It's alive!

[droopsnoot]

For the first time in around eight years, I finally managed to get my Sportshatch running on Sunday afternoon. There's been nothing wrong with it, it's just that as it hadn't run for so long it needed some coaxing to get it going. There's a big leak somewhere around the exhaust manifold (it always used to crack between 1 and 4, it has a tubular manifold of some type) and it's a bit rough, but then it has got petrol from 1998 going through it now (I used new from a can to start it with).

So, maybe another Sportshatch back on the road for next season, depending on what work it needs. I'm expecting trouble with the brakes after all this time, but it was in pretty good condition when it was laid up so fingers crossed.

[pbottomley]

well done sir, I have just got my MOT on my HA just leaves me my 2.3 Coupe to start now.

Nice to hear so many cars now being worked on by people, but then it is summer.

I understand that Karl's Sportshatch is also near road worthyness, so its more sportshatchs than you think!

PS on a side note, why oh why did Vauxhall make sprtshatchs in such god auful colours? was the designer colour blind??

[droopsnoot]

PS on a side note, why oh why did Vauxhall make sprtshatchs in such god auful colours? was the designer colour blind??

Colours? Surely colour, they were all the same apart from the prototype...

My thought: it was the 1970s so all cars were awful colours, they wanted a car to stand out from the crowd, so went for that. The interior was just some tartan they had kicking around (it was the same in some Chevettes and VXs). It's certainly eye-catching, though - when I used to drive mine through town you could see people looking at it, much more attention that the Firenza gets. Plenty have been changed, though - there was a white one in Autotrader years back, a yellow one changed hands recently and there's more than one been repained in silver over the years.

It would be interesting to talk to someone who was at Vauxhalls at the time, to see why they went for that instead of the silver that the prototype / design study (WXE939M) was done in. Sadly the actual designed can't be tackled on the subject as it was apparently the late Geoff Lawson, though whether he got involved in colour choice is another matter.

While I was running mine as an everyday car, I did see a local dark blue Toyota Supra where the guy had put two light-coloured stripes around the car at bumper level, and thought "how nice, he's trying to make it look like a Sportshatch".