1954 Vauxhall Wyvern
I owned one of these in 1964. It was a nice roomy motor with
bench seats and a column change 3 speed box so it could easily seat
six.
The whole car had been resprayed using aerosol paint - dozens of cans -
by the owner's brother who worked at the paint factory, every time he
emptied
a batch of cans he would take them back to be refilled.
There was an interesting novelty - Vauxhalls at this period used
windscreen
wipers that were cable driven from the car's engine so that the faster
you drove, the faster the wipers went - at 75 mph they were an absolute
blurr and floated about 2 inches off the screen!
I bought this car from a pal very cheaply because it had done about
100,000 miles and was rusty - most of the front floor was made of
laminated
'Daily Mirrors' and Araldite. We filled the whole of the rear
chassis
boxes with a strong mix of industrial Araldite after bunging up all the
cracks with newspaper and rags. The engine burned a lot of oil
and
the only way to control it was by using about 80 grade oil.
However
it went very well and with a used set of oversize radial tyres (Dunlop
SP41s) from a big Jaguar the road holding was incredible. In
normal
running the engine was not a problem but 10 minutes on the M1 and you
couldn't
breathe for oil fumes in the cabin. I used to travel up and down
from Surrey to Staffordshire each week but I had to stay on 'A' roads
where
it behaved perfectly. At this time I was given the chance to buy
a really nice Humber Hawk that was fit for motorway use and so I sold
the
Wyvern to another friend who rebuilt the engine and kept it for several
more years.
- 4 cyl. 1507cc. OHV. 47bhp.
- Independent coil spring front suspension.
- Semi-elliptic rear springs.
- Very roomy - 2 bench seats, column change.
- Very rust prone body but very strong.