Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Then and Now No.2 - My how they change.

It's hard to believe that the deep red car in the foreground is the same in the following photo. Taken at a Southern Vales winery many years ago this 260 cu. in. V8 coupe is the same car that Roger has done such a great job on. Note the position of the outside mirror, the opening quarter window and the flat, round scoop.
It's a 302 now but there are a few other changes as well.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

John, I enjoy seeing these early photographs, they show a great history of the club and marque, I’m only a newbie, just 27 years of membership.
The historic photo shows both Nagaris’ with the small chrome door mirrors, they seem to have been common fitment to the early cars, most have since been replaced, usually by the ubiquitous XA Falcon variety, from your experience was there a problem with the view from them or were they simply too small? It appears that very few of those early cars now have original mirrors.
Was the V8 Mk7 one of the first to be fitted with a hatch, it seems to have been quite an innovative car.
Peter

John L said...

My experience is that they were indeed too small and really quite ineffective.
If I remember rightly, I don't think that Mk.7 had a hatch at all but I'm ready to be corrected. Perhaps Roger can enlighten us, or one of the Taylour brothers, I think Bill Taylour owned it at one stage.

John L said...

Oops. Changed my mind already. I've just had another look at the photo and I can see the hinges.

Colin said...

Peter Taylour purchased the car from Ballarat or Geelong in Victoria and it had a metal hatch which was chromed. Had chromed wheels too when Pete brought it home as did the other V8 Mark 7 I had in the early 70's. Pete's Maroon Mk 7 V8 was a great little car. I have brought Peter to this blog site and asked him to comment too. Regarding the XA mirrors, I suggest that when Bolwell upgraded the later Nagaris to the bigger mirrors as required by ADR's as with everything else Bollie people updated their cars. The little torpedoe mirrors are now rare to find, even my new Mk 5 has had ugly Torana one's fitted