Upper Middle Petrol Head:

This awesome XW GT Falcon was snapped at Kingston Beach, south of Hobart, Tasmania, on a gorgeous summer's afternoon.  If it's not a genuine GT, it's as close as you could possibly ask for with the only non-kosher part visible being its apparently standard two spoke Falcon steering wheel, complete with a semi-elliptical chrome horn ring. There are myriad reasons why a non-GT wheel may have been fitted.  It could be that the original's being refurbished ; it might be that the owner prefers the standard XW version.  It matters little, though ; the car is outstanding and that's what counts!   And when I say outstanding, I'm not exaggerating.  The duco is perfect, the chrome immaculate and the interior is pristine.  The only other ostensible departure from original - the striking orange  Simmons wheels - tie in beautifully with the GT side stripes, creating a cohesive colour scheme that really works. All the other GT goodies are there:  it has spo

This is the first article of my  Upper Middle Petrol Head Drives  ... series.  However, I suspect that it could also be my last, given that the owner of the featured car, Phil Blake, is a man of unequalled generosity and trust. If I were Phil, I would not have offered me a drive of his hand-built,  Targa Tasmania  class-winning Fiat-Abarth OT 1600 replica.  But that's exactly how I found myself behind the wheel of his diminutive yellow rocket: one day I was chatting  to Phil about the car when he said, quite unexpectedly, "you'll have to have a drive!"  Clearly, it was an offer that I was never going to refuse! Not totally on top of your early- to mid-1960s high-performance Fiats?  According to an ubiquitous on-line source, who describe the OT 1600 as an "extreme variant" of the Fiat 850 Berlina, only four were ever made.  I'm putting my money on Phil, though ; he reckons there were five and I have no reason to doubt him.  He also

There's a bit of circularity happening with today's post, the 299th in the U M P H  Random series, only one shy of the triple century edition.  The second ever car to be featured was also a Renault 10, photographed way back in January of 2016 ( https://uppermiddlepetrolhead.blogspot.com/2016/01/random-2-renault-10.html ) .       I've only seen and posted about one, maybe two, other Renault 10s in the intervening four years - a sky blue, slightly modified one on display on the lawns of Tasmania's Parliament House, Hobart, during the French Car Club's annual Bastille Day celebrations and standard version of a similar colour at Le Weekend in Cygnet.  Either way, they're getting rare. The one shown here looks a treat with its tricolour themed paint job, ancillary lighting and motorsports style stickers, one of them being for Gordini.  I'm not sure where Gordini sits within the pantheon of Renault sports editions, but I believe its relationship to th