Avengers for sale around the world...

[avengertiger]

Oh wowowowow that lady looks like a LOT of fun. Feck yer RS2000, watch this !!!

The famous Brasillian, some say (and I'd agree) a better job than the LotsOfTroubleUsuallySerious engine - hey hey don't kill me for saying that, Lotus Sunbeam is very brilliant, just... well, needs a lot of work, and if you rally them, often.

I'd say ASOC will be on to that Cheetah! ?10k the other one sold at? Considering clean Lotus's go for ? 15, 20?

Oh hey that Brazillian engine is the way to go. I suppose NZ has them in spades?

Yeh, 2-door MK1 Avenger wih a Braz' under the lid. Oh-ho.

brazillian would be nice alright although just as costly to build as a lotus rebuild,bearings and rods and cranks are one off items now i think.
cant say my lotus ever gave me trouble once they are maintained correctly and let warm up before trashing they are suprisingly reliable,the dog leg zf is unburstable and well the rear axle never seemed to be a weak point even though the lotus has 150bhp standard,mine was 187bhp and still on original back axle with an lsd.
if i had the money that cheetah would be in a container now on its way.
if me aunty had balls she would be my uncle to!!!!

[gt]

paddy all i can say about the cheetah is GET HER BOUGHT! lol

[gt]

super rare cheetah i bid on the "other one" some years ago it was white it went for over 10k,would love one of these just for its rarity sake.
looks a nice car with a bit of tlc needed in places.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/121021057044?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1423.l2649

dave just for you....


you wont pass another on the road!!!!
buy it paddy and i will take her for a spin when im back in the auld sod on holidays sometime.....

[Paddy75]

11Bids on her now and reserve not met. Hard to know.

Oh well as for my slagging the Lotus engine, again I shouldn't listen to the MK2 Escort nut uncle-in-law of mine. So he was full of Ford shit when he told me the ZF 'box ''..left you with a bag of neutrals..'' and the engine was weak, oh and the front hub stubs wrung off too easy on Ave/beams.
Fekkin' bullshit, Escorts did the same!
Those Ford guys just can't take competition!

Hey I'm no rally driver, that Cheetah would only be wasted on me if its as rare as you guys say then it needs a better owner than me just taking it to 70mph the odd time.

Mind you... it'd be some pension plan... yesnoyesnoyesnoyesno!!!

?5 to 6k? Reckion I should message the seller? Oh I could imagine the look on the Escort harriers faces!
When I was a cub the RS2000 was the car that we all thought was the buisness. If an RS2000 went by the school yard we'd race over to the wall to see it.

How little we knew! A glorified Cortina engine in a leaf-sprung wheelbarrow!

Mmmm Sunbeammm

[JoKer]

he told me the ZF 'box ''..left you with a bag of neutrals..'' and the engine was weak, oh and the front hub stubs wrung off too easy on Ave/beams.
Fekkin' bullshit, Escorts did the same!

haha race car driver excuses for when they lose!

[avengertiger]

cheers eamon thats the one,should have bought it mind you i prefer it in black,maybe its just those wheels.
paddy you wouldnt be able to keep yourself at 70 there would be penalty points accrued in that baby.....when i collected the lotus we knocked 135mph out of her on the motorway loaded to the hilt with spares 2up!! should would regularly see 120mph in my possesion and would happily cruise at 100.
she would surely be an investment 2 known to survive!! although you never know were they hide.i know a man in galway who has spent close to 10k on a brazillian engine and its still not done.
i wonder what his reserve is? pm him on the asoc and see what he is after he might swap for the tiger........

[oldschool]

A few tidy 1500's on eBay lately...here's another one...

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1972-HILLMAN-AVENGER-1500-G-LUXE-47829-MILES-/190757977470?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item2c6a0fbd7e

[mikeystoy]

Cool, that Thai one has A/C.

I don't think the first Cricket is a real Cricket. The side marker lights are wrong, those round marker lights are off a Dodge Dart or Dodge Charger. The Cricket had long rectangular side market lights like the second one, or these ones.

Its real; I put the lights from '68 Plymouth and Dodge B-bodies in it.
The Lucas sidemarkers were made of rubber and it went away rather quickly. I had a couple sets and the fit the holes almost perfectly.

[Paddy75]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Talbot-Horizon-1-3-1979-v-/370659239844?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item564d0327a4

This ruined Talbots reputation. Very tinny, very flakey. The front suspension was torsion beams. The Dodge Omni sold in N.America was the same shape with completely diffrent running gear and apparently had a good rep'.

Chrysler decided to develop the Simca side of their euro operations instead of the Rootes side. So we got the Chrysler/Talbot Alpine and Horizon. As I read somewhere ''..Chrysler Alpine ownership tended to be a rather short lived tinny and tappity affair followed by a visit to the crusher. When have you last seen one on the road?..''

So PSA planned to replace the Horror-izon with the Talbot Arizona, however the Horizon had such a bad rep' they dropped the Talbot name and called the Horizon replacement the Peugeot 309. Both the Horizon and 309 were built in the Avenger factory at Ryton.
The 4-door version of the Alpine, the Solara was a good bit better than the Alpine and a good few of them made it into their teens. But the Talbot name was badly tarnished.
About 1990 or so the PSA vans also stopped being called Talbots, again the reputation was not good.

Anyhow here is the posh Hunter, a Singer.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SINGER-VOGUE-ESTATE-1725-HILLMAN-/150922988456?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item2323b60ba8

[oldschool]

The Horizon looks a lot like a Sunbeam...maybe they were trying to suck happy Sunbeam owners into buying a '4 door' Sunbeam??!!
Looks like PSA had a lot of Avenger parts left over at the Ryton factory?
I see many Peugeot's have 4 x 108 stud pattern wheels (imperial 4 x 4.25") which is strange for a car from metric Europe.
I wonder if some of their models use Avenger front hubs and bearings on the rear?

[Paddy75]

Yeh! I see on the old Talbot advertisements 'Talbot takes you further' its usually a picture of a Sunbeam in a rally then the small print invites you to drive the 1979 car of the year, the Horizon.
If you say 'Talbot' to a person of a certan age there, are two diffrent responses.
1. A standard day-to-day driver its, ''..rotten unreliable PoS..'' Bad memories of Alpines and Horizons. ''..damn suspensions collapsed and the rockers broke..'' Simca legacy, the French Fiat.
2. Someone who liked driving or did a bit of rallying ''..oh yes the Sunbeam and Avenger..they were a great driving yokes..''

I can't remember if the Horizon had the French type of wheel fixing, a bolt headed stud or the English type a nut where the stud is fixed to the hub. I do remember the Horizons had the Avenger inside door handles.
I think they also had the Avenger cabin lamp, sure the parts inventory was raided!
What I do recall is that is a Horizon or Talbot Alpine came to the garage the owner was promptly advised to take it to the dump.

The S2 Sunbeam got the bigger Horizon headlights, some peole call this the French style Sunbeam.

As I said before the Simca stuff was weak and really only worked in hot countries like the south of France or Spain. I seem a TV show about Britain de-industrializing in the early 1980's and for a few minutes they focused on the car industry. Peugeot was literally begged not to close the Linwood plant as things in Glasgow were dire enough without even more unemployment.
Even Maggie Thatcher who was fiercly against the government pumping more money into failed industries, apparently wanted to subsidize 'Groupe Talbot' presumably to develop the Avenger & Sunbeam for the 1980's, but PSA said a big resounding 'Non'!
PSA were just not intrested the Avengers with the 'conservative' RWD platform and so they closed Linwood and kept Ryton going as an assembly plant for the remaining Talbots untill the Peugeot 405 & 309 came along in the mid'80s.

We all know how easy it could have been to make a 5-speed Avenger & Sunbeam with probabbly an alloy head, Peugeot though had their own cars to market and didn't need the internal competition.
However there was still a market for RWD cars in France, a lot of Sunbeams and MK2 Avengers sold in France and even Germany.

Anhyow to finish this meandering story the Horizon had the one thing that made it big for Peugeot in the late '80 onwards.

Peugeot approached specialist engine designers in the late 1970's to develop a 1700cc diesel engine for small cars and light vans.
The Engineers wanted to develop a 1900cc unit and so the famous Peugeot XUD unit was born and fitted to P305's and the new 205 in 1.7 litre form.
The 1.9 XUD9 engine was then produced and fitted only to the Horizon. This engine made PSA a clean fortune and was sold on to other manufacturers from Rover, FSO Polski-Fiat, Fiat, Toyota and others.
This engine alone made PSA the third largest manufacturer in Europe.
Other diesels at the time were jusr rubbish. The VW 1.6 thing was a nasty slow, very noisy gasket blowing and head warping PoS. GM's diesel was even worse. Renault had a good 2.1 all alloy unit but it was too big to fit transversly and was only fitted to the R18 and vans which was FWD with the engine and 'box mounted north-south.

I had a couple of 309's with the 'straight' (non-turbo) 1905cc diesel, they were brilliant! Even without the booster they were quick, always started, very rarely blew a gasket and gave 45-50mpg.
The Peugeot 306 had the 1.9 with the intercooled turbo and with a more stylish body than the 309 became known here as ''..the culchie GTI..'' (culchie = redneck) and could be seen batin' around the backroads with a tankfull of marked agri-diesel giving a puff of blackish-blue smoke every time a gear was changed!

So indiffrence from PSA ended the Avenger. Pity, the Avenger platform still had a few years left and people just generally liked them.
I know what would have happend if the Pug XUD got dropped into the Avenger, that would have sold very strongly.

Anyhow, goold auld hindsight!

[oldschool]

Lots of discussion and pictures of Horizons here...they look to be 4 x 98 PCD like Simca, Fiat and Alfa.
Interesting that they were produced from 1978 to 1986, initially as the Chrysler Horizon, so competed directly with the Chrysler Avenger!
The Avenger was old RWD technology while the Horizon was new FWD technology...we know which one we prefer...lol

http://retrorides.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=print&thread=18959

[oldschool]

Not many of these left...a rust free 1971 1500 auto. No power machine, has the same 87mph top speed as Paddy's 1300 manual but is slower over the 1/4 mile! The free flow inlet and exhaust manifolds used in later Avengers really made a difference...would be a good retro fit!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HILLMAN-AVENGER-GL-/221160241928?pt=Automobiles_UK&hash=item337e2d7b08

[oldschool]

Same guy above has a Vauxhall powered Avenger for sale...with a big drop tank...must be thirsty?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0KE59Ul1zk

[avenga]

Love the boot springs.

I need a big tank like that in mine but I want it actually sticking out the bottom of the car like this.