SUBSCRIBE TO THE
MAGAZINE NOW
Facebook-f Instagram

Morris: Real gone: Indian Morris Oxford

16 June, 2014

 


Made under license in India since 1957, the last Hindustan Ambassador rolled off the production line in West Bengal last week. if you’ve ever stepped into a taxi cab when visiting India you’ll be familiar with the Ambassador — a car that has become something of a motoring icon for millions.

Based on the Morris Oxford SIII, the Ambassador was built using production tools originally imported from the UK during the ’50s.

Sales of the car have been on the decline since the ’80s and the makers also say that industrial problems have contributed to ceasing production of the Ambassador.

As well, many point out that the Hindustan is a by-product of a long gone era and say that India is now looking at more modern vehicles from makers such as Mahindra and Tata.

Design accord

28 March, 2025

You can’t get much more of an art deco car than a Cord — so much so that new owners, Paul McCarthy and his wife, Sarah Selwood, went ahead and took their Beverly 812 to Napier’s Art Deco Festival this year, even though the festival itself had been cancelled.
“We took delivery of the vehicle 12 days before heading off to Napier. We still drove it all around at the festival,” says Paul.
The utterly distinctive chrome grille wrapping around the Cord’s famous coffin-shaped nose, and the pure, clean lines of the front wing wheel arches, thanks to its retractable headlamps, are the essence of deco. This model, the Beverly, has the finishing touch of the bustle boot that is missing from the Westchester saloon.

Motorman: When New Zealand built the Model T Ford

21 March, 2025

History has a way of surrounding us, hidden in plain sight. I was one of a group who had been working for years in an editorial office in Augustus Terrace in the Auckland city fringe suburb of Parnell who had no idea that motoring history had been made right around the corner. Our premises actually backed onto a century-old brick building in adjacent Fox Street that had seen the wonder of the age, brand-new Model T Fords, rolling out the front door seven decades earlier.
Today, the building is an award-winning two-level office building, comprehensively refurbished in 2012. Happily, 6 Fox Street honours its one time claim to motoring fame. Next door are eight upmarket loft apartments, also on the site where the Fords were completed. Elsewhere, at 89 Courtenay Place, Wellington, and Sophia Street, Timaru, semi-knocked-down Model Ts were also being put together, completing a motor vehicle that would later become known as the Car of the Century.