Welcome to Jaunty Jalopies:
British Classics Out of Africa

One of the few advantages of getting older is that you can say you were there, First Time Around! Abba have never lost their appeal to a spectrum of older and younger generations but I can say I remember walking from shop to shop at Whitby Regatta in August 1976 where the current No1 “Dancing Queen” was playing on every radio. Similarly I can remember walking down Petticoat Lane one Sunday morning in December 1975 and hearing the strains of the then current Queen magnum opus “Bohemian Rhapsody”

Such is the case with cars. I truly believe I was born into the Golden Age of motoring which had to be the 60’s & 70’s. I remember standing with my father on a local Ford garage forecourt in 1972 looking at a 1600E Cortina. My father saw a couple of stray wires hanging underneath the dash and remarked “She’s been messed about with, lad” Instead he was swayed by the sexy coke bottle look of the new Mk3 model finished in tawny brown metallic with black vinyl roof. It turned out to be our worst ever car!

It’s replacement, a Fiat 125 Special, turned out to be perhaps our best ever car! I never forgot the 1600E though and a similar one became my first car in 1982. The eighties was a wonderful decade for reflecting on the emerging classics of the 60’s & 70’s but we were really just starting out in life then so funds for investment were very limited. Instead, priority went to marriage, kids and property.

At that time, my dream 70’s car was the Mk1 Ford Granada Ghia Coupe. I did go to view one locally, in that classic colour of Roman Bronze but as a penniless student I was deluding myself that I could afford the car let alone keep that thirsty 3 litre engine in fuel.

I reckon cars of that period, on average, only had a 10-12 year life before they succumbed to the tin worm. Consequently when I considered the Granada again in the 1990’s, they had all but disappeared!

The dawn of the millennium brought new opportunities via computers and the internet in most homes. eBay would spawn the occasional Granada Coupe but it would invariably resemble a rusted mass of scrap metal and to transform it required someone very brave and skilled indeed.

By it’s very definition, the worldwide web promoted looking further afield. I discovered that South Africa was a Mecca for British Classic Cars of the 50’s, 60’s & 70’s. Not only were their cars decades behind ours in terms of advanced corrosion but they were right-hand drive as well! Also, amazingly, the Mk1 Granada Coupe, while virtually extinct in terms of UK cars, is not uncommon over there.

In terms of cars we grew up with, the fact that one can, in later life via South Africa, reprise those lost opportunities back in the day, I find quite exciting. In 2018 we imported our first container of 3 Ford Escort restoration projects and the concept grew from there with many containers arriving in the interim.

My aim was to source 60’s & 70’s vehicles similar to those we knew and loved when they were contemporary in the UK. 5 years of researching purchasing opportunities on a daily basis has enabled me to produce a rarity table for British Classics in South Africa. One thing you learn early on is that some of your favourite classics lend themselves to sourcing in SA while others do not. There is no middle ground. The idea of the rarity table is to convey an idea of what is available in SA and what is not.