Coupe Man

[GerardJPC]

Not Lancia specific, but I like this short piece on the sort of terrible person that would drive a coupe (I have four cars that could be or indeed are described as coupes). 

https://driventowrite.com/2016/01/24/ireland-in-the-70s-cars-culture-coupe-man-profile/


The article and comments are also deadly accurate on the subject of Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s (I'm from there).

[Richard Fridd]

Thank you Gerard, does anyone here have memories from their student days of interesting vehicles operated by their teaching staff, coupes or otherwise? The most exotic we had was a Stag and a BMW R80. (Stag as in Triumph, not the animal)

[GerardJPC]

I don't recall paying much attention to the car park at my school.  The Squadron Warrant Officer in my Air Cadets Squadron circa 1976 had what seemed to me a very lovely Rover P6, with clear covers on the seats (which even then struck me as naff). I do not recall noticing Lancias until the Beta era, possibly because there were very few Lancias in boring Solihull.  The most exciting cars that I remember seeing around locally in the early 70s were a Jensen Interceptor and a Lotus Europa, and I've since scratched both those itches.    My dad had a drinking buddy who had been in the US Marines during WW2 and was also a defrocked priest with a large family.  He had a battered Mark Ten Jaguar that seemed to me impossibly huge.   Much of the battering on the Jaguar derived from drink driving, a vice to which my dad was not immune either.  

[frankxhv773t]

I must have attended a more discerning university. The object of my lust (apart from a very pretty first year art history student who is still an essential part of my life these forty years hence) was a lecturer's daily transport in the form of a blower Bentley. It was used in all weathers but as a concession to its age the radiator was draped with an old horse blanket in winter.

A student in the year above me on my course had an equally mythical beast in the form of a hybrid bike based on a Vincent Black Shadow engine in Norton Featherbed frame. One of the first floor lecture theatres projected out over the entrance providing a sheltered area where bikes were parked, including this motorbike. When it was fired up the lecture had to be suspended till the rider departed. Concord had a similar effect from above.

[GerardJPC]

I was thinking of school days, not university (which for me happened in the early 80s).   Cars did not feature much there, because for practical reasons associated with the local traffic layout almost everybody was on bicycles, and there wasn't a car park for the tutors. 

[bobhenry999]

Not in the least exotic, but when I was at infant school in the early sixties my headmaster a rather frightening Mr Franklin had an Austin Westminster, and later on my head of year at senior school had a 2 stroke Wartburg Knight estate, and my science teacher a Fiat 128, the keys of which a pal of mine and I sawed in half when he left them on his desk, much to my shame, although it was funny at the time !

[lancialulu]

Thank you Gerard, does anyone here have memories from their student days of interesting vehicles operated by their teaching staff, coupes or otherwise? The most exotic we had was a Stag and a BMW R80. (Stag as in Triumph, not the animal)

My metal work teacher used to drag race a blown beetle powered motorcycle. Never in the school car park though......

[GerardJPC]

I recall that our school minibus was a Sherpa (I much later had a Sherpa campervan for a while), and that when at Air Cadet camp at RAF stations we went around in lots of Series III Land Rovers.  I grew up very close to the Land Rover factory and I have a Series III that left Solihull, never to return, in the early 1980s, just like me, but it is in better nick than I am. 

I cannot remember anyone whom I knew having an Italian car when I was a child, but my favourite uncle had a rather scruffy Fiat Ritmo in Dublin in the late 80s, when I was an awful yuppie with stripy shirts and an E30 BMW 325i (and, in mitigation of my crimes, a Triumph Vitesse).

[frankxhv773t]

Talking of pranks, at school the geography master's MG midget was picked up, turned on it's side and carried round behind a giant heating oil tank from whence it couldn't be driven out. The first 15 were eventually prevailed upon to lift it back out for him.

[neil-yaj396]

I recall that our school minibus was a Sherpa (I much later had a Sherpa campervan for a while), and that when at Air Cadet camp at RAF stations we went around in lots of Series III Land Rovers.  I grew up very close to the Land Rover factory and I have a Series III that left Solihull, never to return, in the early 1980s, just like me, but it is in better nick than I am. 

I cannot remember anyone whom I knew having an Italian car when I was a child, but my favourite uncle had a rather scruffy Fiat Ritmo in Dublin in the late 80s, when I was an awful yuppie with stripy shirts and an E30 BMW 325i (and, in mitigation of my crimes, a Triumph Vitesse).

A teacher at my school had a 124 Coupe just like yours but beige I think (my Dad had a Vitesse and a TR7.)

[GerardJPC]

Your dad was cooler than my dad!  My dad had no money, so he had some truly terrible cars until he got to the company car ranks, and I learned about swearing from the words that my dad uttered whilst he spent hours lying under horrible wrecks on the driveway.

I might return my 124 to its correct 1970s colour of burned orange.  Somebody has given it a cheap and not very effective spray over in re-sale Rosso Corsa.

Having raided the mind palace, I now have a very dim recollection that my headmaster at secondary school, a dour and almost silent Scottish man, may have had a Fiat 128 (but it might instead have been some sort of Volvo); and that the deputy head of my primary school, a warm hearted Irish rugby bloke, had some sort of sporty Ford.  The young and sporty married couple who taught me French (she) and Physics (he) at secondary school had some sort of brightly coloured hatchback but I cannot recall what.  

I do not recall ever seeing any of my university tutors in or near a car, although a (possibly rented) Sherpa minibus turned up driven by the louche Fellow and Tutor in German when some of us went for a College-funded reading party at a lonely house in Cornwall in my final year.  I was driven there in a very clapped out Austin 1100 that belonged to one of the very few undergraduates who owned a car.   It broke down near Didcot on the way back from Cornwall.

[neil-yaj396]

My history teacher was the later TV presenter, Harry Grattion. He had a beige MG Midget.

[Richard Fridd]

Prompted by the 'car restoration courses' thread my tutor Mr Rutherford had no trouble with pranks. He may have had a military tank parked around the corner as he went on to co present tv's 'Combat Dealers'. Richard