Mirror, signal, hand over cash
FOR ME, the best part of visiting any classic car show is scouring the autojumble. Auto Moto d’Epoca in Padua, Italy, can usually be relied upon to throw up something really unusual, and my favourite find there was a huge wrought-iron gate from the Alfa factory in Naples, complete with a skeletal iron version of the Alfa badge as a centrepiece. Sadly, it wouldn’t quite fit in the overhead locker on my easy Jet flight home.
The NEC, Birmingham, doesn’t have the glamour of Padua. In fact, it’s one of my least favourite places on Earth, which is partly why I’ve resisted going to the annual Classic Motor Show in November for the past few years. This time, however, I thought I’d give it another chance – and I’m glad I did, because it was a really good event, with an amazingly varied and eclectic array of cars.
The autojumble wasn’t bad, either, and while browsing the stalls I remembered that I needed an interior mirror for the Land Rover. It had a horrible modern plastic thing when I bought it, which I quickly replaced with a more period version found at Beaulieu a couple of years ago. That did the job, but not terrifically well, as I soon found out when I was using the vehicle on the road.
The problem is that any mirror stem has to be screwed onto the vertical face of the windscreen header rail, which means that the vast majority of mirrors available – new or used – end up slightly too high to give me the right viewing angle through the Landy’s truck cab rear window. I found myself having to hunch down in the seat to be able to see the road behind, which wasn’t comfortable or convenient.
However, at the NEC show I spotted a period-style mirror (made, I suspect, in China) that had a usefully cranked stem to
give a couple of inches of ‘drop’. Not only that, but the stem is also telescopic, so it can be adjusted to exactly the right position and then locked in place with a knurled ferrule. Fifteen quid? Done!
Of course, shiny chrome is hardly appropriate to a Land Rover but a quick once-over with wet-and-dry and a dusting of grey aerosol will soon sort that, and I can now look forward – or rather, backward – to see exactly whom I’m holding up behind me.