Minx & Sceptre memories

Your Land Rover vs Land Cruiser (30 March) article brought back memories of when I was 12 years old in 1971 enjoying family holidays at Abersoch, north-west Wales, where my parents kept a caravan. A lot of people used Land Rovers or Austin Champs to launch their speedboats from the soft sand there. In fact I can’t remember seeing so many Champs in one place.

However, it was the Land Rovers that got stuck trying to retrieve boats, and with the tide coming in, it wasn’t the beach tractor service that rescued them but the Austin Champs. They could pull the back end off a Land Rover.

Obviously, I’m biased as we had a 1951 Austin Champ, but it was way ahead of any Series Land Rover with its Your Letters, The Editor, CCW, Nick Larkin’s writeup on the Audax bodied Minx ( CCW 6 April) brought back many memories.

My first trip on four wheels was in July 1949 in a well worn 150,000 mile pre-war Vauxhall 10. The Vauxhall was with us a relatively short time. He was initially given pool cars, as I remember a blue Hillman Minx Phase III saloon, a Morris MO Oxford estate and an Austin A40 Devon station wagon.

Then came the first of his own company cars, a side-valve Minx estate dating from about 1953 which would have had a top speed of maybe 65mph with a following wind and have taken around 45 seconds to reach 60mph. Just because the auction houses don’t know what they’re talking about when describing classic cars coming up for auction that doesn’t mean CCW should make the same mistake!

I know Barons describes the Ford Cortina De Tomaso it is auctioning on 2930 April as a 1963 model, but one glance at the car tells you this car is the facelift MkI Cortina, which appeared in late 1964 for the 1965 model year.

It’s a very interesting car, one of only seven made for the Italian market and was said to produce 105bhp from its bored-out 1600cc engine, for 130mph. That’s Lotus Cortina performance in a much rarer car for only about half the price of the Lotus, if Barons’ estimate proves to be anywhere near the mark. Norman E Hawkes, Hessle, East Riding of Yorkshire

Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough, Cambs PE2 6EA. Or email editorial@classiccarweekly.co.uk