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Mexican knave
With looks you had to learn to love, and a chassis you have to learn to exploit, Ferrari’s 340 Mexico was a specialised device. Andrew Frankel relives the 1952 Carrera…
orthodox means. We undid the nuts holding the block to the crankcase, and while a confederate heaved on the starting handle. I put a chair leg on each of the descending pistons in turn and clouted it with a large hammer. The rest, was quite plain sailing. The wiring I left to the local garage. The only new part required (apart from tyres) was a cut-out, which is by any standard very good going indeed for a car which was first taxed in July of 1924, and has had very hard use. It has, I know, been used to cart potatoes about fields, and to haul timber out of a wood. I would like to know a lot more about the car’s history. I have been told that it is a fiat-twin chassis with a fourcylinder water-cooled engine in it., but as the car number, LD 40120, is also on the engine and chassis, that seems unlikely.
Perhaps it is because it is the first car I have owned, but it seems a very “driveable ” car. It is economical, doing about 35-40 m.p.g., and moderately fast. It never stands under a roof, and it is usually run only at weekends (when, with my wife, an enthusiastic passenger, I roar round the countryside), but it starts very easily. The acceleration and road-holding amaze the pilots of pottering fug-boxes. Long may their derisive grins in their mirrors be turned to puzzled stared at the rear views of the old ‘uns.
I don’t know if there are many more Rovers of this type about, but I would like to hear from anyone who runs one. I am, Yours, etc..,
Downham Market. J. D. MAJOR. [The early four-cylinder Rover Nine followed the flat-twin Rover Eight and no doubt much of the chassis is identical. —ED.] * * *