His greatest problem was that he could not wear some of his best and most fashionable dresses in the mini. I think he liked mini cars because of that fashion in skirts at that time.
@@thosdot6497 nothing wrong with the truth. He had his sickness. Most of us do in one way or another. His was more obviously perverted. Sorry if you cannot understand that. What I said was realised back then instead of endorsing sickness the way it is now.
@@richardpickersgill3335 - Tuckey/Quints was entertaining (only the other day I found a half inch thick collection of Romsey Quint columns from Wheels I'd photocopied in the 80s), but for insight into where the car had come from, what we were doing with it, and where it might be going, the quality of thought in these Torque episodes is outstanding. I can't forget we're looking at these with 40+ years of hindsight - some of the questions PW raised still aren't answered.
Seems like yesterday. Love the double yellow (not white) lines down the middle of the road and the green and cream Sydney buses. He pays tribute to the fun of driving a mini but the funnest mini of all was the Moke. More made in Australia than anywhere else in the world because we have the weather for them. Swing axle Beatles were potentially dangerous but many of us became devoted fans. I still have three of them in 2021.
@@wizzard5442 No I shit a brick, but lucky all my mates were ok ( no seat belts in the rear seat). But worst was to come when I had to ring the old man up and tell him Not happy
My first car was a VW Beetle back in 1984, and I also lost it after two weeks :-) Not because of an accident, but because it rained for the first time in two weeks and the water was 10 cm high in the car. It was a 1973 special edition Beetle Jeans. I haven't forgotten the Beetle anyway, and I'm not mad at it anymore either 🙂
You can't roll a Beetle with power down. But, man, they'll roll very easily if you lift off. In the late 70s l got away from the cops 3x in Beetles. They couldn't go where l went. Bad handling but excellent road holding. He's wrong on F Porsche. Porsche was named Engineer of the Century. For example they had gone to IRS a longtime before he had made this statement
Pete certainly knew his stuff, I used to watch Torque and Marque every week on the ABC, he never pulled any punches and would tell the big car manufacturers when they were not doing the right thing with Aussie consumers with sub standard cars. R.I.P. Pete...........
I had a 1964 850, as an art student in 1979 I could only afford two new tyres, and they put them on the back, consequently I ended crashing it into the back of a Holden Panel van on a wet day, as my front wheel drive baldies did not turn, the tow truck said I could pay for his service with my new rear tyres. I still remember the ripple passing along the bonnet. My sister thought she was bleeding with red stuff all over the passenger side, fortunately it was only a bottle of red acrylic paint. Great car though, I could pull the gear stick out as I was driving, and put it back in again. Can't believe the price they go for these days.
@@Max-dd7du I had one too. A 62 English model (cream rims, the later ones were silver). Handled very poorly on gravel or sand country roads. Engine clearance was also low and I did a front pressed steel engine mount driving on farm roads. Easily replaced it myself with an improved alloy mount. Till I found out what it was, I occasionally got a chaffcutter noise from the front (fan against the radiator). Later noticed the slight right to left tilt on the engine (driver view). Also had it toed with the engine pipe off. A bolt became detached and was driven into the alloy sump at the rear. A hole as big as your finger which the bush mechanic patched up with araldite. Never looked back.
I remember when I first put radials on it - they were - not Michelin - but the Italian equivalent =- Pirelli. Much better and lasted longer. In those days the cross ply tires were only good for c. 10 000 miles.
I recently read somewhere that in 2023 Mazda will launch a hybrid car with a Wankel engine as a range extender. So not as a drive, but to charge the battery.
But with a good set of shocks / tyres and your foot always on the throttle you'd never roll a beetle. I gotta way from the cops numerous times in beetles. It was in the dark ages. Also we thru apples at fancy EHs and XYs to get em to chase us. They couldn't get us as ovals, footpaths, creeks, firetrails no-one could catch me. You can now get aftermarket front and rear ends that make em really handle and improve tractability. Excellent
@@Mercmad The Minor was way ahead of it's time when it was first introduced but after a long production run it really showed it's age. I have a mid production run car and the late 40s were alive and well into the 60s! Still wouldn't want anything else.
I test drove one at the time and was reasonably happy with it, nearly put the cash down until I realised that for the same money I could get a fully optioned V8 Sandman Van, Biggest mistake I ever made, the van was a disaster, found out after an RAA inspection I had done because of all the problems I was having that it had been in a serious accident before I took delivery of it brand new. Never bought another Holden after that.
It’s fun to check all these cars peter drove or showcased in these shows by their rego, the lotus cortina rego expired in 1994, so it had a few years after this show on the road. It’s either scrapped or a project car waiting resto now.
@@hamishfullerton7309 - *Nobody was hit in the making of this video, or in the design of the Volkswagen vehicle. "minies [sic] were a better car". Could that possibly be due to having been designed about TWO DECADES later? Actually, I think you really prefer the Germans - because you make it clear that you hate English.
Mercedes built the C111 diesel (only 5 cylinders) that did 403 Kmh to specifically show that diesels are not necessarily slow. This was in 1978, one year before this episode. PW should have been paying attention: because today the S350 D does 250 Kmh, and that's the smallest (2.9L) you can buy in this model, showing what the potential always was.
How things change. What makes Peter such a good journalist is the fact that he is intelligent, informative, practical, and very articulate. Speaking to a well educated intelligent audience. Not today,full of mindless bimbos,which are clueless, mindless and it's all about me,followed by a false giggle.
Those Cooper cars that Pete was on about, I think it was the Cooper this, they raced those in the western suburbs of Melbourne in the 50s at cherry Lake altona and for a short period at the old Williamstown racecourse behind the altona oil refinary but it was short lived all up.
Gotta say the 1980s Merc 190D is the slowest car I've ever driven. Even our 1979 Landcruiser I6 I learned on was faster lol. I miss Peter & his common sense.
Funny how I have owned VW's for forty years and have hot rodded them all the time and when you know how they handle it turns into an asset, Good drivers only need apply.
We had the Merc 300D in our family in the 80s. It was a beautiful car and had none of the problems that Peter Wherret talks about like being sluggish up hills or being uncomfortable in the city. It had enough power to do anything required of it. Yes it did vibrate a bit being a diesel but was such a minor factor considering it was such a nice car overall. I think Peter Wherret is being a bit overly critical to gain some sort of polarising and emotional opinions from his viewers.
The problem with most diesel cars is that they install a tiny little engine into a heavy car. So, the petrol model might be a 3L or even more, yet the diesel would be 1.4L or something equally silly. Of course they were sluggish! Yet it wasn't so much the technology, but the lack of cubic capacity.
Yep, it turns a boring clunky low-revving lump into a slightly more powerful boring clunky low-revving lump. Add the turbo and intercooler plus a revised fuel map then you get an even more powerful boring clunky low-revving lump plus a shitload of smoke.
And don't forget the Common Rail technology or similar systems of direct injection. On the other hand, today's diesel engines are much more sensitive to the quality of the fuel. The old precombustion chamber diesels could also be driven with used fat from the fryer. That's no joke. In the 1980s there were companies in Germany that collected, filtered and sold the frying oil from snack bars. For example, if you drove behind a Mercedes 200 D that was fueled with it, there was a constant smell of French fries on the road. Another example: When diesel fuel was very expensive (international oil crisis, taxes), people got sunflower oil from the supermarket which was cheaper. WARNING: Never do this with a modern diesel engine!
Swing arm suspension was used by lots of manufacturers, not just VW and GM. Mercedes used it for many years. Many early race cars also used this basic suspension. I had several VW cars that I flogged as a teenager and never had any upside down moments. The adoption of radial tires made a big difference in countering camber angle changes. But then again you don't drive a VW like any other vehicle as the weight distribution is totally different.
1960's Ford made military 'Jeeps' also used swing arms in rear... had a sticker on them warning of the danger in corners... Military convoys were also supposed to travel at 20 MPH back then, though...
I worked with a joker in the mid sixties who rolled his VW on a familiar pretty straightish but cambered country road three times. He was pissed at the time but an exceedingly dextrous opening batsman.
3:27 - It was never about handling with these cars. It was about the RIDE on our poor roads. The Velox certainly has a level ride here. Top-gear acceleration from slow speeds was also important. In the Velox's case from SIX mph in top all the way to its top speed, hence three speeds were no handicap. BTW on lower octane fuel the Velox outperformed the larger automatic contemporary Chevrolet with a much larger engine.
His comments about the Mini's ability to carry sizable quantities of alcohol in the interior are somewhat ironic, given his later drink driving troubles
My dad bought a Mini Cooper S in 1973, and one morning it wouldn’t start, so he unlatched the bonnet straps and raised the hood...only to discover that someone had stolen the engine during the night!!,
Wherret spouting goofs again. He said the Mini had an engine turned sideways (it did) and drove the road wheels direct! No, it had a gearbox and diff the same as any car. They are absolutely essential.
Hey Pete, watching in 2019, and guess what, there is still petrol, diesel and shit look we still have big cubic inch motors, shit also I have a Turbo diesel Audi that will kick 99% of petrol motored cars arse on the highways
My Hyundai i30 Diesel smashes all of his comments about diesels, pity they stopped making them. Drives like a petrol, no engine repairs other than servicing, 350000 km mostly on short runs and still drives like a new car. Only bought it so the kids could learn to drive in a manual transmission, 2 years old 8 thousand dollars didn’t think I could go to far wrong. The kids are now well in their 20s I gave our big 4wd wagon to the youngest and kept the i30 for my daily drive. 6 foot 4 heavily built middle aged man driving a little hatch back looks a bit odd but I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
I consider it unforgivable that for all the diesel engine's advantages, particularly better fuel economy, ruggedness, and relatively high torque at low RPM, that more SUVs and light trucks aren't available with the diesel.
It was done in the late 70's before turbo diesels became common place. The only major car company that had a mass produced diesel car perfected and available in Australia was Mercedes and it was slow as a bus.
@@leoncutajar1369 I'm afraid I've never driven a diesel powered Mercedes-Benz. Except for the Sprinter and heavy duty trucks and busses, I cannot imagine Mercedes-Benz is still producing diesel for cars.
@@jasoncarpp7742Most new diesels are almost indistinguishable from petrol cars except for better fuel economy and gobs of torque off the mark. I'm a huge old school diesel fan as they are rugged, more reliable, last longer AND will run on almost any oil but until about the late 80s when the EU started heavily subsiding them and companies started turbo charging them most diesel cars were slow as a bus. Mercedes will continue to build diesel cars as long as people continue to buy them as in Europe thats one of the things Mercedes is most know for.
@@pattheslut And.....the older ones will burn just about anything provided it is clean. A few people are getting 600+hp out of the OM606 engines in europe with any internal mods.
My mothers mk2 cooper s ran a 12.01 at oran park , road going tyres std diff and that was the car I learnt to drive in (I owned motorbikes). No it wasn't std
I had a very worked (1320, flowed head, 731 cam, balanced, Weber 45 DCOE) cooper s. Went like stink - 110 MPH @ 6,500 RPM down the Midlands highway here in Tas. Still regret selling it, but 3 kids........
At least Wherrett had the good sense to refer to the car's energy output as *horse power* because the metric system had already begun to infect our terminology in the early 1970s and this show was made in 1979 when Australia was only 4 years into the Colour TV era.
@@atoieno funny you say that - my old man told me he was egged into a drag at the lights by a mini cooper in sydney in the early seventies. Turned out to be an undercover cop and booked him for speeding!
@@1greenMitsi we used to do the Hume Highway from Goulburn to Sydney as kids. It was fairly obvious those minis that were Highway Patrols.... a 20 stone cop (130 Kg) in a Cooper S filled most of it!
Wherrett's and Nader's comments about the Corvair and VW are not based on reality. It greatly over states the historical facts about the two vehicles ignores the situation which when properly examined show that there was very little difference between the dangers of driving the VW and Corvair and other cars of the time..
Both designs were well below what is acceptable in terms of stability and safety - the rear engine, swing arm configuration of these models has been almost univerally shunned by engineers for many decades (Porsche being an imperfect exception as much has been done to overcome the inherent shortcomings in these wildly expensive cars.)
@@saxongreen78 - I grew up in this era and many friends were driving hot VWs with swing axle. They were awesome fun providing you never EVER backed off in a corner. One of my friends spun one on a 4 lane suburban road at over 100mph. He was racing a V8, and was forced to back off when the V8 oversteered and slid into his curbside lane. With nowhere to go he had to slow down the VW , which brought it around behind the other car and then away it went. When we went back to check the skid marks we reckon he did at least 4 360's across all 4 lanes. It was only his rallying skills and massive good luck he didn't wrap it around a pole. Even as stock they were a LONG way behind the dynamics of other cheap cars with a live rear axle - basically, if you lost it you just had to lock up the brakes, hang on and pray.
Wherrets comments were what we could refer today as Fake news. Opinions hiding behind the name "facts". Porsche didn't design the VW suspension. As a young trainee engineer in the 1920's and early 30's working in Bohemia he looked over the shoulder of one his contemporary's , Hans LedWinka .Ledwinka was drawing up designs for Successors to the Tatra T37 ,which would appear post War in Czechoslovakia as the Tatraplan .Porsche moved to Nazi Germany where his fellow Austrian,Adolf Hitler had taken power afteer an election,promising to revamp the economy after years of Famine etc. He also needed to promote the German industrial combine whilst hidng manufacture of arms etc. Porsche, an Avid Nazi sympathizer was one of several designers asked to draw up a prototype peoples car .Porsche scaled down the design he stole from ledwinka, not realising that Tatra would survive the war and go after VW and sue them for theft. it's something like $20,000,000 in the 70's to pay Tatra. Chevies Corvair was a design that was so different to anything else GM was building that they built a whole new plant to produce them. Nader in the mean time has proven to be that person so typical of the hard left, a socialist using a platform to spout their dogma to the public whilst using the media to push his Fake news to the gullible. In this case it was the Corvair Vs Falcon in a film now shown to be full of fakery to be almost criminal in content.. Anyone who has driven one of those early Falcons will know they are bad handling,powerless ,brakeless disasters, where as the Corvair is a very nice driving car with excellent handling and piles of innovation. In the US if an owner didn't think the turbo flat six wasn't fast enough a company could fit a V8 for them. No worries about handling what so ever. Many were raced in various Sports car events in the US,unlike the Falcon . Then Wherret sits in an early Mustnag hile going on about what a great car it was,actually just a Falcon with a fancy frock . i often Wonder who was paying his salary or his paid for comment content. And a lot of those Mercedes Mercs are still runniing well ,My own 300D is perfectly ok in modern traffic,only needs fueling once a month despite being used every day and there is no noise or vibration in the car. ..again,who was paying him ?
Mercmad - just because he stole the layour doesn't mean Porsche didn't design the Beetle suspension - it's pretty obvious he did; and it's also pretty obvious that he should have made more of an efford. And Corvairs were known to have quite dangerous lift-off oversteer until their later models when the rear suspension was modified - they were even capable of catching out F1 drivers - the book 'Grand Prix Carpetbaggers' about Cooper details Jack Brabham driving John Cooper around in the US in one, and that very thing happening to them. Obviously Brabham was able to recover, but what about your average driver? No one's saying the Corvair didn't have innovation. It might have been nice if they'd put a bit more suspension engineering into it though. The Falcon wasn't raced much in the US because there weren't that many races for it- it was a compact - not able to go into Nascar, which was about their only major tin-top series. It was however raced quite successfully in touring car racing both here, and in the UK (although no doubt heavily tweaked in brakes and suspension, as were they all). Most of the rest of your comment is just drivel - was it the comments about your beloved Merc diesel too much to bear? He's right though - the non-turbo 300D has what, 65kW? That's pitiful, regardless of how much torque. I'm sure if he'd seen the turbo-diesels of only a few years later he would have said something different though.
@@thosdot6497 All of the comments about Corvairs lift off suspension was all down to Ralph Nader and his lies. Drive a corvair and see what i mean. There is no lift off because the VW used the high pivot suspension as did Mercedes ,right into the 50's .Most notably in the gullwing which was known in the day as the widow maker because they actually did lift the inner wheel if you backed off the power in Fast Tight turn. Jenkins,the motoring writer and Friend of Sir Stirling Moss rolled one doing just that. Corvairs do not have the high center pivot point,the actual suspension roll center is below road level ,if you know what roll center is,and I doubt it somehow. You also show complete ignorance as to what sort of car racing occured in the US... It wasn't all NASCAR which is a southern US phenomenon and efforts to set it up in places like California failed. So you have never heard of the AAA Sports car series, Transam , IMSA and the myriad of small clubs who raced at hundreds of venues across the USA. ? i thought not. I have forgotten a great deal more about Porsche Design than you will ever know, as to why, I wont bore you with the details, but porsche didn't design the rear suspension, Hans Ledwinka did,it's a known fact. As I have rebuilt Tatraplan Suspension I can assure you that not only is the Tatraplan a bigger VW beetle but things like the Wheels even interchange. Look at a Tatraplan engine,it's a bigger VW . The Front torsion bar suspension was designed by Rumpler.Who were incidentally one of the unsuccessful designs submitted to the Nazis. but Google Corvair racing car.. I just did and 4,550,000 results came up instantly . you can do the same,it hmight help get rid of that 1960's Naderism you are suffering from .
Nader's agenda was to take the auto industry to task for elevating profits over safety, and all his points remain valid in their context. The Corvair as first sold had no anti-roll bar at all and relied on specifying the front tyre pressures to be unusually low in order to control the tendency to oversteer. This, plus the fact that the importance of the tyre pressures was not adequately communicated to owners or mechanics, meant that Corvairs were more likely to be driven in such a state as to provoke oversteer, something the average driver did not understand. The design staff had recommended that an anti-roll bar should be installed as standard, but management overruled them because it made the car cheaper to build.
@@Mercmad - the poor handling of the 300SL at the limit was well known. The poor handling of the Beetle at the limit was also well known, and well documented by various Road and Track writers of the time. And whether or not the Corvair was popular in SCCA or whatever (without even looking it up on Wikipedia I'm pretty sure TransAm was a later phenomenon, and was populated by pony-cars, which is why I didn't mention it), the point is that in competition, the car is usually not standard, and is driven by drivers who are (again usually) more competent than the average driver, and thirdly, driven on a track where accidents tend not to be so deadly. Stick one in the hands of someone of average driving ability, in poor weather on public roads and the danger levels rise unnecessarily high. And the key word there is unnecessary. Not sure why you think what Nader did was a bad thing - forcing the car companies to actually take safety into account. The oft-told stories of Ford refusing to advertise the optional seatbelts because it might imply their car could crash, etc. Responsible motoring writers from before the 50s were writing about simple things that could be done to make cars safer both in primary and secondary safety, but without holding their feet in the fire, the car companies weren't going to do squat.
Interesting in his time but lacking credibility on many fronts.I did not have any of his scary problems in V dubs I drove for around 30 years often very hard. From memory there was a distinct dislike of anything German for many years. Cheers.
I know that these things can handle like they are on rails. I just can't get over the petrol cap that sits proud below the C-pillar. That is such poor engineering.
Why is the exposed cap "poor engineering" ??? The mini had exposed side panel seams. The entire car was built to be cheap and simple. Adding a fuel filler cavity and door to hide the petrol cap simply adds cost and complexity, doesn't add any technical or functional advantage, plus makes it slower to add fuel since you had to open and close two things. Most cars in the 1950's and early 60's has exposed fuel caps. Esso petrol stations sold fur tiger tails that you could tie onto them. www.woorillacaught.com/tv-shows/put-a-tiger-in-your-tank/
Развлечения
He was Australia's greatest motoring journalist. Good on you Peter. Thanks.
His greatest problem was that he could not wear some of his best and most fashionable dresses in the mini. I think he liked mini cars because of that fashion in skirts at that time.
@@thomaselliott573 - he was arguably Australia's most insightful and yes, possibly greatest motoring journalist. If only you'd stopped at that point.
@@thosdot6497 nothing wrong with the truth. He had his sickness. Most of us do in one way or another. His was more obviously perverted. Sorry if you cannot understand that. What I said was realised back then instead of endorsing sickness the way it is now.
Bill Tucky in Wheels also know as Romsey Quints in Sports Car World.
@@richardpickersgill3335 - Tuckey/Quints was entertaining (only the other day I found a half inch thick collection of Romsey Quint columns from Wheels I'd photocopied in the 80s), but for insight into where the car had come from, what we were doing with it, and where it might be going, the quality of thought in these Torque episodes is outstanding. I can't forget we're looking at these with 40+ years of hindsight - some of the questions PW raised still aren't answered.
Seems like yesterday. Love the double yellow (not white) lines down the middle of the road and the green and cream Sydney buses. He pays tribute to the fun of driving a mini but the funnest mini of all was the Moke. More made in Australia than anywhere else in the world because we have the weather for them. Swing axle Beatles were potentially dangerous but many of us became devoted fans. I still have three of them in 2021.
My first car was a vw Beatle. Only had it for 14 days and put it on its roof. Pissed myself laughing when I watched this, thanks for the memories
Bet you werent laughing flipping the Beetle lol
@@wizzard5442
No I shit a brick, but lucky all my mates were ok ( no seat belts in the rear seat).
But worst was to come when I had to ring the old man up and tell him
Not happy
My first car was a VW Beetle back in 1984, and I also lost it after two weeks :-) Not because of an accident, but because it rained for the first time in two weeks and the water was 10 cm high in the car. It was a 1973 special edition Beetle Jeans. I haven't forgotten the Beetle anyway, and I'm not mad at it anymore either 🙂
You can't roll a Beetle with power down. But, man, they'll roll very easily if you lift off. In the late 70s l got away from the cops 3x in Beetles. They couldn't go where l went. Bad handling but excellent road holding.
He's wrong on F Porsche. Porsche was named Engineer of the Century. For example they had gone to IRS a longtime before he had made this statement
Pter Wherrett was a very good presenter and reviewer often overlooked
RIP Peter Wherrett, 1936-2009
An historic T.V. show hosted by a legend.
My god! I remember watching this episode in 1979 ... I'm old!!
You're only a young whipper snapper, son. If you were old, you wouldn't be able to remember if you'd seen this in 1979, yesterday or never.
Pete certainly knew his stuff, I used to watch Torque and Marque every week on the ABC, he never pulled any punches and would tell the big car manufacturers when they were not doing the right thing with Aussie consumers with sub standard cars. R.I.P. Pete...........
You have to be driving a diesel every day.....loved the yellow double lines in NSW.....at least you could see them in the rain,bring them back
PW was a true visionary.
Loved my Mini in 1974 and regret every year that I have sold it!
I have a '69 mini. If I had a dollar for every person that told me that. I could retire early. :-)
I had a 1964 850, as an art student in 1979 I could only afford two new tyres, and they put them on the back, consequently I ended crashing it into the back of a Holden Panel van on a wet day, as my front wheel drive baldies did not turn, the tow truck said I could pay for his service with my new rear tyres. I still remember the ripple passing along the bonnet. My sister thought she was bleeding with red stuff all over the passenger side, fortunately it was only a bottle of red acrylic paint. Great car though, I could pull the gear stick out as I was driving, and put it back in again. Can't believe the price they go for these days.
@@Max-dd7du I had one too. A 62 English model (cream rims, the later ones were silver). Handled very poorly on gravel or sand country roads. Engine clearance was also low and I did a front pressed steel engine mount driving on farm roads. Easily replaced it myself with an improved alloy mount. Till I found out what it was, I occasionally got a chaffcutter noise from the front (fan against the radiator). Later noticed the slight right to left tilt on the engine (driver view). Also had it toed with the engine pipe off. A bolt became detached and was driven into the alloy sump at the rear. A hole as big as your finger which the bush mechanic patched up with araldite. Never looked back.
I remember when I first put radials on it - they were - not Michelin - but the Italian equivalent =- Pirelli. Much better and lasted longer. In those days the cross ply tires were only good for c. 10 000 miles.
Little did Peter realise that the rotary outlived the man himself, finishing up in the Mazda RX8 in 2012. Wherrett passed away in 2009
I recently read somewhere that in 2023 Mazda will launch a hybrid car with a Wankel engine as a range extender. So not as a drive, but to charge the battery.
Long live the Wankel!
Peter's critique of the culpably engineered Beetle is spot on...but it was certainly the best _marketed_ design of all time.
That and the Morris Minor was a dangerous poorly built piece of english shit pushed onto the Aussie market like all english shit!
BBG. Time for bed little boy don’t let your mum catch you trolling you’ll get thrown in the naughty corner.
But with a good set of shocks / tyres and your foot always on the throttle you'd never roll a beetle.
I gotta way from the cops numerous times in beetles. It was in the dark ages. Also we thru apples at fancy EHs and XYs to get em to chase us. They couldn't get us as ovals, footpaths, creeks, firetrails no-one could catch me. You can now get aftermarket front and rear ends that make em really handle and improve tractability.
Excellent
@@mikeperth8027 Morris minors and the Oxford were designs way ahead of anythng else. I'll bet you have never ecen sat in one.
@@Mercmad The Minor was way ahead of it's time when it was first introduced but after a long production run it really showed it's age. I have a mid production run car and the late 40s were alive and well into the 60s! Still wouldn't want anything else.
And within a year or so of PW doing this episode, Holden produced a rather crude diesel Gemini that more or less proved him right.
I test drove one at the time and was reasonably happy with it, nearly put the cash down until I realised that for the same money I could get a fully optioned V8 Sandman Van, Biggest mistake I ever made, the van was a disaster, found out after an RAA inspection I had done because of all the problems I was having that it had been in a serious accident before I took delivery of it brand new. Never bought another Holden after that.
@@rayg9069 sad. Yeah people over hype something not too special
It’s fun to check all these cars peter drove or showcased in these shows by their rego, the lotus cortina rego expired in 1994, so it had a few years after this show on the road. It’s either scrapped or a project car waiting resto now.
I remember watching this episode as a 12 year old. It explained how my cousin rolled my aunt's Beatle.
Hitters revenge, minies were a better car
Yours aunts car was named George,Ringo John or Paul ?
@@hamishfullerton7309 - *Nobody was hit in the making of this video, or in the design of the Volkswagen vehicle. "minies [sic] were a better car". Could that possibly be due to having been designed about TWO DECADES later? Actually, I think you really prefer the Germans - because you make it clear that you hate English.
Mercedes built the C111 diesel (only 5 cylinders) that did 403 Kmh to specifically show that diesels are not necessarily slow. This was in 1978, one year before this episode. PW should have been paying attention: because today the S350 D does 250 Kmh, and that's the smallest (2.9L) you can buy in this model, showing what the potential always was.
How things change. What makes Peter such a good journalist is the fact that he is intelligent, informative, practical, and very articulate. Speaking to a well educated intelligent audience. Not today,full of mindless bimbos,which are clueless, mindless and it's all about me,followed by a false giggle.
Those sixties era cars are mostly turned into hyandais but the rolling stones still here in 2019..
They were fun to drive.
Those Cooper cars that Pete was on about, I think it was the Cooper this, they raced those in the western suburbs of Melbourne in the 50s at cherry Lake altona and for a short period at the old Williamstown racecourse behind the altona oil refinary but it was short lived all up.
Good ol rx7. Ive had a few, amazing cars.
Gotta say the 1980s Merc 190D is the slowest car I've ever driven.
Even our 1979 Landcruiser I6 I learned on was faster lol.
I miss Peter & his common sense.
It was the Cooper t23 car they raced wich I was mentioning of what they raced in the west part of Melbourne and used the Bristol engine.
Funny how I have owned VW's for forty years and have hot rodded them all the time and when you know how they handle it turns into an asset, Good drivers only need apply.
@MichaelKingsfordGray To bad you are such a fuckwit.
We had the Merc 300D in our family in the 80s. It was a beautiful car and had none of the problems that Peter Wherret talks about like being sluggish up hills or being uncomfortable in the city. It had enough power to do anything required of it. Yes it did vibrate a bit being a diesel but was such a minor factor considering it was such a nice car overall. I think Peter Wherret is being a bit overly critical to gain some sort of polarising and emotional opinions from his viewers.
The problem with most diesel cars is that they install a tiny little engine into a heavy car. So, the petrol model might be a 3L or even more, yet the diesel would be 1.4L or something equally silly. Of course they were sluggish! Yet it wasn't so much the technology, but the lack of cubic capacity.
My first car was a '55 Morris Minor 800 in early 1960's... here in N.W. Ohio, USA...
You had competition in the performance stakes: the Beetle
Classy intro. Nice.
Have you noticed that Wherrett was such a Greenie even back then?
Not a bad thing.
It's amazing what a difference a turbocharger and an intercooler can make to a diesel.......
Yep, it turns a boring clunky low-revving lump into a slightly more powerful boring clunky low-revving lump. Add the turbo and intercooler plus a revised fuel map then you get an even more powerful boring clunky low-revving lump plus a shitload of smoke.
And don't forget the Common Rail technology or similar systems of direct injection. On the other hand, today's diesel engines are much more sensitive to the quality of the fuel. The old precombustion chamber diesels could also be driven with used fat from the fryer. That's no joke. In the 1980s there were companies in Germany that collected, filtered and sold the frying oil from snack bars. For example, if you drove behind a Mercedes 200 D that was fueled with it, there was a constant smell of French fries on the road. Another example: When diesel fuel was very expensive (international oil crisis, taxes), people got sunflower oil from the supermarket which was cheaper. WARNING: Never do this with a modern diesel engine!
Swing arm suspension was used by lots of manufacturers, not just VW and GM. Mercedes used it for many years. Many early race cars also used this basic suspension. I had several VW cars that I flogged as a teenager and never had any upside down moments. The adoption of radial tires made a big difference in countering camber angle changes. But then again you don't drive a VW like any other vehicle as the weight distribution is totally different.
The only thing worse were off road bar treads (military pattern) . Now they were scary.
@@Xynudu Sure were Rob, a G60 Nissan on Road Track Majors should have been registered as a weapon of mass destruction,
1960's Ford made military 'Jeeps' also used swing arms in rear... had a sticker on them warning of the danger in corners... Military convoys were also supposed to travel at 20 MPH back then, though...
I worked with a joker in the mid sixties who rolled his VW on a familiar pretty straightish but cambered country road three times. He was pissed at the time but an exceedingly dextrous opening batsman.
3:27 - It was never about handling with these cars. It was about the RIDE on our poor roads. The Velox certainly has a level ride here.
Top-gear acceleration from slow speeds was also important. In the Velox's case from SIX mph in top all the way to its top speed, hence three speeds were no handicap. BTW on lower octane fuel the Velox outperformed the larger automatic contemporary Chevrolet with a much larger engine.
The Beetle reliable? Reliably will catch on FIRE!
His comments about the Mini's ability to carry sizable quantities of alcohol in the interior are somewhat ironic, given his later drink driving troubles
My dad bought a Mini Cooper S in 1973, and one morning it wouldn’t start, so he unlatched the bonnet straps and raised the hood...only to discover that someone had stolen the engine during the night!!,
Wherret spouting goofs again. He said the Mini had an engine turned sideways (it did) and drove the road wheels direct! No, it had a gearbox and diff the same as any car. They are absolutely essential.
Hey Pete, watching in 2019, and guess what, there is still petrol, diesel and shit look we still have big cubic inch motors, shit also I have a Turbo diesel Audi that will kick 99% of petrol motored cars arse on the highways
We were told at school in 1974 that the world would run out of oil in 20 years
Drop Bear and if you live in Europe you won't be driving in the cities anymore
My Hyundai i30 Diesel smashes all of his comments about diesels, pity they stopped making them. Drives like a petrol, no engine repairs other than servicing, 350000 km mostly on short runs and still drives like a new car. Only bought it so the kids could learn to drive in a manual transmission, 2 years old 8 thousand dollars didn’t think I could go to far wrong. The kids are now well in their 20s I gave our big 4wd wagon to the youngest and kept the i30 for my daily drive. 6 foot 4 heavily built middle aged man driving a little hatch back looks a bit odd but I’m laughing all the way to the bank.
I consider it unforgivable that for all the diesel engine's advantages, particularly better fuel economy, ruggedness, and relatively high torque at low RPM, that more SUVs and light trucks aren't available with the diesel.
It was done in the late 70's before turbo diesels became common place.
The only major car company that had a mass produced diesel car perfected and available in Australia was Mercedes and it was slow as a bus.
@@leoncutajar1369 I'm afraid I've never driven a diesel powered Mercedes-Benz. Except for the Sprinter and heavy duty trucks and busses, I cannot imagine Mercedes-Benz is still producing diesel for cars.
@@jasoncarpp7742Most new diesels are almost indistinguishable from petrol cars except for better fuel economy and gobs of torque off the mark.
I'm a huge old school diesel fan as they are rugged, more reliable, last longer AND will run on almost any oil but until about the late 80s when the EU started heavily subsiding them and companies started turbo charging them most diesel cars were slow as a bus.
Mercedes will continue to build diesel cars as long as people continue to buy them as in Europe thats one of the things Mercedes is most know for.
@@leoncutajar1369 Turbo diesels rock, they are excellent highway cruisers, have long engine lives, and are miserly fuel sippers.
@@pattheslut And.....the older ones will burn just about anything provided it is clean.
A few people are getting 600+hp out of the OM606 engines in europe with any internal mods.
What would he think of the ford F150 Shelby pickup with 750hp petrol V8
Dodge Ram with 6.2 Hemi supercharged is my choice
Off course the speed those people took the corner at, had nothing to do with the car ending in the Gutter... ("eye roll")....!
The best motoring journalist anywhere bar none, just wonderful, after watching these, I can no longer watch Top Gear, it’s just trash.
@H HOUR HOTEL get over what?
Really listen more carefully. His criticism of the Holden Brakes for instance, nearly every drum breaker car on the road had that setup.
If you saw Pete's real life portrayed in a film you wouldn't believe it, if you know what I mean?
No thanks.... 😀😏
Yeah we know what you mean, you're the type that feeds on shit like ET or a current affair and other mindless probing drivel.
My mothers mk2 cooper s ran a 12.01 at oran park , road going tyres std diff and that was the car I learnt to drive in (I owned motorbikes). No it wasn't std
Note that was 1982 when they cheap by todays standard.
I had a very worked (1320, flowed head, 731 cam, balanced, Weber 45 DCOE) cooper s. Went like stink - 110 MPH @ 6,500 RPM down the Midlands highway here in Tas. Still regret selling it, but 3 kids........
At least Wherrett had the good sense to refer to the car's energy output as *horse power* because the metric system had already begun to infect our terminology in the early 1970s and this show was made in 1979 when Australia was only 4 years into the Colour TV era.
those mini coopers go like stink
The Highway Patrol Police in Australia or at least New South Wales used them as pursuit vehicles in the 60's.
@@atoieno funny you say that - my old man told me he was egged into a drag at the lights by a mini cooper in sydney in the early seventies. Turned out to be an undercover cop and booked him for speeding!
@@1greenMitsi we used to do the Hume Highway from Goulburn to Sydney as kids. It was fairly obvious those minis that were Highway Patrols.... a 20 stone cop (130 Kg) in a Cooper S filled most of it!
Wherrett's and Nader's comments about the Corvair and VW are not based on reality. It greatly over states the historical facts about the two vehicles ignores the situation which when properly examined show that there was very little difference between the dangers of driving the VW and Corvair and other cars of the time..
You sir, are absolutely full of shit.
Both designs were well below what is acceptable in terms of stability and safety - the rear engine, swing arm configuration of these models has been almost univerally shunned by engineers for many decades (Porsche being an imperfect exception as much has been done to overcome the inherent shortcomings in these wildly expensive cars.)
@@saxongreen78 - I grew up in this era and many friends were driving hot VWs with swing axle. They were awesome fun providing you never EVER backed off in a corner. One of my friends spun one on a 4 lane suburban road at over 100mph. He was racing a V8, and was forced to back off when the V8 oversteered and slid into his curbside lane. With nowhere to go he had to slow down the VW , which brought it around behind the other car and then away it went. When we went back to check the skid marks we reckon he did at least 4 360's across all 4 lanes. It was only his rallying skills and massive good luck he didn't wrap it around a pole. Even as stock they were a LONG way behind the dynamics of other cheap cars with a live rear axle - basically, if you lost it you just had to lock up the brakes, hang on and pray.
Wherrets comments were what we could refer today as Fake news. Opinions hiding behind the name "facts". Porsche didn't design the VW suspension. As a young trainee engineer in the 1920's and early 30's working in Bohemia he looked over the shoulder of one his contemporary's , Hans LedWinka .Ledwinka was drawing up designs for Successors to the Tatra T37 ,which would appear post War in Czechoslovakia as the Tatraplan .Porsche moved to Nazi Germany where his fellow Austrian,Adolf Hitler had taken power afteer an election,promising to revamp the economy after years of Famine etc. He also needed to promote the German industrial combine whilst hidng manufacture of arms etc. Porsche, an Avid Nazi sympathizer was one of several designers asked to draw up a prototype peoples car .Porsche scaled down the design he stole from ledwinka, not realising that Tatra would survive the war and go after VW and sue them for theft. it's something like $20,000,000 in the 70's to pay Tatra.
Chevies Corvair was a design that was so different to anything else GM was building that they built a whole new plant to produce them. Nader in the mean time has proven to be that person so typical of the hard left, a socialist using a platform to spout their dogma to the public whilst using the media to push his Fake news to the gullible. In this case it was the Corvair Vs Falcon in a film now shown to be full of fakery to be almost criminal in content.. Anyone who has driven one of those early Falcons will know they are bad handling,powerless ,brakeless disasters, where as the Corvair is a very nice driving car with excellent handling and piles of innovation. In the US if an owner didn't think the turbo flat six wasn't fast enough a company could fit a V8 for them. No worries about handling what so ever. Many were raced in various Sports car events in the US,unlike the Falcon . Then Wherret sits in an early Mustnag hile going on about what a great car it was,actually just a Falcon with a fancy frock . i often Wonder who was paying his salary or his paid for comment content. And a lot of those Mercedes Mercs are still runniing well ,My own 300D is perfectly ok in modern traffic,only needs fueling once a month despite being used every day and there is no noise or vibration in the car. ..again,who was paying him ?
you are a fucking idiot
Mercmad - just because he stole the layour doesn't mean Porsche didn't design the Beetle suspension - it's pretty obvious he did; and it's also pretty obvious that he should have made more of an efford. And Corvairs were known to have quite dangerous lift-off oversteer until their later models when the rear suspension was modified - they were even capable of catching out F1 drivers - the book 'Grand Prix Carpetbaggers' about Cooper details Jack Brabham driving John Cooper around in the US in one, and that very thing happening to them. Obviously Brabham was able to recover, but what about your average driver?
No one's saying the Corvair didn't have innovation. It might have been nice if they'd put a bit more suspension engineering into it though. The Falcon wasn't raced much in the US because there weren't that many races for it- it was a compact - not able to go into Nascar, which was about their only major tin-top series. It was however raced quite successfully in touring car racing both here, and in the UK (although no doubt heavily tweaked in brakes and suspension, as were they all).
Most of the rest of your comment is just drivel - was it the comments about your beloved Merc diesel too much to bear? He's right though - the non-turbo 300D has what, 65kW? That's pitiful, regardless of how much torque. I'm sure if he'd seen the turbo-diesels of only a few years later he would have said something different though.
@@thosdot6497 All of the comments about Corvairs lift off suspension was all down to Ralph Nader and his lies. Drive a corvair and see what i mean. There is no lift off because the VW used the high pivot suspension as did Mercedes ,right into the 50's .Most notably in the gullwing which was known in the day as the widow maker because they actually did lift the inner wheel if you backed off the power in Fast Tight turn. Jenkins,the motoring writer and Friend of Sir Stirling Moss rolled one doing just that.
Corvairs do not have the high center pivot point,the actual suspension roll center is below road level ,if you know what roll center is,and I doubt it somehow. You also show complete ignorance as to what sort of car racing occured in the US... It wasn't all NASCAR which is a southern US phenomenon and efforts to set it up in places like California failed. So you have never heard of the AAA Sports car series, Transam , IMSA and the myriad of small clubs who raced at hundreds of venues across the USA. ? i thought not.
I have forgotten a great deal more about Porsche Design than you will ever know, as to why, I wont bore you with the details, but porsche didn't design the rear suspension, Hans Ledwinka did,it's a known fact. As I have rebuilt Tatraplan Suspension I can assure you that not only is the Tatraplan a bigger VW beetle but things like the Wheels even interchange. Look at a Tatraplan engine,it's a bigger VW . The Front torsion bar suspension was designed by Rumpler.Who were incidentally one of the unsuccessful designs submitted to the Nazis. but Google Corvair racing car.. I just did and 4,550,000 results came up instantly . you can do the same,it hmight help get rid of that 1960's Naderism you are suffering from .
Nader's agenda was to take the auto industry to task for elevating profits over safety, and all his points remain valid in their context.
The Corvair as first sold had no anti-roll bar at all and relied on specifying the front tyre pressures to be unusually low in order to control the tendency to oversteer. This, plus the fact that the importance of the tyre pressures was not adequately communicated to owners or mechanics, meant that Corvairs were more likely to be driven in such a state as to provoke oversteer, something the average driver did not understand.
The design staff had recommended that an anti-roll bar should be installed as standard, but management overruled them because it made the car cheaper to build.
@@Mercmad - the poor handling of the 300SL at the limit was well known. The poor handling of the Beetle at the limit was also well known, and well documented by various Road and Track writers of the time.
And whether or not the Corvair was popular in SCCA or whatever (without even looking it up on Wikipedia I'm pretty sure TransAm was a later phenomenon, and was populated by pony-cars, which is why I didn't mention it), the point is that in competition, the car is usually not standard, and is driven by drivers who are (again usually) more competent than the average driver, and thirdly, driven on a track where accidents tend not to be so deadly. Stick one in the hands of someone of average driving ability, in poor weather on public roads and the danger levels rise unnecessarily high. And the key word there is unnecessary.
Not sure why you think what Nader did was a bad thing - forcing the car companies to actually take safety into account. The oft-told stories of Ford refusing to advertise the optional seatbelts because it might imply their car could crash, etc. Responsible motoring writers from before the 50s were writing about simple things that could be done to make cars safer both in primary and secondary safety, but without holding their feet in the fire, the car companies weren't going to do squat.
Oh my goodness. This dude was also a cross dresser. Hahahaha
Not at the time when he was on TV. That silliness came much later.
And what are you into
So? That hurts you how?
Interesting in his time but lacking credibility on many fronts.I did not have any of his scary problems in V dubs I drove for around 30 years often very hard. From memory there was a distinct dislike of anything German for many years. Cheers.
I know that these things can handle like they are on rails. I just can't get over the petrol cap that sits proud below the C-pillar. That is such poor engineering.
A lot of British cars of the time had a similar fuel filler. Have a look at a Mk1 Cortina next time you see one.
Why is the exposed cap "poor engineering" ???
The mini had exposed side panel seams. The entire car was built to be cheap and simple. Adding a fuel filler cavity and door to hide the petrol cap simply adds cost and complexity, doesn't add any technical or functional advantage, plus makes it slower to add fuel since you had to open and close two things.
Most cars in the 1950's and early 60's has exposed fuel caps. Esso petrol stations sold fur tiger tails that you could tie onto them.
www.woorillacaught.com/tv-shows/put-a-tiger-in-your-tank/
this guy was a peanut . as one can still tell today
As told by a peanut himself, let's hear your predictions then big boy.
Looks more like a cashew to me.
Devastating criticism, genius.
Peter , what about the Citroen DS Dude , common on mate , go the Europeans