Upper Middle Petrol Head:

This very, very sexy "pony car" is an  American Motors Corporation (AMC) Javelin, possibly a 1968 or '69 model.  For some reason, they were marketed as Rambler Javelins in Australia.  I've not seen it around Hobart before but, with a J -prefix rego, it's not super-new to the state.   It really did look the goods, with very nice duco in a striking shade of blue, straight, shiny chrome and tasty after-market  alloys.  The interior was in similarly great nick.    According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Javelin ) , the Javelin came with anything from a 3.8 litre straight six (shared with the Rambler Hornet), through to a stonking 6.4 litre V8.  They weren't considered to be a "big" car, though, being towards the smaller end of the US market, competing with GM's Camaro   / Firebird   lineup rather than, say, Ford's Mustang, GM's GTO or Chrysler's Dodge Charger.   I'm a big fan of the Ramb...

Back in the early 1980s, vehicles like this HJ Sandman were commonplace in the car park that used to run the full length of Sandy Bay's Nutgrove Beach, creating a through-road where there's now a wide pedestrian promenade.  This caused considerable annoyance to gentlefolk of the area and was a constant PiTA for the police tasked with responding to never ending complaints of hooning, drinking, swearing and other behaviour not quite in keeping with the post code!   Forty years down the track, it's hard to fathom that a Sandman - or any classic Aussie car, for that matter - is pulling the same sort of money now as a house did then.  Not a house on the Sandy Bay waterfront, though; you could buy an entire 1980s Eastern Shore street for the price of a 2023 des res anywhere along the Long Beach / Nutgrove strip! All of this makes the location of Hobart's Classics by the Beach, held on the  first Sunday of every month   at the remaining souther...

Sadly, Lancia Betas of this quality and condition are nearly as rare as angels’ poop today, many having succumbed to rust.  This is especially true of the model in the UK, where they corroded so badly that their engine subframes not uncommonly became loose, often when the cars were still quite new, resulting in Lancia buying them back and pretty much destroying the marque’s name in Britain.   Whilst rust is the worldwide scourge of Lancias of that era - and don’t go all “yes, we know - the Italians used Russian steel” (we’ll get to that in a minute) - the problem isn’t as bad Down Under, very probably because we don’t salt our roads.  In this respect, Australian vehicles are very much like the fabled “California cars” or those from South Africa, often being significantly sounder than examples from countries whose roads ice over or that are, at the opposite end of the spectrum, very humid.  It's likely that today's Beta coupe - brought to us by SEQC PeteR, as are the ...