Talking about the 1600E, when I was round at his garage about a month or so ago there was a very nicely restored one up on his ramp which was a treat to see. Back in those days I preferred the look of the GT or Lotus versions, especially the mark one. The MK2 1600E always looked a bit "heavy" and "blingy" to me? But lovely to see such a nice one today.
Thinking back to these older cars makes you realize how things have come on with underbody protection on today's cars. Welding in reinforcement plates for strut top mounts on many vehicles was a really common job as was the repairs to sills with "oversills" being available for many vehicles off the shelf at many factors. "Tin bashing" custom sections for box section repairs was common too. Trouble was often that when you cut the old sills off you found nothing left underneath to weld the new sills to! Minis were bad enough but I remember the horrendous rust that developed on the "step" in front of the rear subframe on the 1100/1300 Austin/Morris which could get very expensive to repair as it often involved structural work on the subframe mountings. I ran a Datsun 120Y estate, exactly like this one even down to being the same colour:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR-x9FONxMg It was a cracking wee car, a sort of Japanese Anglia/Escort if you like and it drove so well. The engine and gearbox were a delight to use but the bodywork? Oh deary me! I was always welding bits into it! Eventually my pal at that time, who was a panel beater, offered to replace both the front wings and respray them for me. The next day after dropping it off at his workshop he phoned me to say "can you call round? I've something to show you". He'd cut away the front wings which had exposed the extent of the rot to the entire front structure of the vehicle. His opinion was that it was so extensive that plating was out of the question so the poor thing had to go to the scrappy! Thankfully I'd not yet bought the replacement wings! One thing I remember very clearly about that car was that it was the first car I'd come across which took a "modular" approach to spares being very "strong" on replacement assemblies rather than individual components. For instance it was not unusual in those days to rebuild things like dynamos, alternators, wiper motors, carburetors and many other sub assemblies. The wipers packed in on it and when I stripped the motor down all it really needed was a clean up of the commutator and a set of new brushes. "Sorry sir, the motor is only available as a complete unit"! In the end I buffed down a set of Lucas brushes until they fitted the holders and it worked fine but all the "official" spares seemed to follow that "complete unit only" ethos.
