Voitures Anciennes

[widge]

Day one, photoshoot one. Generally speaking, classic cars gradually disappear from the streets when the leaves begin to fall in autumn. They only reappear when the green leaves return to the trees. Preferably when it is dry and the sun is shining. In this way the Citroën DS embodies the French dream: we are going where the sun shines brightly, holidays forever. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, such as visiting family on New Year's Day.

Lovely cars, there is a dutch guy who lives near us who loves restoring DS's, in doing so he ended up sourcing and buying and selling parts for his hobby, and ended up torning it into a business.
https://www.citart.com/en/

[RobertArthur]

Nice Lamborghini, not classic and much too low for me.

[RobertArthur]

Really classic this VW, 1937. It took a collector almost eight years to rebuild it: a W30, of which only the chassis remained. Now the world's oldest VW Beetle can be found in the district of Hameln-Pyrmont. With road approval by TÜV Nord where a certain Thomas Reich was responsible for this technical inspection, here taking pictures of this "Ur-Käfer".

‘It's driving in its original state, back to the roots, so to speak – and it's loud,’ says owner Traugott Grundmann about the 23-horsepower car. It gets bumpy at speeds above 80 kilometres per hour. According to the TÜV, the car can reach speeds of 100 kilometres per hour. The TÜV has also confirmed the authenticity of the chassis. According to the TÜV, there is no evidence of any other remaining frames or bodies. This means that the rebuilt car is considered the world's oldest VW Beetle. With the comfort of the 1930's: for the collector, the car is rather cramped. ‘People used to be smaller,’ he says. Anyone over 1.80 metres tall would have trouble stretching their legs under the steering wheel. Grundmann can still manage it – but he has to hunch over to see out of the windscreen.

Almost all prototypes were scrapped during the Second World War. This can be seen in pictures that the collector has hung in a hall in his exhibition. ‘The material was needed,’ said Grundmann. The chassis with the number 26 had travelled a good 56,000 kilometres by then. In 1937, the former Porsche engineering office, with the support of Mercedes, built the car as the Volkswagen W30. ‘These 30 test cars were built on behalf of Ferdinand Porsche for a large-scale road test and are considered the direct precursors of the later VW Beetle,’ said TÜV Nord.


Source.

[RobertArthur]

Model T or Cadillac?

[RobertArthur]

Winter, January 1979, where is my VW Beetle.

[Hotrodder]

You can bet, when he digs it out, it will start.

[RobertArthur]

This afternoon, I saw a beautiful 1971 V12 engine in a museum, 430 hp, 2550 kg. Perhaps @Hotodder could draw inspiration from this for a spectacular DIY project, a super T-Ford, it occurred to me.

[Hotrodder]

Funny you should mention that idea. In the 70s I was considering buying a "V12 engined Ford model T "Desperado". It was already a well-known car doing the show circuit when I saw it at the Chelsea Cruise. Very nicely built and well detailed it had a price of £2000 which was a lot of dosh at the time. I was considering getting a loan but then reality kicked in. I had limited garage space at the time and was unemployed. You can Google the term in quotes above to find a few photos.

Regarding your V12.................No amount of chrome would make that thing pretty. Having said that, at a custom car show in LA I saw a motorcycle with an Allison V16 aircraft engine. It was meant to be a trike but had four wheels (two up front) that looked a bit pigeon toed being bent by the excessive weight.

[RobertArthur]

Hotrodder, this man-sized engine, about as tall as me (almost two metres), is a stationary diesel that runs smoothly at a constant speed of 1500 rpm. And it still does: when that colossus was started yesterday afternoon, I immediately noticed how quietly and smoothly it ran. A 12-in-line engine set up next to it also clearly showed how much power and torque it produced, but sounded a little less refined.

This engine comes from a generator set belonging to the Zuid-Holland dune water company in Katwijk aan Zee, and was donated to the "Kromhout Museum" in 2001. This engine was part of the emergency power generator for the Hague dune water pipeline. The generator consisted of two 12-TV 117 engines with exhaust gas turbochargers, which were positioned with their flywheels facing each other and a dynamo mounted between them. To maintain pressure in the pipe system during the time needed to start the emergency generator and synchronise the two engines, one turning to the left and the other to the right, the water tower was used.

I readily admit that this is a side step that does not entirely fit under the umbrella of classic cars, but when I heard that sonorous sound of that V12, I immediately thought of V8 engines. Still, walking around among dozens of old ship engines, stationary engines and a few aircraft engines and the unmistakable smell of lubricating oil and diesel fuel, it was pure enjoyment.

[Hotrodder]

I was working for an electrical contractor a few years before coming to France. The work was cabling the new Global computer centre for a major UK bank. Their backup power system consisted to two huge marine engines driving independent generators that were set up to kick in if the mains power failed. It was tested one day and the backup engine fired up to full revs within the designed 60 seconds. For the rest of the day there were execs running around with long faces. They had not realised that halfway through the time it took for the huge engine to gain the required revolutions, most of the computers crashed and the estimated loss to the bank was somewhere in the region of £100k. Oh dear, what a shame.