Avenger advertising

[Paddy75]

This must have been 1974, round grille badges and the adverts babble is about ''..Avenger driving is to be believed..'' or something. A GL 2 door and the banner at the end, ''..who can make you happy the Chrysler man can..'' Same as the Chrysler '75 leaflets.
Here was the propaganda. Hang on, that GLS is a square must be a 1500, well whatever, likely 1600's and 1500's were sold alongside each other for a while.

GH001 Chrysler Dealers UK The Chrysler Man Can 70s

[oldschool]

Those were the days...LOL
Looked like James Hunt kissing that blonde with the GLS...go and see that RUSH movie if you get a chance...talk about the sexy seventies...it's a wonder they had any time for racing!!

[Paddy75]

This seems unusual, 'Chrysler Sunbeam Life' circa 1975, LHD Avengers but the blurb is in English, eh? Where was this for? Canada maybe?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chrysler-1975-Sunbeam-Life-Sunbeam-Style-Magazine-/380461486000?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5895458fb0

Maybe Holland? But its not in Dutch. Chrysler International would suggest it was printed for North America. Few good pictures though.

Kinda suggests it was possible to get a later MK1 in the States. Your guess is as good as mine.
At ten bucks for this brochure might be worth the while one of the US or Canadian guys on this forum taking a look.

Oh BTW, the blue 4-door looks like a post 09/'73 UK/Irl spec' Super, square headlights and round clocks dashboard

[oldschool]

That is an interesting magazine Paddy!
Firstly, the yellow car on the front cover is RHD (check wipers) so must be a Hillman Avenger, not a Sunbeam Avenger...lol
Secondly, the Sunbeam Avenger was never sold in North America...the road test was done in Malta, hence the English text and ads, but Malta is RHD so why is a LHD drive car being driven there?!
It seems from reading the text that the Sunbeam Avenger for Europe was originally launched in Malta and the country was being revisited in 1975 for a retro road test in the blue car, which explains the b & w photos of an original Sunbeam Avenger in the article too.

[Paddy75]

Have to get up very early to catch you out Richard!

Mystery solved its for European Avengers but in English. I have the launch Autocar article from March 1970 taken in Malta where they give it a good write-up but they were not at all happy with the actual consumption of the 1250cc, yeh seems the 1500cc with its mild cam was the most economical of the different engines.

Anyhow if you look at the blue SunVenger the exhaust tailpipe looks to be on the RHS and the fuel filler on the left! Did they reverse the boot floor pan for LHD models? I'd hardly think so! Mr Airbrush was at work I reckon. Generally the fuel filler should be on the opposite side of the exhaust to prevent a big bang when refuelling on a hot day.

Then the picture of the blue 4-door from above shows no tailpipe and what looks like an outline of a fuel filler cap, on the left, lies lies lies!

Oh but this brochure has it all! Misinformation! Confuse the Russians! Or trying to trick LHD markets that the car is optimized for LHD, errr... that must have caused a few arguments upon delivery, ''..grrr the noise of it Monsuier, ze driver is sitting over the exhaust!..''

Then the usual 1970's picture of a family saloon towing a Yacht, Avengers had their merits but a Hunter really would be the job for lugging!

[oldschool]

Hey Paddy...I'm 'Ross'...don't insult Richard...haha
The blue car is a RHD that's been 'mirror printed' to look like a LHD as all Avengers/Sunbeams had the fuel cap on the right and tailpipe on the left...lol
That brochure is just about worth buying for its joke value!

[Paddy75]

Ach! Sorry Ross! I'd make a very bad detective! ''..Aye yer honor...him there...hees name?...ah.. Ron or sunthin'..''

More photographic manipulation, look at the second picture.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TALBOT-BRAND-LAUNCH-Alpine-Sunbeam-Avenger-Horizon-4-SIDED-1979-BROCHURE-F10-/161175552747?pt=UK_CarParts_Vehicles_Manuals_Litterature_ET&hash=item2586cfc2eb

Where is the pentastar? From August 1st 1979 (commencing the GB's 'V' registration I think) all Chrysler cars had to be registered as Talbots. Speaking to my neighbour who was into Avengers at the time the Talbot badge was used for a few months before this, just depended on the dealer. Possibly something to do with the Talbot Sunbeam Lotus launch?
Many Chrysler/Talbots I have seen with Talbot on the lid and Chrysler UK on the VIN plate. There must have been dozens of Chrysler front badges haunting Peugeot-Talbot dealers!

[Paddy75]

BTW folks if ye have 1/2 hour to waste take a look at this...

British Leyland - the Quality Connection

Not about Avengers (one or two in the background) but our old friend BL. This video is amazing, they are admitting their build quality is garbage! Maybe should be in the jokes section!

Hmmm this video could have been called, ''..Should have bought an Avenger..''

As for my Avenger, well I put the smaller/earlier float valve into the fixed needle Stromberg CDS and set the float level, it is running super good so I'm very pleased with that.

[oldschool]

Looks like a training video on what not to do when assembling BL cars.
Pre-robot days, so I don't think Avengers would have been superior!
It's very hard to find a NZ one that doesn't leak in the rain...not sure if UK ones are any better?
Recently saw that 'Made in Dagenham' film about equal pay for women in the Ford factories in the 1960's.
The working conditions and pay were pretty bad with lots of strikes affecting production and quality.
They said in the film that Vauxhall had very few strikes as GM worked with the unions, so Viva's and Victor's were made better than other 60's and 70's cars?!

[Paddy75]

You could have a point there Ross the build of Vivas was pretty good come to think of it, the panels aligned up properly on them as I recall but a rattling 3 bearing and bad breathing engine with an oversprung suspension made them a dangerous handeling car on these roads we have. The Viva was a good car on good roads, such as in England where they were quite popular but as I read somewhere the Avenger was more popular in the north of England, Scotland and Ireland where the roads are more errr... lets say organic!

Vauxhalls always seemed to blister rust very badly, the number of times I seen a Viva or (Opel) Kadette with the ringworm looking blisters all over the panels! GM were kinder to the unions but the pension costs forced GM to the wall needing a big bailout which Ford avoided I see.

Chrysler UK's problems were of economies of scale particularaly if you look at their range. Imp - Simca 1100 - Avenger - Hunter - C180 - Valliants there was no parts interchangability in that whole range! As for build quality, well some say the Ryton built Avengers were better than the Linwood build although this may have been disinformation on the part of rival makers. Ford dealers were famous for telling customers a big pack of lies about other cars.

Made in England in the 1950's mean't quality, by the 1970's however things had changed. The stories of workers arriving in BL factories with sleeping bags had some truth to it! I met a mechanical engineer who had worked various projects in the car plants of midlands England and his opinion of the BL factories was very low, ''..lazy b******ds..'' when I asked him about the Rootes/Chrysler plants he said Ryton was much more modern (Chrysler's 1960's investment presumably) with a better attitude amongst the workers which would make sense. Peugeot again put a lot of investment into Ryton in the 1980's and that plant was viable but by the globalized 2000's it was costing ?300-500 more to produce a P206 in the old Avenger plant compared to Slovakia so Ryton got the chop, two months later the ? corrected against the ? and Ryton (even the French unions backed Ryton) still remained closed, bulldozed and today a supermarket stands on the site.

Anyhow how bored was I to have watched this!

Look out for the Avenger on strike and according to the Minister for Prices (the UK was a bit commie back then) the Ford workers broke the pay deal leading to the winter of discontent and so the sledgehammer that was Maggie Thatcher, then 4 million unemployed, violence, drug abuse and much of the British working classes desending into the underclass.

Ha! MK2 Escorts are to blame for it all!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WRVVdGQcN0&feature=player_detailpage#t=791

Dammit but why didn't the 'copy URL at current time' work, go to 13:25 or so. It would be torture listening to overpaid gobdaw politicos!

[oldschool]

Yes the running gear let the Vivas and Chevettes down. I remember back in the day my friend bought an HB Viva for his son and I ended up overhauling the motor and replacing a broken gearbox mainshaft...I thought that was pretty slack for a 'modern' car...lol
My workmate had a Chevette and blew the diff when he put wide wheels on it...after replacing the diff he put the skinnies back on...haha
With the 'rustproof while you drive' OHC motors they put Victor running gear in, which helped a bit.
It was common to put Isuzu Gemini 1600 running gear in NZ Chevettes as they had the same floor plan, made them heaps better!
Still plenty of Chevettes and HC Viva's on NZ roads as they don't rust bad.
They're more common than Avengers, but the HA and HB's are getting rare and pricey!

[Paddy75]

Aye the VauxPels had a 'soft car' rep' at the time and any hard driving usually ended in a trip to the scrapper for a rear axle, or gearbag, or engine! The clutches in them were still coarse splined as I recall and small diameter.

When I worked in a garage about 1990 the number of even the later 1980's FWD Asconas, Cavaliers or Kadettes with a warped head! About two a week! That OHC family engine was pure dung but a lot easier on the juce than a Sierra or Cortina so people bought them.

The 1970's Vauxhalls though, the did have a good strong body and manys a teen' buddy had a Chevy with a pinto engine and 'box fitted, with the gear stick so far back it knocked the handbrake!
I remember those wee Bedford HA ex-GPO or telecoms vans, about guaranteed the diff would or was wrung!
Yeh the Viva was a comfortable slow car but you could as you say easily drop something more potent into them - well not so much in the Viva rather the Kadette/Chevette. There was an old guy around here with a 1973 Kadette coup?, the fastback shaped 2-door in bronze. When he died there was a scramble amongst the Opel rally guys to get it!

Yes indeed, as is said NZ is a kind of eden for 1970's cars. I can only guess your climate keeps the rot at bay. I suppose while the Avengers, Escorts, Vivas and so-on that were built in NZ being a smaller production run mean't the workers didn't get as bored as the armies of workers in the British factories did. Then too I suppose the steel was pressed in the UK and shipped to NZ so they would have had to treat the panels for shipment and better undersealing by the NZ plants mean't a far better body in the long-run.

Some people oiled their cars from new, hey it was not hard to do nor was it expensive. My Avenger has signs of waxoil applied a long time ago but not everywhere. Next spell of hot weather I seriously intend to remedy that!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HILLMAN-AVENGER-RETRO-A3-POSTER-PRINT-FROM-CLASSIC-70s-ADVERT-/400301676281?pt=UK_CarParts_Vehicles_Manuals_Litterature_ET&hash=item5d33d6d6f9

Great job, a 1600GLS with ro-styles, what would have been better was a serious dose of waxoil when new on a hot dry day.

Fffff....hahahaha...this is some advert!

VAUXHALL SUMMER 1973 ADVERT

How he hell did that actor ever recover his dignity after that!

Now this one is some sort of blasphemy! Mr Avenger himself flogging Vauxhalls!

Patrick Macnee (John Steed - The Avengers) Vauxhall Advert

A bit of sucking up to the unions as well. Pleeeaseee don't go on strike again!

[oldschool]

Here's a recent review of the Avenger featuring an original 1970 brochure which stated they had months of aerodynamic testing in a wind tunnel!!

http://hooniverse.com/2015/02/05/the-carchive-the-1970-hillman-avenger/