Published: November 16, 2015, 10:05 AM
Updated: November 23, 2021, 2:42 PM
British Car Day in Upper Canada1
As Brit as it gets!1
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The quirky charm of older British cars
Every year, the Toronto Triumph Club organizes British Car Day at Bronte Park in Oakville, Ontario (formerly known as Upper Canada) – solid British territory during the War of 1812. The display is always an orgy of automotive nostalgia and eye candy for those of us seduced by the quirky charm of older British cars, oil leaks and Prince-of-Darkness jokes notwithstanding. Among the hundreds of MGs, Triumphs, Jaguars and Morgans and other less-known brands on display this year, here are a few that caught our eye.
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1986 Ford Capri
Not many Fords appear at BCD, but this late-model Capri still looks good to our eyes -- and surprisingly modern. In production from 1969 to 1986, the Capri was Ford Europe’s equivalent to the Mustang, suitably scaled down and with smaller, mostly four-cylinder engines to suit European driving conditions. This third-generation Capri 280 appears to be one of the limited-edition “last run” models built in 1986, powered by a 2.8-litre V-6. In the Seventies the Capri was sold in North America as a Mercury.
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Bug-eye Sprite
For shade-tree wrenchers, one of the appeals of old cars is their underhood accessibility. And accessibility doesn’t come much wider-open than on this immaculate Austin-Healey “Bugeye” Sprite. The Gen-1 Austin-Healey Sprite always did have a one-piece front shell that opened in its entirety, but the original design was hinged at the rear. This front-hinged conversion allows much easier access to the mighty powerhouse below (this one looks modified, but the original stock engine was all of 948 cc).
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British by way of Italy
What’s this pretty little thing? Would you believe Innocenti? In the 1960s, BMC’s Italian partner packaged BMC mechanical hardware -- in this case, the Austin-Healey Sprite – into its own bodies. Styled by Ghia, the car was originally a roadster, albeit somewhat larger and more “luxurious” (e.g., it had wind-up windows) than the Sprite. In 1966, the car was redesigned to be offered only as a coupe like this one here. Like most of the Spyders, the coupe was powered by a Sprite 1,098-cc engine.
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MG-F, not a TF!
Here in North America it’s easy to believe MG expired when the MGB and Midget were euthanised in 1980. Not so. Between 1993 and 1995 Rover Group reskinned the MGB and sold it with a 3.9-litre V-8 as the MG RV8. Then, soon after the BMW takeover, Rover Group launched the MGF, a mid-engined rival to the Mazda Miata. Powered by a high-tech 1.8-litre engine, it was built from 1995 until MG Rover collapsed in 2005, and from 2007-2011 under new Chinese ownership. The F was never exported to North America but quite a few earlier ones appear to have emigrated as personal imports.
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MG Magnette
Something else North Americans may not know about MG is that the brand made saloon cars – er, sedans. To create the 1953-1958 Magnette, MG revived a name from its pre-war sports cars, borrowed the sleek body from BMC sister brand Wolseley, and installed the twin-carburetor 1.5-litre engine from the MG-A sports car. Technically, the Magnette was notable for being one of the first cars to employ rack-and-pinion steering. It also featured a cabin lavishly lathered in leather and timber, making it something of a poor man’s Jaguar.
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MGA
Ah yes, the MGA. British car designers sure knew how to do curves back in the 50s. The voluptuous 1955-1962 A looked like it came from a different planet than its predecessor, the TF, which still wore design cues from the 1930s. It even made its successor, the MGB, look decidedly staid in comparison. Under the skin the MGA was pretty simple stuff, though there was a short-lived Twin Cam version that also benefited from ahead-of-their-time four-wheel disc brakes. The Twin Cam engine looked great on paper and under the hood, and even powered an MG prototype to a land speed record of 410 km/h in 1957, but Its success as a production car was curtailed by terminal unreliability.
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'90s-era Lotus Elan
The Lotus Elan of the 1960s and 70s was a little jewel of a car that, more than any other, inspired the original Mazda Miata. Largely forgotten is Lotus’s attempt – under GM ownership – at an Elan come-back in the early ‘90s. In its own way the Elan M100 was a real looker, and by all accounts it steered and cornered brilliantly, despite the sacrilege of being front-wheel driven by an Isuzu engine. Ironically, competition from the Miata probably also did more than anything else to hasten the Elan’s premature demise in 1995, though production continued in Korea for a few years, after Kia acquired the rights to the design.
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Lotus 340R
Lotus got its groove back with the mid-engined Elise in 2000 Powered initially by the 1.8-litre Rover K-Series engine, the tiny Elise revived the Lotus formula of extracting big performance from small engines by “adding lightness.” The Elise-based limited-edition 340R took the bare-bones concept even further. With its tuned engine and open-wheel, windowless and roofless body, the 340R was intended as a track toy and would not be road legal in most jurisdictions. Reportedly, the entire 340-car production run sold out before production even started. Obviously, at least one of them ended up in Canada …
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Modified MGB V-8
For a while in the Seventies the MG factory built V- versions of the MGB GT using the aluminum 3.5-litre Rover (originally Buick) V-8 that was actually lighter than the B’s original 1.8-litre cast-iron “four.” This one-off pecimen, however, goes big with a modified Ford 302 V-8. The spec sheet claims 285 hp at the rear wheels, equivalent to well over 300 at the flywheel. A Tremec 5-speed gearbox and Mustang rear axle help relay the power to the pavement while extensively modernised four-wheel-disc brakes and coil-over suspension aim to keep all the bonus brawn under control.
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A real Mini van
So Chrysler claims to have invented the minivan in 1983? We don’t think so. BMC was building a van version of the original Mini at least 20 years before Chrysler came up with its people-mover. And the panel van was only one among many spin-offs from Alec Issigonis’s revolutionary 10-foot-long sedan. There was also a pick-up, a “woodie” wagon, and even the beach-buggyesque Mini Moke. Even less well known over here were the sporty-ish Riley Elf and luxuri-ish Wolseley Hornet derivatives with their conventional box-on-the-back trunks and upright I-wannabe-a-Bentley-when-I-grow-up grilles.
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Morris Minor vs. Ford Anglia
Enthusiasm for old British iron doesn’t have to come in the shape of an MG roadster or Jaguar sedan. This pair represents the econoboxes of their time. And despite their contrasting body styles, they were deadly rivals -- at least for a time. Remarkably, the Morris Minor (the black car) was in production largely unchanged from 1948 to 1972, while over the same period its Ford rival went through four distinct iterations, from the upright prewar-style Popular/Prefect through the 1953-1959 100E and the 1959-1967 Anglia 105E (the white car in the picture) to the first-generation Ford Escort which replaced the Anglia in 1968.
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Triumph TR7
The story goes that Triumph’s wedgy 1975 successor to the classic TR6 roadster was first launched as an unfortunate-looking coupe because the all-important U.S. market was expected to outlaw convertibles in the name of safety. The 2.0-litre four-cylinder coupe was every bit as much a dog as it looked, but after the U.S. regs failed to materialize, the TR7 became the convertible it always should have been. It even became available as the TR8 with that ubiquitous Rover-nee-Buick 3.5-litre aluminum V-8. But by the time Triumph had turned it into a half-decent car, parent company British Leyland was unravelling, and TR7 production ceased in 1981.
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TVR V8
Like most boutique British firms, TVR had a chequered history of making-it-up-as-they-went-along car building, not to mention serial name changes for cars that all seemed to look alike. So with apologies to TVR cognoscenti, we’re not even sure if this is a Grantura or a Griffith or a Vixen or a Tuscan. But the takeaway here is that some versions of these minuscule glass-fibre-bodied lightweights – originally designed to be powered by small four-cylinder engines -- were built with 289-CID (4.7-litre) Mustang V-8s. Claimed top speed was 250 km/h, and we’re guessing the driver’s life expectancy was about the same as the time it took to get up to that speed.
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Morgan - Aargh!
Pretty much by definition, if you’ve got the British-car bug you’ve also gotta have a sense of humour. We spotted this “bumper sticker” trapped under the leading edge of the hood of a Morgan.
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Morgan Three-wheeler
This classic Morgan Three-wheeler epitomizes both the quirkiness and the charm that keeps vintage British cars popular here in the colonies,
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