Letters

We love to hear from you, the readers' - so please take a moment to get in touch.

There are several easy wasy to do so, see our contacts page>>

Letter: A small Galaxie

Dear Classic American,

Having just read the article on the 1960 Ford Galaxie sunliner in the January issue, I thought I’d better drop you a line. Down here in Bournemouth, we have another two 1960 Sunliners living even closer than the two in Enfield – in fact they are less than four feet apart in our garage and on our drive respectively!

They are both currently off the road, but one of them is undergoing a very long and drawn-out restoration (same old story: kids, house moves, DIY and so on) but we will get there one day. Having owned them for 13 or 14 years, they have become part of the family.

During 1960/61, 91 right-hand drive 1960 Sunliners were brought into the UK, 90 of which were imported by Lincoln cars (on which you recently ran a feature). At the time we bought ours, we knew of six right-hand drive cars still around: two were red and ours which are Sultana Turquoise and Yosemite Yellow, plus a white one and a sixth one, the colour of which I can’t remember. There was also at least one yellow and one red left-hand drive car knocking about also.

In the last year or so, a very tidy right-hand drive car was sold down here on the South coast. So although very rare, they are still about, and I am certain that there are plenty of others languishing in peoples' garages and about the country. Incidentally, all the right-hand drive cars had the left-over 332cu.in. engines from the 1959 cars and modified 1959 dashboards, unlike the left-hand drive cars which got the new 352 motor and new dashboards. They were also at the time I believe the widest American production car at 7ft 2in wide dwarfing the ’59 caddy and reputedly were only made for one year because they were deemed too wide for American roads!

Dave and Bev Williams
Bournemouth
Dorset

We hope that Harry Tuttle’s superb 1960 Ford Sunliner provides you with a bit of inspiration to get at least one of your 1960 Galaxies back on the road – anyone else out there with one of these rare Fords?

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Letter: Europe Ban on Imports

Dear Classic American,

I am not sure if you are aware of this, as I don't recall reading it in the magazine recently (although I’m still catching up on two issues back, so maybe I have missed it,) so just in case, here is the scoop. A friend of mine forwarded me an e-mail regarding some proposed legislation from Europe banning the import of non-EU cars. There was a contact number for someone at an import association, whom I called. They explained to me that the immediate threat is the banning of the import of any car that is not already type approved and is less than six months old into UK/Europe.

Any car older than six months is not affected. Obviously, this only seems to affect the import of new cars. However, they went on to explain that further down the agenda was the ban of any used car. It all escalated from the import of 300 Chinese SUV type vehicles into Germany that were exempt from the European legislation, and as a result the motor manufacturers want all non-official imports banned!

This doesn't seem to add up to me, considering the quantities involved here, and why should this affect used cars? Unless the people involved here are concerned about China’s future involvement (and possible eventual domination!) in the global automobile industry. The guy added that it is Europe that is pushing for the legislation and that the UK government does not want it. He also said that he would forward to more info, but I have yet to receive it. Are you aware of any of this?

Martin Fowler
Via e-mail

We are very much aware of this proposed legislation and the impact it could have on the American car scene as we know it. We take it very seriously and have made it the lead story in this month’s News Section and also the top story on the Classic American website. For more information on how you can make your voice heard to protest against this proposal, go to www.classic-american.com and fill in the petition letter on-line for your MEP. Tell all your friends on the American car scene and involve your clubs: as we saw with SVA in the past, if we make our voice heard we can impact on legislation such as this, which is detrimental to importing American vehicles into the UK.

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