Youngest A40

[Dave the rave]

“”By the mid-seventies Gab was just a rusty old banger with a couple of thousand miles behind her (she was a company rep's transport and when I bought her she'd already covered over one thousand miles””

This doesn’t seem to make sense Keith….. She was 10 years old by 1978….

[Keith Bennett]

Built in October '58, I got her in '66... so, nearly in her twenties by the mid-seventies Dave.

[Dave the rave]

Yes, but the mileages you quote don’t make sense…..”a couple of thousand miles by the mid 70s”……

[Keith Bennett]

Um, I think the mileage was something like 122,000 miles when she came to me in 1966, so another 8000-odd over the next eight or nine years sounds okay.

Bar has just put her finger on my numerical error - my statement regarding the early mileage should of course read "hundred thousand" rather than just "thousand". Apologies for the errors - this is the bloke who confusedly ordered a brake master cylinder recently rather than one for the clutch: sadly, the ol' brain isn't what it used to be.

[Dave the rave]

Aha….aha, aha, aha…. Obviously a Banbury thing….

[chrisjp]

"I still recall standing at grubby trade counters amongst professional mechanics, waiting for the inevitable negative response from a bored, disinterested storeman. Mercifully those days are past"

Even in 1969, when I first got my A40 and it had not long been discontinued, I still recall the agony of getting ANY spare part from grumpy partsmen in BMC main dealer parts departments. You'd have to queue for sometimes an hour or more, only to be confronted by a partsman who dismissed you as too young to know what you're talking about, and then pretend to misunderstand what part you wanted!
The ease with which parts can now be obtained for ANY car over the internet, and particularly for the A40 from Derek Minter, really is a blessing!

[exlkrs]

Funny how a thread started about the youngest A40 has turned into a thread about the oldest ones!!

[suehancock]

Very interesting, thanks for the info. My car Hyacinth fits this description and her last 4 digits on the chassis number are not far from yours 2770. She is a LHD in Canada, 1959 MK1.I cannot find the body number though. Is it under the grills between the wipers? I will have to look into getting a Heritage Certificate for her when I figure out how to do it.

[Keith Bennett]

On my right-hand MK1 the numbers were stamped onto a thin steel plate about a couple of inches long by around three-quarters of an inch wide, which was positioned on the edge of the scuttle just to the left of the windscreen wipers' motor before being anchored by one spot weld at either end and then painted in body colour when the entire shell was sprayed.