Addicted to horspower

LETTER Damning with faint praise

Thank you for the article on the Shelby Mustang GT500 (Excess All OF THE MONTH Areas, February 2022). What a great looking car. One does get the impression however that the author was struggling to find good things to say about it. The term ‘damning with faint praise’ comes to mind. Like most US muscle cars of its era, brute force horsepower was considered superior to sophisticated underpinnings and handling. While Colin Chapman of Lotus fame was preaching ‘simplify, then add lightness,’ the Ford lads were saying ‘just add grunt.’

Still love to own one though... Ashley Walkley

Fellow 2CV saviour

In the February 2022 edition of

Classic Cars I read with interest the progress that Quentin is making with his Citroën 2CV and the outlay to date.

I bought a 1988 Charleston earlier in the year that was advertised on the internet; it looked fairly decent and Covid travel restrictions meant that I didn’t go to examine it before buying, instead getting it shipped home to Northern Ireland. It seemed to have been well cared-for with lots of new mechanical and electrical parts fitted. The front and rear wings were sound as were all the doors, though there was some filler at the bottom of the A-panels and the windscreen surround.

I thought about DIY but found a garage in Kingscourt County Cavan that specialises in 2CV reincarnation.

A body-off job ensued with a new windscreen scuttle, boot floor and rear valence. To complete the spend, I opted for a new galvanised chassis and after a full respray it’s back home.

I hope Quentin’s is finished soon. Michael Maguire

European adventure

A few weeks ago a new resident of the town came to the Porthcawl Museum in South Wales and donated a bag of documents and photograph albums that he had stumbled across in the loft of an empty house that he had just bought.

One of them contains photographs of what appears to be a car tour of Europe in two MG sports cars in 1934. Some show them driving around the Nürburgring; in a number of the images the cars can even be seen with a number of German troops inspecting them.

With the help of the MG Owners’ Club I was able to identify a Lagonda 2.0-litre 16/80 on the tour. Subsequent research via the Lagonda Club has revealed that WH 5554 is still on the road somewhere in Canada and was first registered in spring 1934. The Lagonda lapped the Nürburgring at speeds of up to 106mph in 1936, some 20mph in excess of the manufacturer’s listed maximum speed.

My research is still ongoing with the family history, which I eventually hope to link to the cars and various other documents in the bag. To date I have managed to provide an ancestor who is now living in South Africa with copies of letters to and from an army dentist who was a prisoner of war with the Japanese for around four years and may even have been on the tour. David Swidenbank