Spot of the day DB 11

[Farmer matt]

We've swerved around hedgehogs and been on a diversion, but rattled through the last edition at record speed.

Keep those great spots and photos coming here......

 

Matt

[keefr22]

Spot of the day DB11 - very good!  

 

XJ-12 for the next one?!

 

Keith

[kiseca]

3 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Spot of the day DB11 - very good!  

 

XJ-12 for the next one?!

 

Keith

 

13 is very likely to be a Jaguar as well 😄

[Toftdale]

I'll kick off with this Lotus Carlton, spotted in a supermarket car park last week.  Not sure I've ever seen one in the wild before, not even back in the day  - Andy 

 

[Alan R]

A car so fast that the Daily Express(I think it was!) wanted it banned!

 

Cheers,

Alan.

 

[Zephyr]

What the heck... a Lotus shopping trolley?

I had no idea, had to search t'internet for info.

They look very sharp from some (most) angles.

[Farmer matt]

They were built as stock Omega/Carlton 3.0 GSi then shipped to Hethel. 

Do not remember actually seeing one either.

[Chimpion]

19 minutes ago, Farmer matt said:

They were built as stock Omega/Carlton 3.0 GSi then shipped to Hethel. 

Do not remember actually seeing one either.

Didn't the motorway police use them? If so, you probably saw one without realising it.

[Toftdale]

11 minutes ago, Chimpion said:

Didn't the motorway police use them? If so, you probably saw one without realising it.

Just the opposite,  thieves use to nick them knowing full well that they could not be caught.   Reg number 40RA became quite infamous after it was taken and went on a six week crime spree (the thieves,  not the car 😁) during which time they often taunted the police.   Hence the calls for them to be banned - Andy 

[SnøMotion]

Those 3 litre Vauxhalls/Opels were pretty fast in their own right, though. 

 

Needless reminiscing alert!

In the early 90s I used to hitch hike quite a bit and one Saturday teatime I decided to go from Sheffield to visit my girlfriend at the time in Birmingham. I got picked up at the M1 by a guy who did plane maintenance at East Midlands Airport and he dropped me at the A453/M1/A42 roundabout. I started walking down the A42 slip road as I was hitching and inadvertently ended up at the end of some chevrons between that and the M1 feeder to the A42. It was a bit of a sketchy place to be standing, but in no time at all a black 3.0 Senator came screeching to a halt so I could jump in. The car was being driven by a lad in his early 20s (same as me) who had just dropped his parents off at the theatre in Nottingham. It was his dad's car and he had to go and pick them up again later, so he said he was happy to drop me off at the door of my girlfriend's in Selly Oak. We just chatted away about the car and whatever else 20 year olds talked about in the early 90s and it was just a super relaxing journey. At one point I just happened to glance over at the dashboard and discovered we'd been doing an indicated 140 mph*† pretty much since he picked me up. We maintained that speed until we reached the city centre and traffic. 

 

Martin

 

* Other driving speeds are available. 

† Don't do this at home, kids.

[keefr22]

3 hours ago, Toftdale said:

I'll kick off with this Lotus Carlton, spotted in a supermarket car park last week. 

 

There's one for sale in a dealer I didn't know about just down the road, who seems to specialise in expensive machinery - price? £130,000......!!

 

My son's mate has two of them....!!

 

Keith

[kiseca]

I don't think I've ever seen one either, though I may have come across one at a car show and forgotten. I think it makes sense that they were rarely spotted in the wild. They are legends now but when they were on sale most buyers just went for an M5 (fast enough, more refined, interior and bonnet badge more appropriate for a 50 grand car at the time) and most magazine tests I saw preferred the M5 too. The Lotus was faster and handled better but wasn't as comfortable, the gearchange and engine were less refined, the ride was more fidgety. And the interior felt cheap for the price. If you wanted a 5 seater executive express with extra punch as your daily driver, the BMW was the better package overall and with fewer compromises (or at least better balanced compromises for the job it did as a new car)

 

Nowadays noone's going to consider a Lotus Carlton as the family's daily driver and office commuter so the performance and handling become more important, the Carlton dashboard becomes less important and the badge less so too because an E34 is also now just an old car to most people.

 

Bottom line, I don't think they sold all that many of them.

 

Me, I think I'd have bought the Lotus 😂

Edited October 3 by kiseca

[pigsty]

56 minutes ago, kiseca said:

They are legends now but when they were on sale most buyers just went for an M5 (fast enough, more refined, interior and bonnet badge more appropriate for a 50 grand car at the time) and most magazine tests I saw preferred the M5 too. The Lotus was faster and handled better but wasn't as comfortable, the gearchange and engine were less refined, the ride was more fidgety. And the interior felt cheap for the price. If you wanted a 5 seater executive express with extra punch as your daily driver, the BMW was the better package overall and with fewer compromises (or at least better balanced compromises for the job it did as a new car)

And yet, with all that being true, did anyone hop up and down and shriek and demand the M5 be banned?  Of course not.  It's either:

• we hate this, it's the only thing like it that we've ever heard of, let's ban it and that'll be the problem solved
• it's okay for BMWs to go like stink with a wardrobe in the boot - but a Vauxhall?  Ban it!  Burn the witch!

Or, just as likely, both.

[keefr22]

One from earlier - 68 Mustang notchback in turqoise - at least I think it was a 68, just glimpsed it in a car park behind a hedge as I drove past! Was definitely a turquoise Mustang notchback!

 

Oh and yeaterday one of those new Ford Crapi' s (not a typo!!) - that's three I've seen now, they must be getting more popular (not getting any better looking though...!! 🤣 )

 

Keith

[GiampieroSilvestri]

Opel had the idea to put the engine of the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 in the second Omega.A couple of test cars were built but the engine was to powerful for the original gear box that always broke after a few kilometres.

 

Saluti

 

Giampiero

Edited October 3 by GiampieroSilvestri

[johnlambert]

I've done my first track day, with a classic car club, at Curborough sprint course. There was a good variety of cars in attendance.

 

My car is the black Fiesta behind the silver Volvo.
 

[kiseca]

2 hours ago, pigsty said:

And yet, with all that being true, did anyone hop up and down and shriek and demand the M5 be banned?  Of course not.  It's either:

• we hate this, it's the only thing like it that we've ever heard of, let's ban it and that'll be the problem solved
• it's okay for BMWs to go like stink with a wardrobe in the boot - but a Vauxhall?  Ban it!  Burn the witch!

Or, just as likely, both.

 

I know what you mean and I agree. Applying logic won't help anyone understand it though. It was all about figures that fit in a newspaper headline. The Carlton could do 175mph. BMW limited the M5 to 155mph electronically. In its day, no Ferrari could match that apart from the Testarossa and the F40. No Porsche on sale could match it at all, you'd need a 959 and I think those were out of production by then.

 

Also, the Carlton could dip under 5 seconds to 60mph. The M5 couldn't. Today you can't even call your hatch hot if it needs more than 5 seconds to get to 60, but in the Carlton's day, under 5 seconds was sensational and hardly anything could do it. A Testarossa couldn't. I am pretty sure a 911 Turbo couldn't, either. The cars that could, could probably be counted on one hand. The 959, F40, Esprit Turbo SE, Corvette ZR-1, and the Vauxhall engined Caterham Seven.

 

Maybe the Westfield SEiGHT (or something like that) could manage it, and perhaps a TVR or two from that era? But I think TVRs didn't crack that barrier until the Griffith. Anyway, I digress.

 

Recently a Lucid Air Sapphire clocked 60 in 1.88 seconds. I think, considering how reluctant the Carlton's gearshift apparently was, the big Vauxhall possibly spent 1.88 seconds of its 0-60 time just on gearchanges alone. Still, its acceleration was sensational and combined with its  top speed astonishing top speed, it made a great headline for any newspaper that really didn't give a crap about people's safety but sure cared a lot about selling more newspapers, and outrage seems to sell really, really well.

 

Never mind that 155mph is more than enough to wipe out everyone in the car and a bunch of people outside of it too. Never mind that BMW sold 12 of its 4 door missiles for every Carlton sold. Never mind that a Carlton ended up being twice as rare as a Countach, and cost more than the aforementioned Esprit SE. You couldn't say that your BMW family car was faster than a Ferrari, but you could say that about a Vauxhall, and that's all that mattered. Then and still now, that was enough. Logic and relevant facts be damned. Throw a few headlines together, draw some conclusions that are absurd and unprovable but are pretty difficult to prove wrong too, sell lots of papers, give a car a reputation that sticks with it for eternity after it quietly made a loss for its manufacturer.

 

Of course now we know that Carltons didn't typically end up as huge fireballs that wiped out an entire family and their picnic basket, but when the car was new it was impossible to say, as a fact, that won't happen. It's no more dangerous than any other 170mph car, and it's no more dangerous than a 155mph M5.

 

 

[Kiwidave4]

The MGA shows the advantage of aluminium panels - they are the bits without the rust stain! 

35 minutes ago, johnlambert said:

I've done my first track day, with a classic car club, at Curborough sprint course. There was a good variety of cars in attendance.

 

 

[Kiwidave4]

Not strictly my spot but I thought it might be of interest. My daughter lives in the big smoke and yesterday visited a photo exhibition. In the foyer was this TC promoting another event so she grabbed a snap for me. 

First thing I noticed was the 'Spirit of Ecstasy'.

Edited October 3 by Kiwidave4
grammar

[Admiral Puff]

Probably has a sticker on the fuel tank saying "My other car is a Rolls-Royce" ...

[johnlambert]

5 hours ago, Kiwidave4 said:

The MGA shows the advantage of aluminium panels - they are the bits without the rust stain! 

 

The door panel on the passenger (LHD car, remember) is practically a work of modern art.

 

 

The underside of the car and the mechanicals are supposed to be in very good shape. I had a passenger ride and it certainly seemed to go perfectly well.

[HK-500]

It reminds me strongly about the "jewels" made out of Fordite😉

[Farmer matt]

1958 TR3A

 

 

Matt

 

[Chimpion]

This is just over a week old from a holiday in Greece. We hired a car in Athens and drove to Delphi, and in the other direction passed at least two Citroen SMs (I was too focussed on my  rear view mirror to notice at first - if you've ever driven in Greece, you'll know why!). A few days later, at the Epidauros archaelogical site (which is around 4 hours drive from Delphi), these were in the car-park. I assume they're the same ones I saw earlier. It's rare to see one of these, but there were six of them in total (one is parked out-of-shot).

 

 

[kiseca]

I used to walk past a beaten up SM parked on a street in London on my way between Waterloo Station and the office. It was parked between two or three similarly neglected DSs. None of them looked like they'd moved in years.

 

That was not long before Covid. Lockdown. They may well still be there, but even at the time, with the classic car market ballooning like it was, I couldn't believe an SM was just sitting there getting filthy.

Edited October 4 by kiseca