LANCHESTER L.A.10 1935 SPORTS SALOON

Why did I choose to buy a Lanchester? - purely nostalgia, as my first car was a Lanchester in the late Fifties (sold to a Breakers Yard for £5 ) and I ran another one for a period in the early Sixties. Of course at that time these were regarded merely as 'not in the first flush of youth' rather than classics. They were Bangers, and when I think back they certainly tended to go 'bang' with alarming regularity. Still, nostalgia usually goes hand in hand with rose-tinted spectacles and for better or worse, in November 97 I was tempted and fell.

The car came with a new M.O.T. Test Certificate but because of my lack of recent experience of this age of car, and a question mark over reliability on a 100 mile journey to home, it was agreed that the Seller would transport it on his trailer. Following delivery, a more detailed examination of the vehicle showed that this was the right decision for a number of reasons - apart from the general trauma, and potential overnight loss of my remaining hair, from driving a 1935 car on two extremely busy motorways.

These reasons included the inability to check either petrol or temperature gauges since unfortunately neither were working. I could of course  have just filled  the petrol tank and reasonably hoped that the beast would do more than the 10 miles to the gallon needed to get me home but once it was delivered it quickly became clear that only a sudden change to Arctic conditions would have enabled the cooling system to work properly. In short, when purchased, the cooling system was clogged with limescale and other assorted muck and could give a passable imitation of an electric kettle - not an ideal set-up for starting out on 100 miles of motorways devoid of the frequent lay-byes in which we regularly stopped in the past to allow our old bangers to cool down. (Invariably their cooling systems were always clogged with  assorted muck as well).

Don't get me wrong, I was neither surprised nor disappointed that there were going to be 'THINGS TO DO' -- in fact quite a lot of things to do --------------