Hi all, I have been uns*bscribe for 5 weeks due to a trip to New Zealand.
Great to see the list just rolls along.
My wife and I spent a month in Nelson on the South island.
Apparently, in the 60's and 70's Nelson had a car assembly plant that
assembled a host of Brit vehicles, mostly British Leyland. There are lots of
Brit cars floating about. Loads of Hunters, Minxs, Sunbeams, Humbers,
Triumphs, Rovers, Austins and Morris. Some of these cars were in mint shape
too.
I saw three split window Morris Minors that were daily drivers and a Humber
80 which was a rebadged Minx.
Ian , from the NZ club gave me a name of a chap in Nelson and we were able
to visit with Bruce and Julie one Sunday afternoon. He has a red Series 1 in
nice shape...overdrive and weber. Bruce and I went out for a run on the
backroads and he even let me drive it ! Eh Chuck!
He claims to know of two other Alpines in the area and a couple of
Rapiers...I saw three in my travels. I talked to a car salesman at a lot
that was into Brit stuff and he said they could not sell Hunters and did
not like to take them on trade. I was not able to find out if these cars had
the Holbay fitted or not.
Anyway, it was so neat to cycle down the street and see all these old cars
being used as daily drivers. Bruce has an interesting system to replace the
lead in petrol. It consists of an adjustable drip system of lead additive
which is sucked into the engine via a vacuum hose to the intake manifold. I
found this kit in the local autoparts store at $69 NZ. Has anybody had any
experience with this kit.?
I finally got my Alpine out of the back of the garage today, headed off the
island for a trip up the highway. It was a sunny day but not warm enough to
take the hardtop off. Car ran great...for 36 years old!!
Tony
1963 Series 2 Alpine
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