The most boring classic in history?

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Karel Vermeer is always making us happy with the fruits of his many travels to France. A few weeks ago week while crossing Belgium he stopped at a classic car show at Weelde. Now you can easily conclude these are all average sixties CARS. fORD 12m, MG TD, Unimog, Citroen 2CV, Renault Dauphine, NSU Prinz. Typical everyday cars, charateristic for late sixties, early seventies western Europe. Especially the nondescript german Ford 12M is ultraboring of course... NOT so to your editor. Karel did it again! You should know that we owned a very identical 1967 12M in this exact vibrant beige in 1977/1978. It probably was the cheapest car we ever owned at 45 dutch guilders (Euro 20)... including half-full  tank of petrol. The earlier owner was an engineer with Fokker and the car had no(zero!) issues when we bought. Just slightly tired with starting corrosion issues showing at the top in the front wings. The Fokker man had this cleverly mended with small alloy applications. Looked very professional. To those who don't know these Fords, they have an extremely sturdy V4. Over a period of 12 months I had only one issue. Backing up at a farm near Basel in Switzerland the right rear wheel fell off! During the long night trip with heavy rain all the way down the Autobahn from Amsterdam nobody of us had heard the singing wheal bearing. Ok, no sweat, we started the repair and found that the remains of the bearing were sort of welded to the axle stub. No way to get off the inner bearing shell despite hammers and large spanners borrowed from a local combine repair dude (this line of job). Finally we gave up and asked the combine nutter for help. I'll never forget, what we couldn't get fixed with big pliers and all...this chap maneged to do with a single bare hand. He just pulled off the beaqring shell with finger and thumb!  Two hours later we took off with fully repaired Ford V4. Boring? Yes, it was the very last problem I had with the car. Sold it three months later with a 100 Euro profit including 3 months guarantee. Have a great week.  

     

Kommentar abgeben...