Retro Cruisers [pics]

[WillCarter]

I don't think we've ever had a thread that celebrates the good old fashioned cruiser, cars that are cool just because they're cool, not because they're trying to be anything or fit into any niche. So here's one. For what it's worth I'm classing cruisers as retro cars in regular use, with minimal mods... the typical slam and roll basically but I'm happy for you to put your own spin on it too. These all come from the excellent Photostream of Stephen Trinder but I'll add more from elsewhere soon.

1969 Holden Kingswood by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1964 Humber 90 by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1981 Toyota Corona Mk 2 by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1981 Datsun Sunny by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1979 Toyota Corona by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1981 Morris Marina by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1972 Datsun 240C by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1977 Toyota Corolla by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1972 Sunbeam Rapier by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1978 Vauxhall Chevette by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1978 Datsun 220 C Diesel by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1971 Toyota CROWN by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1970 Toyota Corona by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1981 Datsun Sunny GX by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1975 Hillman Hunter by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1965 Morris 1100 by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1984 Mitsubishi Sigma by stephen trinder, on Flickr

Holden Commodore by stephen trinder, on Flickr

1977 Ford Escort by stephen trinder, on Flickr

[fred]

I do believe a Vennie belongs here

[baggabones]

Ooohh yes!! ...loving this thread already!

[WillCarter]

New Zealanders seem to have got this done to a fine art. Also, a Ventora makes a great retro cruiser fred but maybe a photo not taken on a potato?

















Courtesy of our friends at: Old School New Zealand

[WillCarter]

Some from our very own alabamaandy that fit in very nicely here.

[WillCarter]

Street Machine

[Dez]

so little of this going on in the UK now. as you say, it seems to be the reserve of our antipodean friends these days.

i remember when buying a large-ish cheap saloon or wagon and chopping the springs/throwing some blocks on it was commonplace. maybe even running to painting up the steels or a cheap set of period alloys. stacklight mercs were very favoured for such treatment.

[markbognor]

Can I blow my own, long since passed, trumpet.

[Dez]

i was gunna do the same, but i have very limited pics of my previous stuff.
there are all i can offer.

[rmad]

Jan 21, 2015 20:08:21 GMT Dez said:

so little of this going on in the UK now. as you say, it seems to be the reserve of our antipodean friends these days.

i remember when buying a large-ish cheap saloon or wagon and chopping the springs/throwing some blocks on it was commonplace. maybe even running to painting up the steels or a cheap set of period alloys. stacklight mercs were very favoured for such treatment.

Those were the days!

Sadly I don't have the freedom to buy weird old cars and slam them as I did back in the day. AlabamaAndy and I used to live relatively near to each other and would regularly appear with some new low rarity. It got to the point that if people saw something strange and slammed in my neck of the woods they'd just wave, assuming it was me- even if they'd never seen the car before!

Here's a few of them:











We weren't the only ones either (obviously dez was one of the others!) with a few errant chaps hovering in a budget-minded wilderness somewhere between the Aircooled VW, Street Machine and Hot Rod scenes.

VIP was up to no good with Yugos (I didn't know him back then though):



...and the scrapingscrap gang were up to all sorts of silliness:









Seth (who I didn't know at the time, but saw his cars at a few 'Rod shows) was on the other side of London being all classic:








I tried to do things properly with a V8 Herald but missed the old 'slammer' days and found an old Cressida to chop the springs on and drive 'til either I was bored, it died or something more interesing came along - sadly (sort of) it was too good to treat in the disposable way these quick slam cars were intended, we got this place going shortly after and realised that obscure Japanese cars were 'a thing' with the help of some internettery. Rather than being some weird old grandad car ripe for slammage, I'd accidentally bought an iconic Shakotan base! The Cressy stuck around for longer than some of those old rides and tamed me a bit.

Crikey, it was fun. :-)

[WillCarter]

Not gonna lie, I was hoping you would pop up rmad as it was some of your ex-motors I had in mind when making this thread. Dez and markbognor always deliver with the coolness too. Now we just need Seth to do a pic dump too.

[stealthstylz]

I think the base cars just aren't as ripe for it now, and the stuff that was been dicked around with back then was super cheap banger fodder. I need to get my old computer set up and get the photos of the old chod off. Highlight was a chevette that I bought for 25 quid, chopped the springs and bump stops till they were loose at ride height then drove round for 3 weeks till the test ran out then dumped it down the quarry and torched it.

[Dez]

i had two mazda b2000s, both satin black, indexed the torsions, oxy torched the front bumpstop towers off, pulled some leafs out back and chucked some 4" blocks in. i don't have pics of either but I'm sure foxy will have some of his and it was basically the same.

there was at least 5 stacklight mercs between us donny lot, my yellow one which wore both red steels/WWs and 17" porsche cups, the black diesel one ive now own again which had 928 rims at one point, a grey one on chrome enkei 3 spoke sorta things that both steve and phil owned, a maroon one and another black one. many, many VWs especially type 3s.

found a pic of my squareback-

bought off a farm owners son who was into VWs for 800 quid including 3 cars full of spares. every panel on it was cali import. had no interior at all and no rubbers at all either.

[adam73bgt]

I'll let others decide whether it's cool or not but my MGBGT only had a little lowering, some wheels and a couple of other cheap mods, did me well as a daily for quite a while





Edit: To give an idea of the cheapness

Wheels: £40 (some paint and tyres bump that up to about 70)
Front spoiler: £1.70
Roof: rollered black

etc...

[rmad]

There's great base cars out there...what we're missing is the 'cheap first car' culture. When you need to find £2000 to insure anything as a 17-21 year old you might as well get a loan out and buy a new Corsa with free insurance. My first cars were all sub-£500 with insurance at about £300.

Some of those 'old' cars were actually about twenty years old when we were mucking about with them. With the same 'old, unloved, unusual, weird and cheap' mindset I had back then we're talking about cars like this as bases for car fun:















Those are your 'Slammers' - those are the Vivas, Skodas and Chevettes of this era.

[Seth]

Many people, certainly in the hot-rod/custom scene here, seemed to grow up to take their cars more seriously. Limited budget has always kept me away from being that serious.

[cianha]

What I've found (over on this side of the Irish Sea at any rate ) is that insurance on anything over 15 years old has started to creep up, so there's no such thing as a "disposable" 20 year old car any more, especially if you're starting out. Aside from a few Polos/106s/Fiestas/Astras, not a lot has survived.

[WillCarter]

See, I still think there's room for this kind of thing even if the cars have gone up in value somewhat, the trouble is now that it seems to be it's no longer cool to do things on a budget to stand out but rather to stick to a formula and show off how much money you can spend keeping up with everyone else. In my admittedly small knowledge of what goes on outside of the RR bubble the monetary side of things doesn't seem to be the issue since there's no end of young drivers barely out of their teens that seem to have no problem in spending thousands on virtually brand new cars, then spending nearly as much again on air-ride systems, brand new wheels and interior re-trims. For the cost of what it takes to put a five year old Golf up to show standard, you could probably build two, maybe three unique rides (obviously depending on what you start out with) and stand out ten times more for a fraction of the cost. So yeah, while times change and in turn older and classic cars have become more sought after I think it's more the change in peoples attitudes that have seen this kind of thing disappear more than anything else.

[vulgalour]

nomad's Hillman Hunter is effortlessly cool.

retrorides.proboards.com/thread/88892

FOAD is a serial offender, one of the prime examples of his efforts has to be the massively unloved and almost unknown Proton Saga which he's done almost nothing to and ended up with a very, very cool car.

retrorides.proboards.com/thread/173463/87-fso-1500-pickup-own

Cheap cruisers are still out there.  Insurance is expensive on everything so why not get something more comfortable and interesting for your budget, it's amazing how big a car can be insured and run cheaply!  Lateral thinking and working to a budget rarely has instant gratification, unlike when you can throw a lot of cash around, but the reward you get from spending time and a bit of effort does feel longer lasting, that smug satisfaction of knowing you got one up on everyone else and have funds left to ENJOY yourself with.

For under a grand (including purchase cost) I have a cruiser/beater that turns heads. It's actually pretty amusing that people notice the Xantia at all to me, it's just a fairly ordinary French estate car with a few aesthetic tweaks - wheel trims from a different Citroen, no tailgate badges, early grille - and has cost me buttons.  Proof that you needn't splash the cash to make a positive impression and you needn't have a rough looking car if you don't have a lot of pennies to play with.

[sasquar]

This sort of thing is still going on round here (Poole/Bournemouth) way. Loads of odds and sods generally with coilovers on, and not a lot else, just used as transport..... Off the top of my head, in the local area, within the last year or so, Ive seen lots of k10 micras, various boxy old hondas (sorry, don't know id's) including a pretty cool shuttle thingy, old sierras, cavaliers (mk3), astras, a couple of moggy minors, pov spec 106, LOADS of vw stuff, jettas, mk1/2/3/4 golfs, boras, passats, corrados, polos, caddys other nearly vw stuff seat ibizas (old shape) cordobas etc, the obligitory bmws, e21(?), e30, e36, e46, couple of 5 series......

The real world is out there, most of the guys who drive them are young too, well, younger than me at least, and I'm only 32!! They tend to be used exactly as people on this thread are talking about, buy with 6 months mot, chuck cheap coilovers on/cut/remove springs (sadly I'm not even joking about removing springs.... evern been in an mk4 astra with no rear springs in?? lets just say its the worst riding thing in the world and leave it at that) drive until the mot is out, then weigh in and buy something simmilarish, and repeat......

Oh, and rollered paint jobs seem to be pretty common on these as well, theres one lad in particular who likes to change the colour of whatever hes driving at least once a month......