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[Martin_1962]

 A mate of mine in the late seventies took me for a spin in his Hunter with the holbay engine and for a 4/5 seater saloon was bl**dy quick and if i remember rightly sounded pretty good to 8-).

Very nice - the Holbay engine was the one to have.  Just wish I was old enough to drive when these cars were in production!

:(Sadly i'm old enough to remember a few rootes group cars including hunters. The holbay was a right mover in it's day & much loved but the handling was awful. I know all cars of that era were vague to say the least but equivelant cortinas,vivas etc were a little more sure footed.
       Still, cracking nostalgia, i drove these type cars as a teenager so happy memories

As to the Avenger they do handle well, my mums estate was excellent, had a prat in an Escrap trying to keep up down a lane while I was driving quite carefully, if I had known he was trying to catch me I would have booted it properly and gone The knobend claimed to be an off duty Policeman, but his driving left a lot to be desired, but if a carefully driven 1.6 Avenger Estate can cause a FWD Escrap to struggle what does this say about Escraps?

If you want to improve the handling, shorten the wheel base and fit stiffer std ride height springs, better dampers, a hatch body, and pretend you are rallying That said the Estates axle was better located with a 5 link panhard rod setup, the saloon and hatch had a 4 link setup

[x25xe]

You could strip the engine down to individual components and rebuild it overnight.... problem was, you had too... regularly! Great fun though.

Would love to buy this one but nowhere to put it..  

Strip down regularly?  My dad had a Hillman Hunter OHX 957 E.  I loved that car.  Anyway, he drove it by day and my mum, who was a district nurse, drove it by night.  Between them, the car went round the clock twice.  To my knowledge (I was around 8 at the time mind) it never had a total rebuild.  It did have the points converted to a Sparkrite electronic ignition system though and a Smiths rear window heater.

Somewhat sadly, the day he sold it, I cried!  We got another Hunter after that, which was the Chrysler version.  It was not the same

The Rootes engines were around the best on their day - 5 bearing crank for example as Martin has already pointed out.

[Martin_1962]

You could strip the engine down to individual components and rebuild it overnight.... problem was, you had too... regularly! Great fun though.

Would love to buy this one but nowhere to put it..  

Strip down regularly?  My dad had a Hillman Hunter OHX 957 E.  I loved that car.  Anyway, he drove it by day and my mum, who was a district nurse, drove it by night.  Between them, the car went round the clock twice.  To my knowledge (I was around 8 at the time mind) it never had a total rebuild.  It did have the points converted to a Sparkrite electronic ignition system though and a Smiths rear window heater.

Somewhat sadly, the day he sold it, I cried!  We got another Hunter after that, which was the Chrysler version.  It was not the same

The Rootes engines were around the best on their day - 5 bearing crank for example as Martin has already pointed out.

The Avenger 1600 was one of the best push rod engine designs I know of, it had some more advanced features than Fords XFlow, if it had aluminium or cross flowed desigh it would have been best

[Jay w]

talking of low mileage mothballed cars, how about this......

http://www.buriedcar.com

Due to be dug up in about 30 days time