It was £15k plus £5k for, literally, the equivalent of a large Sprinter van of spares, most new.
The car had only a few hundred miles on the clock since being built
At the moment similar but v well used (70k+ miles) are on sale in the uk at £25k
The 96 was a great car to roll. We did it on the top of Turini on the ‘71 Monte. We were the tyre/weather crew for a 3 car semi works Saab team so we’re doing the stage about 2-3 hours ahead of the competitors.
Came round a corner, on hard packed snow n ice at full chat and sliding - to find animals on the road. Nils tried to avoid them and we rolled but landed back on our wheels and continued with just minor damage!
Wow, good value indeed George. No wonder it was snapped up. I could have been tempted myself.
I was a keen rally enthusiast in the seventies. Well, rally mad really.
In '75 I was working as debutant programmer for Fiat England in Brentford and one lunchtime I read in Motoring News that the Chequered Flag in Chiswick had started to campaign a Stratos. So the following day I popped down to have a look at lunchtime.
I got on well with the chief mechanic, Ron Pellett, and I actually sorted some spares they needed (Fiat/Lancia were being “difficult” as they saw them as “unauthorised” privateers) So, Ron asked me if I’d like to co-drive the tyre truck on the Scottish rally. I then did quite a few events with them including the Welsh and the Circuit of Ireland.
In between events we used to go testing on the Bagshot tank proving grounds where I was happy to act as ballast in the navigators seat. I got to sit with some good drivers that way. Tony Pond probably freighted me the most
My last direct involvement with rallying was in '77 or '78 when I convinced a couple of colleagues to help me code a computerised rally results system. We first ran on a Nixdorf Mini computer in the Donegal rally HQ, a first of it’s kind I think. There had been some other mainframe based results reporting systems, just printouts but no realtime stuff with screens in the HQ as we had.
Sadly my career then got in the way and I had to knuckle down. Though I did donate some laptops to Eddie Jordan for telemetry in '91
When BL launched their rally TR7 in the British championship BBC Wales made a documentary of them tackling the 3 day Burmah International (with Mr Pond as lead driver) of which I was PRO.
I’d great fun with the BBC crew of Barrie Hinchcliffe filming some of the incar action stuff in advance. One part of that included driving the Knapdale stage in Argyll with a cameraman flat on the bonnet (I and driver holding a foot each!!) That was tackled v slowly with the film speed cracked up later to make it seem as though it was filmed from the TR bonnet.
Apart from the original Monte Carlos that was the first event to start from Glasgow.
Every couple of days we drive past this lovely old Citreon Traction Avant - which has been languishing in this overgrown garden for the past year or so.
Going for about £18,000… is a bit of a generalisation for a car that was built continuously from the early 1930s to the late 1950s and can be found in every condition from much worse than the one in the field to even better than the one in the other photo.
I would love to own one, I think they are really elegant.
£18,000 sounds steep to me Dan. Unless maybe for a six cylinder one. I’ve a friend who downsized in July '18 to a garage less apartment and had to sell his. He had her for quite a few years and had done a lot of work, new clutch, upgrade to a four speed box +++ He was asking €13,500 which was negotiable. Lovely car. I’ve attached a few photos he tried to tempt me with. Maybe I should have I wonder which is worse, buyers regret or not having bought regret?
I was at Retromobile last week and it was interesting to compare the market with the last time I was there in 2011. Now people are looking for crazy money for any old tat. With the elevated prices I guess it makes business sense to restore stuff that would have gone to he crusher a few years ago. Even stuff that should have gone straight to the crusher from the production line (if it was crap in 1965 it’s definitely no better now would be my take).
There’s a lot of money at the top which regards classics as an investment class and lots of money in the retired or semi-retired end who want a car they lusted after in their youth. All pushing prices up. I think it’s a bubble.
And the memory of Chequered Flag and the Stratos lives on - thanks to Steve Perez from Chesterfield. Steve - owner of Vodka Kick - has one in his rally stable and over the last decade or so it’s seen action on major events in the UK and Europe.
Are you just being argumentative, again, Mr Miller. I took the figure from various websites that specialise in flogging these restored cars in the UK - I am no expert so no nothing about the price. Perhaps your own experience in restoring and selling these cars is far greater than mine but there is no need to be so unpleasant…again,!
Thanks John - as l said in my original post l know nothing about restoring these old beauties and only took the price from various UK websites that specialise in flogging them. This one looks fantastic and to my untrained eye seems like a bargain for 13000+ euros. If only my euromillions would come up:blush:
Traction Avant Prices are all over the place the where made in big numbers and allot have survived too the are clubs all over Europe for them I have seen renovated ones go for 8000 euro and up to around 20000 I have always dreamed of making one in to a hot rod put a ls engine in it
I have had military vehicles for years. My favorite was a DUKW which I reluctantly sold when I moved to France although I did a couple of events & drove it off the beach at Arromanches. I had a couple since but not in floating condition.
I also had a pontoon truck here (made it to Perigieux one August) & a post war american Reo, whose multifuel 7.8 litre turbo had a very sexy (but loud)
Citroën planned two variants that never entered production, since there was insufficient funding to develop them, except as running prototype vehicles. One was an automatic transmission-equipped model, based on the Sensaud de Lavaud automatic transmission, the other a 22 CV model with a 3.8 litre V8.
The transmission (which was actually originally designed for the Citroën) was a “gearless” automatic, using the torque-converter alone to match engine revolutions to the drivetrain revolutions, much like the Dynaflow Transmission introduced later in the USA. The car was supposed to have a less spartan interior than the other Traction Avants and it was to feature Citroën’s own new V8 engine. About twenty prototypes were made, but the project was canceled at the start of 1935 after the company’s bankruptcy and resulting Michelin takeover, which rapidly led to a level of financial discipline that the company had hitherto heroically failed to apply.[13] The prototype 22CVs were probably all destroyed.[17] The 22CVs sometimes shown today are recreations, usually powered by Ford flathead engines.
Between 8 and 20000 euros According to those in the know - l personally know nothing about classic car prices so l was pleased to get an email at 1.30 this morning notifying me of your views on classic car prices. Thank you so much Gudrun.
Must confess that, I have noticed nearly all classics have shot up in price here in France, compared with 10 years ago… and of course some have gone “through the roof” to ridiculous prices (in my opinion)
After our current mess… perhaps things will quieten down once folk realise that money isn’t everything…
) That was tackled v slowly with the film speed cracked up later to make it seem as though it was filmed from the TR bonnet.
I wonder which is worse, buyers regret or not having bought regret?
(if it was crap in 1965 it’s definitely no better now would be my take).
.
