Found pics

[slowanimals]

IMG_20201231_142318.jpg (2.9 MiB) Viewed 2782 times

[slowanimals]

Hillman Avenger Sunseeker, I only found out last year that these were available in two or four doors and the colour was slightly different and unique to each. I can remember knocking around in this during the summer of 1997 but not the registration. More recently I ended up buying the mk.1 Triumph seen in the background.

IMG_20201231_142333.jpg (2.68 MiB) Viewed 2782 times

[slowanimals]

IMG_20201231_142346.jpg (2.61 MiB) Viewed 2781 times

[mercrocker]

I love old photos like this....My old man with the Minx only had 4 cars in all the time he held a licence here, the Minx followed by a Viva HB and one of those FD Victor estates, a 2000SL. Great old barge that was!

Was there a later Avenger special in that yukky colour? I remember a neighbour having something like the Sunseeker but it was a 4 door with the bigger headlamps and a grubby vinyl top. I also recall a Top Hat special in blue with a white vinyl top. People often wonder why the Sunseeker didn't have a sunshine roof but of course the Avenger was one of those cars where the manufacturer recommended not to fit one!

[slowanimals]

There were a few different special Avengers, the Sunseeker and the Top Hat are the only two I can bring to mind at the moment. We came across a Top Hat for sale in a pub car park in rural Suffolk one sunny evening around 1998 or so, sign in the window said £400 I think. Into the pub we went, located the owner who was perfectly happy to lob the keys across to two total strangers so we could take it for a drive. It flew being a 1500 auto so it wasn't until a bend loomed that we realised the fucker was brakeless.. Gentle application of the handbrake slowed us enough to make the curve, turn around somewhere and take it very gingerly back to the pub. I haven't thought about that in years, it seems like a different world now.

[Hooli]

FB_IMG_1609431814476.jpg (182.33 KiB) Viewed 2767 times

[slowanimals]

Very early Hunter, SVX7D, reputed to have been under a sheet in the Braintree Rootes dealer showroom on launch day in 1966. It was fairly tender even in 1997,and the rolling shell was on the bay a year or so back.

IMG_20201231_142411.jpg (2.25 MiB) Viewed 2763 times

[slowanimals]

I think the A60 is still around, it was a fairly common sight around Colchester when I was a child in the eighties, unfortunately whoever bought it from the original owners robbed its plate, 6CWC.I last saw it in good hands in Clacton about ten years ago. JJB400D probably not.

IMG_20201231_142657.jpg (2.44 MiB) Viewed 2762 times

[slowanimals]

This was on ebay about two years ago plateraped and bearing a Dorset reg on nasty plastic plates. At least it survives, Connaught Green is a rare colour on these. Picture is from about 2000, he'd not long bought it from a caravan dealer near Bury St Edmunds where it had been used as a part ex on a caravan by its original owners.

IMG_20201231_142629.jpg (2.99 MiB) Viewed 2758 times

[mercrocker]

This early(ish) Mk 1 Hunter was still tooling round town in the mid 90s. It's gone to ground since, I hope it still lives somewhere.

Scan_20201231.jpg (308 KiB) Viewed 2757 times

Whilst I had the Rootes album and the scanner open, here's an interesting one. Don't know the coachbuilder (possibly Woodall-Nicholson?) but this was lurking in an area of the local scrappy sub-let to a classic dismantler. Fate again unknown.....Those extra side windows look distinctly FX4 to me.

Scan_20201231 (2).jpg (323.09 KiB) Viewed 2757 times