Estonia’s oldest automobile and motorcycle manufacturers launched their latest car with the 1960 model year, here in the 1969 model this special edition celebrates the success in the rally of Finland with a rally commemoration model.
Lightweight aluminium alloy wheels, finned brake drums all round, stiffened and lowered suspension and rally spot lights round out the changes to this model.
At face value, the Elmsley Sundance 1300 Super cabriolet appears very similar to its cousin, the Cricket Super hot hatch. It sports the same powerful boxer engine (in essence two 650cc two-cylinder boxer engines from the standard model combined), cream leather interior and a sizable portion of matching body panels.
They are not the same car, though. The Sundance sees its engine in the front, driving the front wheels. This arrangement, through some engineering magic from the Elmsley suspension team, has afforded the cabriolet a maneuverability that even the venerable Cricket cannot match.
Hear the powerful flat-four in the Sundance rumble like a giant’s belly that hungers for the open road, feel the finely tuned chassis change direction like a ping pong ball, see the handy removable top let the sunshine in wherever you encounter it. Surely then, an unmatchable offer for the price.
The GS trim features racy interior patterns and a super revvy engine, delivering almost twice the power of the vanilla version. It will happily drink almost twice as much too. A decent midrange and a 5-speed (the realism!) to keep the pace up.
Later eclipsed by its less bug-eyed 70s Final Form, it’s still a decent mix of compact practicality and usable performance.
The headlights weren't too bright so many owners opted to fit auxiliaries as on this blue sample. Oh and sTaTs
The revolving door of brand names continues. My global mainstream brand formerly known as Legion formerly known as Stellar formerly known as Caplan is re-named once again.
In the early 1950s, TURBOL bought its way into the European market, merging Stellar Motorcars of Britain with fresh new purchases of smaller car companies in West Germany and France, united under the mainstream Paige brand name already in use in the Americas. With the unification came the challenging project of unifying the 3 separate European factions into a cohesive unit, and the core of this project came in the from of Project PEC, for Pan European Car, a car to appeal to all of Western Europe. Given the car’s need for broad appeal, it was quite conventional in layout; hotchkiss drive with inline 4 engines, and 2 door, 4 door, and estate body styles.
1967 would see the biggest update to the PEC platform since its introduction. Transatlantic coke-bottle styling aped American members of the TURBOL family, and the rear suspension utilized coil springs instead of leafs to improve comfort.
In 1969 a pair of new high-performance models were introduced, the TC1600 and RS1600. Both models shared a new 1.6 liter I4 with an aluminum twin-cam, 8v head. Sitting at the top of the model range, they also sported upgraded interiors, and sporty suspension tuning. The RS1600 took things a step further than the TC, adding a limited slip differential and twin carburetors, but the single-carb TC1600 still made a mighty 97 hp and propelled the 890kg Sparrow to 100 kmh in under 10 seconds.
The Constellation was Yamazaki Motor Co.'s first production car, being based on a rear engine, rear wheel drive compact sedan from Marseille which Yamazaki had a strategic partnership with at the time. Up until that point, Yamazaki was mostly known as a motorcycle manufacturer and a supplier to other, larger car manufacturers in Japan.
In 1964, the first generation Constellation ended production, being superseded by the second generation model which was larger and more luxurious than the outgoing model. Outside of Japan however, the first generation model, now known as the Stella, continued to be produced as a low-cost and more compact option.
With new front wheel drive models entering the market and Yamazaki being slow to react to the market (as Marseille was, since they were the ones providing the chassis designs), Yamazaki’s Italian distributor attempted to rekindle interest for the brand’s cars by introducing the Stella Special.
The Stella’s small 0.9l engine was swapped out for a bigger 1.3l motor from Marseille. They did not stop there, however, as the engineers making the car were able to pull some strings and obtain DOHC valvetrain technology from an Italian manufacturer. The resulting engine, with two SU carburettors, produced a healthy 75hp.
In addition to the DOHC engine, the Stella Special received a floor-mounted shifter, front disc brakes, wider tyres, bucket seats, a sports steering wheel, and two lamps mounted on the car’s bonnet, which earned the car’s nickname, “Spider”. The Special was sold in limited numbers in the Italian market, although a few examples also made it to other parts of Europe, and even Japan.
TLDR; a Japanese car with French DNA and Americana styling, spiced up by Italians.
The Bianca is Milano’s first foray into front-engined, FWD citycars, after a line of RR offerings. Presented here in 1600R trim, it sports a 1.6 litre engine, as well as performance goodies from the rally version. With 91 hp moving only 682 kg, quickness and nimbleness are asured, as well as a supremely fun experience at the limit.
The Greek company Hephaestus has unveiled a sportier version of their Lupin for '69. Called the Veloce, the standard inline four have been bored up to 850cc, fitted with an overhead camshaft, twin carburetors, and a tubular exhaust header. Power has now been bumped up to 47hp. Wider rear tires, stiffer springs and dampers, styled steel wheels, front disc brakes, and a two tone paint job top off the list of changes from the standard model. Prices start below ten thousand AMU for this spicy little city car.
The Albere Guille Sparrow now comes in large size! The Sparrow that everybody knows and loves is now available in a 4-door variant, and is also available with the ‘Sportif’ pack featuring a new and powerful 1.2L engine, alloy wheels, bonnet bulge, and exclusive two-tone paint.
Introducing the HPB Codzie GTS! From the workers at HPB brings you a brand new sporty version of a classic! Fast and nimble! Drive to enjoy! Here are some of the stats of this new workers’ car!
165.4 km/h top speed.
0-100 km/h time: 11.9 seconds.
712 kg weight.
46.6 kW engine.
29.7 mpg.
All this for only $8070!
I should be able to get the first round out fairly quickly, final results may have to wait a little bit as I’m at Le Mans for this next week, I’ll see if I can figure out a way to make it work
Your first entry actually broke the calculator and you managed to get minus points, I asked you to fix the price and the fuel as that was both a bin and gave some tips to improve certain areas of the car for a better score, you only fixed the price and continued to use 98 leaded, so bin for you. The car was last anyway in all fairness so it changes nothing.
@Knugcab
Poor driveability followed by even worse sportiness and average stats otherwise. Cheap and reliable but let down by the main stats, probably due to solid axle in the rear.
@AltTab_8187
Poor driveability but high sportiness and average comfort. Despite this it’s the most expensive car, and the highest service costs by far too, overall not helped by mediocre looks. Also the least reliable of the field. One of two entries to utilise a 6cylinder engine and also very heavy at 975kgs.
@S_U_C_C_U_L_E_N_T
The styling of this entry was very unique and well thought out, it’s a shame that real life engineering for rear engined cars perhaps doesn’t carry over as well as it should, lowest drivability of all and average sportiness and comfort. Reasonably priced and economical.
@Ch_Flash
One of my favourite entries design wise, extremely drivable but the lowest sportiness of all entries, average comfort too lets this down as the rest of the stats are relatively good. An easy fix to boost sportiness would have been to use rack and pinion steering.
@Maverick74
Another well styled entry, with just about every main stat being below average this entry didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. Rear engine again is the issue here. It’s the lightest entry which doesn’t gain anything here but it is impressive at only 578kgs.
Yeah, going with a rear engined car was a gamble. But the front engined test mule I looked at was barely any better apart from cost, and I figured the bottoming out penalty it suffered from would result in a bin anyway, so I figured I’d give this a shot.
The crew first gathered another collection of cars to test at a more open location to get a better feeling of the cars. After sorting through what they didn't want, this was closer to the idea.
@machalel
Great driveability holds this one up, with good minor stats. It’s also relatively cheap, comfort is the main culprit here but that’s to be expected of one of the least prestigious entries here. A cheerful design let down by the rear. Also the only inline 3 in the entire lot of submissions.
@Vento
For something that looks like it haunts you in your nightmares, given a chance it actually does quite well. Average stats across the board and the cheapest entry of all at $8070. Had the design been literally any better it would have been a few places higher.
@mart1n2005
If having the longest trim name gave points you’d win with “TAT - 1200 tuhat järve (thousand lakes)” however it doesn’t so unlucky. Average Driveability but poor sportiness with the second best comfort, cheap to service and cheap to buy with good looks, (despite being so “old fashioned”) it’s also economical. Had some comfort been sacrificed for sportiness then this would have done much better.
@abg7
It wouldn’t be an ABG entry without them placing near perfectly on the median, below average driveability but good sportiness and the best comfort of all help this entry, one of three entries to use every bit of the budget. Very mini grand tourer but not super mini.
@the-chowi
A great looking entry, low driveability but good sportiness, could have placed higher with some slightly better minor stats such as reliability.
@04mmar
Another entry that placed highly thanks to good stats, The design feels awkward especially with the wheels as big as they are, good sportiness and driveability is the key here, despite being very close to the max budget the service costs are on par with the other entries.
@z2bbgr
Fun design, good driveability, high sportiness, comfort would be the lowest if it wasn’t for the singular bin earlier at 4.1, prestige is also the lowest out of all entries, because of this though the service costs are the cheapest and this gives a big boost to placement.
