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1967 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu Class: Cars, Sedan — Model origin: 
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Comments about this vehicle| Author | Message |
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◊ 2012-12-04 03:14 |
What's the one in the centre? Shape looks Kadett B, but lights don't. |
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◊ 2012-12-04 04:39 |
Subject car is a 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu |
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◊ 2012-12-04 10:40 |
@dsl: Could the left car be a Chrysler 160/180? That is with the number plate mounted above the bumper. Were they made in Linwood as well? |
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◊ 2012-12-04 13:51 |
@zodiac - agree the C160/180 [949] resemblance but they were never exported to US, and it had a break in profile with flatter boot before rear window, not this coupe line. Made in France, Spain and later in Aus, but never UK, although the story was nearly more complex. Its development was parallel in UK and F with plans for UK production at Ryton as a Hillman and with a V6 engine as a new Humber Hawk; in 1969 Ryton was stripped of all Arrow assembly material which was shipped to Linwood, and completely re-equipped for 1970 launches of Avenger and UK 949s. Chrysler then decided to chop all UK [949] production/versions, despite Ryton having much of the heavy tooling partially installed which was scrapped at cost of a few £million. French 949 redesigned by Chrysler to become more international now it was the only version, so became much blander. |
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◊ 2012-12-05 10:21 |
It's sad when companies pull out of advanced projects at a late date. Although I find (produced) car history very interesting indeed, there's nothing of what would have been. Your story reminds me of Morris Marina, which also was aimed at a more expensive field, but when BMC realized they would make a loss, they made it as cheap as possible. Another question you might confirm or reject: I spent a year in the Glasgow/Paisley area, and when visiting the Glasgow Transport Museum (at Kelvingrove) I was surprized to see a Volvo P1800 at the collection. I thaught about it for a while, and my conclusion was that the body was made by Pressed Steel in Linwood (close to the Hillman Plant, now called Phoenix Business and Retail Park), although when reading books on the P1800 project it is said the bodies were made somewhere in the Birmingham area. What's your opinion? -- Last edit: 2012-12-05 11:27:23 |
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◊ 2012-12-05 13:48 |
@zodiac - this might be a long answer, so pour a cup of coffee first. I live 5 minutes walk from Kelvingrove, but the transport museum has moved to a new site - Link to "www.glasgowlife.org.uk" and /movie_2145456-Woolly-and-Tig.html . Both parts of the P1800 story are true - Jensen won the contract for all P1800 production, which occurred at their factory in West Bromwich, near Birmingham (they also assembled the Sunbeam Tiger and previously had done body assembly for the Austin Healey 100 and Austin A40 Sports and Gipsy). These arrangements were common right across 50s and 60s UK car production - creating some very unusual mixtures of what was made alongside what, by whom, and where. Pressed Steel Fisher were contracted to make the P1800 bodies at Linwood - the factory had originally started as a railway wagon and diesel unit production site but switched to cars after 1959, starting with the Rover P5 3-litre and then picking up the P1800 contract; bodies were then shipped to Jensen for the oily bits to be fitted and trimming. PSF was a huge operation and had contracts for body pressing for most of UK industry apart from Ford and Vauxhall, with bodies being regularly shipped all over the country to the base factories - most 50s/early 60s Rootes bodies were made by PSF at Cowley (Oxford) and then shipped to Ryton as the assembly plant. Have only recently begun to realise how complex these arrangements were - and how inefficient. PSF was rationalised in mid-late 60s - Rootes bought the Linwood plant, kicked out all the other contracts and turned it into a single site Imp centre which then took on all other Rootes bodies after BMC bought PSF Cowley, similarly kicked out all outside projects, and absorbed it into the Morris complex. More info: it looks as if Volvo had separate contracts with PSF and Jensen - not a sub-contract to PSF via Jensen; this meant when the Jensen contract was revoked for quality reasons of the finished cars and because Volvo now had new assembly capacity in Sweden, the bodies for the now 1800S were still built by PSF at Linwood for a few years, possibly until 1969 (which was a change-over year for Linwood anyway, as Rootes switched Arrow production to Scotland to clear Ryton for Avenger and 949 - as previous comment above). Also Volvo had investigated several German firms before Jensen, including Drauz, Hanomag and Karmann. And the Volvo contract (with the Tiger contract which followed it) seems to have stopped Jensen going bust at the time. So if it hadn't been for stodgy old Volvo, we would never have had the later Interceptor and ground-breaking FF. And Walter would not have exciting quattro Audis in his life. And the 2009 F1 champion would probably have been called Wayne Button. -- Last edit: 2013-02-04 04:02:39 |
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◊ 2012-12-06 19:29 |
@dsl - As you gave me a sencible answer, I'll try to give you one as well. The reason for my question was that I’ve seen a badge in a friend’s 1966 P1800 saying the body was made by PSF somewhere in England. I assumed it was made in the Coventry/Birmingham area as most British car related firms were located there, but I now understand it said Cowley, Oxon (as of the PSF main office). I’ve now visited him and he kindly borrowed me a book issued by the Swedish P1800 register called (in my translation) “ Volvo P1800 – from idea until prototype and production” by Mats Eriksson & Kenneth Collander, Trafik Nostalgiska Förlaget, Stockholm, 2011, 280 pages, ISBN 9789186275556, which confirmed most of what you wrote. However, it also criticized PSF for being unable to meet Volvo’s demand on capacity and quality, suggesting lack of ability by staff used to work on bigger products, like trains. I imagined thoughts like Clarkson’s “That’ll do” when talking about the quality of British car manufacturers. That annoyed me as I’m well aware what Scot’s can achieve like 120 (I think I read at the Glasgow Transport Museum) boat building companies at the Clyde estuary, numerous train manufacturers, inventions, and astonishing architecture like the Coates Memorial Church in Paisley, Glasgow University, the Wallace Monument at Stirling, the Rosslyn Chapel just outside Edinburgh and among the more contemporary buildings I like the Radisson/SAS hotel in Glasgow City Centre. Not to mention the amazing works by Charles Rennie Mackintosh where the most impressive I’ve seen is a small water colour, which at least used to be on display at the Huntarian Museum at the Glasgow University, where he painted a coast line using a single brush line. That was certainly no lack of ability and would have been a disaster if just a small mistake. Perhaps I have rose tinted eyes when I see Scotland, but then what caused the disaster? Under the headline “Closing reflections” on the last few pages there’s an interesting discussion on that subject, and I believe the most crucial point is that the Labour government during the mid and late 50’s, in order to satisfy voters in areas predominately voting Labour, forced successful British manufacturers to move part of their manufacture to those areas. Two examples are Leyland (Bathgate) and Rootes (Linwood). The Linwood plant then used labour, not from workers used with the car industry, but (unemployed) miners (from Ayrshire), steel workers (from Lancashire) and ship builders (from Clyde side), probably with little or no training. That meant they were, justifiable, taken with surprise when Volvo, not thinking, came with drawings from Frua in Italy using Metric (millimetres) instead of Imperial (Inches) measurements. Naturally they couldn’t understand the tolerances, partly because they were used with bigger products and partly because Volvo didn’t, to a greater extent, inform them of their crucial measurements (some more crucial than others). When Volvo sent the (wooden) raw model, that was used for measurements to manufacture the machines used to press the steel, and (perhaps eager to deliver the first car as soon as possible) not a prototype as Volvo was used to. Also perhaps Volvo didn’t inform about the importance of the measurements as a wooden prototype might expand or shrink depending on moisture in the air, and visitors from Volvo once were astonished to find the wooden prototypes stored in a simple shed on the premise. This in turn made it difficult for Jensen Motors to assembly the cars, and not used with bigger contracts, didn’t send the cars back for necessary adjustments. Neither were Jensen Motors used to order other parts en masse i.e. labelling all rubber parts “black rubber”. You’re probably right that Jensen Motors were close to bankruptcy in the late 50’s and eager to win the contract with Volvo, but used a margin that small any disruption meant a disaster. Therefore Richard Jensen almost constantly complained and threatened to sue Volvo, and Volvo in turn wasn’t happy nor with the number of cars produced, nor the quality. Volvo continued using PSF in Linwood until 1968, as they by then had got capacity in Olofström in Sweden. But perhaps the real reason was that Rootes bought PSF... I read a lot of complaints in that book, but one should instead be happy the P1800 was produced at all. It could easily have been yet another prototype in a museum. Edit: When reading through this I realise the sentence about "rose tinted eyes" can be misunderstood. What I ment, is that after having spent more than a year in that country, I love Scotland to the extent it actually hurts. And I've tried to explain some difficulties that can occur when making a car. These difficulties would have happened, and do happen, elsewhere as well. -- Last edit: 2012-12-09 19:53:17 |
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◊ 2013-02-04 04:36 |
@zodiac - have only just spotted your reply. Very interesting - not much I can add. The other problem for Linwood was that Rootes was still essentially a family firm and out of their depth with a brand new factory so from their main base, a technically very advanced car to launch as the Imp, antiquated management skills and methods (which amongst other things meant being to weak to resist the government pressure to relocate and no idea how to retrain the local workforce for car manufacture), and basically not enough money to develop the car properly before it was launched. Another mistake was to have Royalty open the factory - this was booked well in advance and fixed the calendar too inflexibly to cope with the delays which cropped up - so everything was launched about 6 months prematurely compared to what was really needed. Rootes and Linwood never really recovered - 3 years later they were desperate to be taken over by Chrysler, which started another series of disastrous management directions. Interested in your appreciation of Scotland's architecture. I've never really got to grips with Rennie Mackintosh, but found Alexander "Greek" Thomson much more interesting - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Thomson , http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=100095 , http://www.scotcities.com/greekthomson.htm , http://www.greekthomson.org.uk/documents/ThomsonBuildings.pdf . |
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◊ 2013-02-04 09:12 |
 Informative discussion - but what car is on the left finally? I'd go for a 1968 Opel Kadett B Coupé. More likely than an Avenger. Definitely no Chrysler 160/180. -- Last edit: 2013-02-04 09:13:04 |
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◊ 2016-09-28 10:48 |
According to Motorbranschen 1/69 (a Swedish magazine covering issues relating to garages and sales mainly on cars) page 37, Volvo recently moved the P 1800 pressings to Olofström. I believe that would mean that the Linwood plant was used until MY 1968 and Olofström from MY 1969. -- Last edit: 2016-09-28 10:48:49 |
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