thing. Why would someone buy one of their cars when they can buy a competitor that is not only a popular design but comes with a far longer warranty? The answer is on the roads. You will see far more Kia and Hyundai stuff than Vauxhall.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Jun 28, 2021 12:46:46 GMT
I have to agree Del the newer Opel/Vauxhall models do look very Peugeot inspired to me and PSA will surely reach a point when there's one brand too many and for me Peugeot, Citroen and DS carry more appeal than Vauxhall does. They are trying the new Corsa and rumoured Astra seem good-ish but I do think ultimately it'll be a bit like Talbot after 5-7 years they'll kill the brand off. Hope I'm wrong.
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Jul 9, 2021 19:33:20 GMT
Jowett was another long gone British car make. They were made in Bradford and were a small scale manufacturer who had a brave go at the export or die car market after the war. They made a small van, which was also available as an estate, with side windows called the Bradford, which had a 1 litre flat twin engine, which dated all the way back to 1910, when the firm started up.
They then designed a very innovative car called the Javelin which came out in 1947, and it was advanced for the time, with a flat 4 engine and all round independent suspension, followed by a sports car derivative called the Jupiter.
The volume production which these excellent cars needed, due to the orders they had received was beyond Jowetts capacity, and they had problems with body pressing supplies, which led to them going bust in 1953.
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Villain
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Post by Villain on Jul 12, 2021 9:48:08 GMT
AEC at Southall built all kinds of stuff aside from commercial road vehicles, back in the '30s they built a series of Diesel powered Railcars for the Great Western railway, two of which are now preserved. Very interesting stuff about the British marques discussed further up the thread but some European firms which spring to mind are Innocenti, OSCA and Intermaccanica of Italy. Innocenti ceased production of BL's Mini under license in the mid '70s (from memory) but the factory was bought by Allesandro De Tomaso who then used it for producing the bodyshells for the Biturbo cars he launched a few years after he acquired Maserati from Citroen. OSCA was the small company set up by the Maserati brothers after they sold the family name and their huge factory in Modena to wealthy industrialist Count Adolfo Orsi, they carried on in a much smaller workshop until the mid '60s producing small but very fast racing cars and a series of small coupes. Intermeccanica seemed to come and go very quickly and only produced a small number of cars. Another great Italian name much missed is Lancia - even under Fiat's wing from 1969 onwards their cars were so well engineered that the cost of producing them sent them into liquidation. The severe rust issues caused by using cheap imported steel of inferior quality didn't help matters either. Villain
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Jul 26, 2021 19:05:22 GMT
On the British ones again, two of them seemed to get squeezed out because they had no obvious purpose.
Riley was one, originally independent, they had a massive range of cars, pretty much to suit any individual customer, so each car was practically custom made, this was hopelessly uneconomic and by the late 1930s they were close to collapse so Nuffield (Morris) bought them out. The problem was that there was no real home for the make, Morris were the value for money cars, MG were the sporty performance cars and Wolseley the more luxurious, quality end.
After the war, when Morris and Austin merged to form BMC in 1952, Riley did go their own way a bit with the very attractive RM series cars, but they ended up as badge engineered Austin's and were really duplicate Wolseleys.
Singer was the other, their problem was that they didn't seem to know what part of the market they were aiming at and did everything from small economy cars to high performance sports models. They got into difficulties after the war, a car called the SM1500 was an unattractive poor seller and they were taken over by the Rootes group, they became badge engineered Hillmans which weren't really necessary, Humber were the upmarket cars and Sunbeam the sporty ones.
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Bojan Scores
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Post by Bojan Scores on Aug 6, 2021 12:09:36 GMT
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Three Litre
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Post by Three Litre on Aug 6, 2021 12:14:43 GMT
They look the part i.e. old!
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Aug 6, 2021 12:46:39 GMT
I actually quite like it, based on the Morris J type.
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Post by Sam Tyler on Aug 6, 2021 13:40:24 GMT
There have been various press releases on these over the past few years such as this one from >>> Autoexpress <<< from November 2019 but I think the price would put many off. Although they are taking pre-orders I couldn't see a price on their website but other sites are suggesting that this relatively small van will cost in the region of £60k. For that price I'd sooner restore an original. Sam.
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