Andy's Florida junkyard horror story reminded me
of a similar one that happened to me in Tallahassee,
Fla. about 7 yrs. ago. At the time I owned a Series II
Sunbeam Alpine that the previous owner had fitted with
a 2.0l Pinto engine & automatic trans. I had bought a
wrecked Capri with a four speed from a junkyard with
the idea to put the trans. into the Sunbeam. (The auto
was just NOT sporty at the time). The yard delivered
the Capri to my house one weekend while I was working
on the Alpine. As the guys were unloading the Capri one
of them remarked that they had one of them Sunbeam cars
back in their yard, cept someone had put a V-8 in it !
With images of Tigers dancing in my mind I began
pumping this guy for info about this "Sunbeam car". And
then as innocently as it had happened, his co-worker
says, " Nope, we crushed that one just last week."
In my ten years as a Floridian I came to realize
that the caustic combination of humidity and the
oft-found lack of foreign car understanding ("Sunbeam...
that's a Pontiac, right ?) usually spells a tragic & early
death for some really worthwhile cars. The only upside
of this is that if you found something it was usually
cheap.
Alright, who else out there has some incredible
British-car stories ?
Daren Stone
HERMES::"dstone@sc9.intel.com"
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