The British Motor Museum contains the world’s largest collection of historic British vehicles. It was a really impressive museum and worth a visit if you’re ever in the UK. It is a nice combination of early vehicles, examples of popular British cars, concept cars and competition cars. The museum is located in Warwick, near Birmingham, about an hour or so north of London on...
The National Motor Museum arose out of the collection of the previous Lord Montagu (3rd Baron Beaulieu). It is housed at the Montagu family estate at Beaulieu in the New Forest. Lord Montagu’s father was a keen early motoring enthusiast and his personal vehicles started out the collection. Starting with the five original cars in the 1950’s the museum has expanded out to hundreds...
The Alpine Eagle is a variant of the infamous 40/50 ‘Silver Ghost’. It was actually referred to by Rolls Royce as the Continental model. However, the Continental was a replica of the cars entered in the 1913 Austrian Alpine Trial. During the 1912 Trial, the three speed gearbox had proven insufficient. Therefore, four cars were prepared for the 1913 season with four speed gearboxes. ...
The Jaguar Heritage Collection was displayed near the historic Jaguar Factory at Browns Lane until that site was redeveloped in 2012. The collection is now split across a few museums, but the bulk of it can be found at the British Motor Museum. During a recent visit to the UK, I was able to tour the British Motor Museum. The Jaguar Heritage Collection is...
If car companies are looking for reasons why young people yearn for self driving cars, they need not look any further than the Seat Ibiza. I rented the Seat Ibiza for the weekend, and my conclusion was that I needed to write this review immediately. This is an important fact as once another 24 hours have elapsed, I doubt I will remember much about...
The online communities for collector cars are now on their third iteration. They started mostly as email lists, moved to forums and are increasingly moving to social media. This is not a good thing. The car forums and lists built a real sense of community and there was a lot of effort that went into many postings. Indeed, some individuals spent a lot of...
When I last replaced the battery in my W111, I was unable to fit the correct sized battery. In the end I fitted one smaller than I would have liked, but it was the only one that fit into the mounting frame I had. I knew the mounting frame was not original to the car as the previous owner purchased it on eBay. ...
In recent years a nice 560SL is going for 3-4x the price of other R107s. They have always been the most valuable of the series, but are they worth the extra money? I would argue they are not event he the best model of the series. They might be the newest, and have the largest engine, but that doesn’t make them the best....
I am no longer the owner of a Rover P5 Coupe. The car was really too far gone to practically save it. It needed pretty much everything. Instead, I found a new owner that is going to use it for spares to get three Rover P5 Coupe’s in much better condition back on the road. I wouldn’t normally like to see such a rare...
Before the boot lid can be attached to the car, the Citroen DS badges need to be mounted. This is something I have unsuccessfully been trying to do for a few weeks. I found a solution last night that works for me, no idea if this is the ‘correct’ way as I couldn’t find any reference on the internet. My car, being a 1970...
The saga of my non functional A/C is now over. The 300SE is blowing cold air. It would want to after all the parts I had to change to get this far. The final piece of the puzzle was the Klima relay. This relay controls the engagement of the compressor and had burned out when the clutch shorted. I ended up buying a rebuilt...
I have always admired the W116 model. However, since the introduction of the W126 in 1980 the W116 has lived in its shadow. My 450SLC has been my primary car for most of the time I have owned it, but with three children, this is no longer possible. As I needed something that could fit three child seats in a row, a W116 would...
My E-Type has had ongoing problems with the brakes holding on. This has been on and off since I bought the car in 2010. Over that time, I have pretty much renewed the entire braking system. Turns out, that might be part of the problem. What I have learned, is that the reproduction E-Type Master Cylinder can be problematic. So much so,...
My fight with the W126 Air Conditioning system is almost over. When I purchased the car, the A/C worked rather well. After the water pump gave out, it looks like it shorted out the compressor clutch. Changing out the clutch is not much different to changing out the whole compressor, so I sourced a new compressor and receiver/drier. This was rather irritating as working...
My efforts in getting the wiring right at the front of the DS continue to disappoint. This time, I made a harness to test multiple wires at the same time. This helped somewhat, but I think there may be something not hooked up right at the headlights. As my car has been fitted with relays, the headlights should both come on at the same...
One of the first and easiest jobs after the repaint was to fit the Citroen DS Mirrors. Before the repaint I was continually having the mirrors adjust themselves at speeds above 80km/h. That is, they would slowly fold inwards until they were touching the car. I was also disappointed with the quality of the previous mirrors, so purchased new ones of a higher quality. ...
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