Lancaster News

Latest news

Latest news

Welcome to Lancaster Insurance News

Keep up to date with the latest news and events from the world of classic cars.

DO YOU REMEMBER THE HILLMAN SUPER MINX?

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 9th February, 2018

For many of us it is the smallest details of an old car that can evoke such powerful memories – the transmission whine on a Vauxhall Viva HB, the tip-up seats on a four-door Morris 1100 – and the oval shaped interior mirror on a 1965 Hillman Super Minx.

1948 LAND ROVER SHOW CAR DISCOVERED

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 8th February, 2018

A major joy of the classic car world is the finding of a famous or historically important model in a barn, a field or even beneath some bramble bushes. The original Saint ‘Volvo’ and the Bullitt ‘Jump Mustang’ are two famous examples and seven years before Genevieve entered production, the 1904 Darracq was found in a London scrap yard.

FOUR GREAT BRITISH CARS OF THE YEAR

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 7th February, 2018

The 23rd February will see the announcement of the new UK Car Of The Year (COTY) – which prompts me, and many others, to recall some of the great British COTY winners of previous decades.

DVD OF THE WEEK – SCOTLAND YARD

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 5th February, 2018

One of my all-time favourite film series also features my all-time favourite car marque. In each edition of the Scotland Yard B-features made between 1953 and 1961 there often is at least one highly polished 6/80 and, after 1958, 6/90 arriving at a crime scene located conveniently near to Merton Park Studios.

DO YOU REMEMBER – THE MOBIL ECONOMY RUN?

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 5th February, 2018

If you happened to glance at the Radio Times or similar publication some 57 years ago, you might well have read the following startling announcement:

50 YEARS OF THE ESCORT

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 2nd February, 2018

One of my favourite automotive brochures of the 1960s features a very disgruntled looking Hugh Futcher (Carry On support actor, panicking Sapper in Quatermass & The Pit and more recently the star of a Specsavers ad) aboard a pedal car.

THREE TOPPING TOYS

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 2nd February, 2018

Put simply; these are three toys – or pastimes if you prefer – that should grace the home of any automotive enthusiast -

Spring bargains: the classics to hunt down at low prices

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 2nd February, 2018

Revealed: five great classic cars to buy and enjoy during the spring months. You’ll be amazed at how far your money will go if you buy well

NEWSREELS OF THE WEEK – SIR STIRLING MOSS

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 1st February, 2018

The recent news that Sir Stirling Moss ‘will finally retire, so that he and my mother can have some much deserved rest and spend more time with each other and the rest of the family’ prompted me (and, I suspect, countless years) to re-watch the footage of his racing career.

No More Little Chef?

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 1st February, 2018

As I write this piece, there are any number of online reports that once-familiar sight on our roads is going the way of the RAC telephone box, the AA salute and police Wolseleys with bells – the Little Chef.

DO YOU REMEMBER – THE WARTBURG KNIGHT?

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 30th January, 2018

Great automotive myths of our time No.693 – all cars from the former Soviet Bloc were laughably antiquated.

Humdrum family favourites from yesteryear – how to save one

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 30th January, 2018

Now that once-ordinary saloons are now utterly retro and desirable, we give some tips on how to find a family-favourite classic that’s worth rescuing from extinction.

WHAT IS YOUR NUMBER ONE CLASSIC?

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 29th January, 2018

I have a theory, which may well be entirely inaccurate, that your favourite classic is frequently dictated by seeing it on screen while at an impressionable age. For some, it was watching a Polar White Ford Escort RS2000 Mk. II speed through Buckinghamshire with a perm-haired CI5 agent at the wheel and for others it was the Jaguar S-Type coming to grief in the pre-titles sequence of Stoppo Driver, one of the finest episodes of The Sweeney.

60 YEARS OF THE AUSTIN GIPSY

  • Lancaster Insurance Services |
  • 29th January, 2018

During the 1970s and 1980s, you might have encountered a well-used off-roader that, from a distance, at any rate, resembled a Series II Land Rover. On closer scrutiny, it turned out to be the far rarer Austin Gipsy, the British Motor Corporation’s highly ambitious bid for the 4x4 market.