Upper Middle Petrol Head:

  Happy new year, petrol-heads!  We begin 2023's Classics by the Beach with this immaculate V6 Ford Capri GT, follow it up with an unusual - also quite rare - SAAB, an excellent VW Beetle, a pristine Austin Healey, and an interesting selection of Minis, before capping it all off with an elegant Riley coupe.  Please enjoy! I've loved Capri GTs ever since Ms Paterson first drove her then quite new blue one into the Howrah Primary School teachers' car park in the early 1970s.  Other than the main colour, hers was had the exact same livery as today's example and featured what were then considered to be high-end performance Dunlop Aquajet bias-ply radial tyres, possibly on alloy wheels from the same manufacturer and that looked like this: Ms Paterson was a formidable woman and a member of the Australian Institute of Advanced Motorists.  I thought she was really, really cool!  It's unlikely, being a primary-schooler when this quirky SAAB was built, that I'd have found

Cool things to know about this stately Wolseley 24/80 Mk II:  1/. It does not belong to a crusty old man with bushy eyebrows and hair growing out of his ears, instead being owned by a youngish woman who has had it for the last twelve years or so; 2/. she recently drove it from her home state of New South Wales to Hobart, Tasmania, where UMPH correspondent GlamRock photographed it; and 3/. said owner loves her classic car dearly. Other moderately interesting stuff:  a/. The Wolseley 24/80 had a production run spanning 1962 to 1965 and shared the body and trim of the much longer-lived four cylinder 15/60 and 16/60 variants (1958 - 1971);  b/. the 24/80 was powered by a 2.4 litre straight six-cylinder version of the BMC B-Series engine, developed in Australia and known as the Blue Streak; c/. all three versions - 24/80s, 15/60s and 16/60s - look much the same, although Wikipedia reckons it's possible tell them apart by reference to their front bumper overriders;  d/.  this is largely