Braving the unexpected miserable weather at this month’s Cars and Coffee
Liverpool was not only our diehard motor enthusiasts, but more importantly -
Michelle Odwyer and her team of Hula girls, raising money for the Woodland
Hospice - this month’s chosen charity. The girls were dressed for the Hawaiian
theme in grass skirts and flower garlands. Within 4 hours they raised over £450.
This month’s observation was the amount of classics and retro 70’s- 80’s vehicles
that surrounded our 1983 Volkswagen Golf GTI. The car that popularised the
concept of the hot hatch. The 1976 Golf GTI was announced at the 1975 Frankfurt
Motor Show. However, the Golf GTI was not the first hot hatch, several cars from
the early seventies started the trend. Sportier versions of mainstream hatchbacks
such as the Autobianchi A112 Abarth in 1971 and the Simca 1100 Ti which was
on sale in Europe by 1974. Another early hot hatch was the Renault 5 Alpine
which first went on sale in May 1976, pre-dating the launch of the Golf GTi, by
two months. This Mk1 GTI in a late 70s period colour called Mars red, like orange
similar to the Series 1 Audi Quattro in the hit TV shows ‘Life on Mars’ and ‘Ashes
to Ashes’ driven by characters Gene Hunt and the beautiful Alex Drake.
The car was designed by the Italian style guru Giorgetto Giugario (voted Car
Designer of the Century in 1999 - we’ll be doing a special feature on him in a
future issue). Known for notable 70’s ‘folded paper’ designs such as the Delorean
DMC 12 (Back to the future movie car), Lotus Esprit (Roger Moore’s - James Bond
submarine), The Saab 600 - which was a rebadged Lancia Delta that set the stage
for the Saab & Fiat-Lancia-Alfa Romeo partnership, (one of our C&CL members
Greg Lunt owns a beautiful red Lancia). He also designed the current Ford
Mustang to even the elegant Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GT. Oh and if your into
photography - the Nikon F4S!
On another spectrum resting at the entrance to the Chung Ku restaurant lies Dom
Farley’s early 1964 Porsche 356C. This immaculately preserved white 356 was based
around the Ferdinand Porsche evergreen air-cooled rear engine VW Beetle ‘folks-
Wagon’ concept. These were a hand-crafted aluminium bodied cars built in the
picturesque countryside of Gmund in Austria from 1946. At the time, these cars
were entered in a race as a development programme during the formative period of
Le Mans. After the first win at Le Mans, the success of Porsche was guaranteed!
This particular Porsche 356 has a super 90 engine. 1725 cc. Originally bought by
an American airforce pilot in Holland then shipped to the US in 1970, before being
shipped here by Dom’s Father.
After the success of the first book signing here of Roy McCarthy’s ‘Alphabet of
Curious Cars’, Comedian Gary Skyner was invited for a biography book launch.
We’d like to thank Matty Kelly and his team from BMW Williams Liverpool,
our local 125 Field Company REME Army, all of our motor enthusiasts and
everyone that came to support Cars and Coffee Liverpool and our chosen Charity -
Woodland Hospice.
P.s Thank you to Andy McQueen who made a little boy very happy by letting him
sit in your Ferrari F430. His father had given him the middle name ‘Enzo’ after
the famous founder Enzo Ferrari.
Please get in touch with [email protected] for any help or any
interesting projects you have coming up.
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