Voitures Anciennes

[Hotrodder]

I can see it might be a matter of taste.........but there seems to be little choice today if they only fit black at the factory.

[RobertArthur]

Another modern classic sports car, made by Honda, without black wheels. Last week I visited a nephew of mine whom I hadn’t seen for about five years. It turned out he owns a Honda S2000 roadster. The design philosophy behind it really appealed to me because it tied in perfectly with a cry you sometimes hear from today's drivers: ‘I want my switches back!’ Former Chief Engineer Shigeru Uehara revealed in an interview: "You will be surprised to know that we had very little input from the marketing people. This was a deliberate move, as we wanted to create something to please us as an engineering team, rather than try and please everyone. If you listen to everyone, included everything they ask for, all cars end up the same. We wanted a vehicle that was more focused - more Honda."

The whole design story with one interesting detail, actually not a detail at all: keep everything the driver needs within reach, keep it intuitive, he or she needs to focus on what’s happening on the road ahead, not on a large infotainment screen. To quote a US release note: "As with the S2000's exterior, the central design theme of the roadster's interior is performance. Honda engineers designed the interior to contribute to what they call an "interfusion" between the driver and the car. The conceptual model for the S2000 interior is a modern Formula 1 car's cockpit. Outward visibility, simplicity of controls, control feel, comfort -- both machines have these needs in common. Before production, the interior design was extensively tested, including wind-tunnel testing and over 20,000 miles of real-world driving in what Honda calls the maturing phase of the design. It is during this phase of development that details such as control placement, seating and driver visibility are finalized." The result in pictures and again more information, also in Honda's European Media Newsroom.

How to rip up the rulebook.

[RobertArthur]

How a technically innovative and simple automatic gearbox still failed to win people over. The little DAF soon gained a reputation as a car for older people who couldn’t change gears. For some young people, it was a car you didn’t want to be seen in, as if you’d ended up in a mobility scooter a bit too early. And yet, when the traffic lights turned green, those little DAFs outpaced all the other cars. Always the optimum torque with the Variomatic gearbox, this 1958 DAF 600.

And yet, these reliable, agile cars demonstrated what they were capable of in 1968 at the (in)famous London-Sidney Rally. Departure from the Crystal Palace circuit and sponsored by the Daily Express and the Sidney Telegraph. With their 1100cc engines, the DAFs were the smallest cars in the field, but performed surprisingly well. Rob Slotemaker and Rob Janssen finished 17th out of the 56 cars that crossed the finish line in Sydney on 18 December – just over half of the field that had set off from London on 24 November. The other DAF, driven by Van Lennep and Hissink, fell a total of 24 hours behind following a crash in Turkey, but was still just able to board the ship for the nine-day crossing from India to Australia, to complete the final leg of the gruelling journey there.

[RobertArthur]

Long time no see, a 1968 Volvo station wagon referred to by type 21/1341P. It began with the PV444, then the second version the PV544. The Amazon, a more modern design, was more expensive. This one is a specific variant of the Volvo Amazon Estate (P220), produced between 1962 and 1969. This model was the direct precursor to the modern Volvo family estates. I can’t remember ever seeing a single one in France, but the further north you go, the more likely it gets.