Rare Rides: A Ford Consul From 1954 - Little Beige Bathtub

Today’s Rare Ride put me immediately in mind of the Austin Cambridge featured in this series last year. Both were intended primarily for British customers, and both have a similar upright sedan shape which seemingly made so many British cars of the Fifties look exactly the same.

Let’s take a look at some basic Euro Ford transportation that was grandfather to the Cortina.

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Curbside Classic Jr: The 1955 Ford Mini Me – 1956 Ford Consul Mk II

Too many Cubside Classics shot, not enough time to write about them extensively. So we’ll call it CC Jr.: heavy on the pics, light on the text.

The great import boom of the fifties involved everything from Europe; from Abarth to Zagato. And the Big Three got in on the act too, selling their European subsidiaries’ wares. The Opel Rekord sold particularly well, and they used to be easy to find, in California, anyway. And English Fords were mainly the smaller Anglia and the later Cortinas. But here’s a rare bird, a Consul, looking very much like a scaled down ’55 Ford.

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  • V8fairy Not scared, but I would be reluctant to put my trust in it. The technology is just not quite there yet
  • V8fairy Headlights that switch on/off with the ignition - similar to the requirement that Sweden has- lights must run any time the car is on.Definitely knobs and buttons, touchscreens should only be for navigation and phone mirroring and configuration of non essential items like stereo balance/ fade etc>Bagpipes for following too close.A following distance warning system - I'd be happy to see made mandatory. And bagpipes would be a good choice for this, so hard to put up with!ABS probably should be a mandatory requirementI personally would like to have blind spot monitoring, although should absolutely NOT be mandatory. Is there a blind spot monitoring kit that could be rerofitted to a 1980 Cadillac?
  • IBx1 A manual transmission
  • Bd2 All these inane posts (often referencing Hyundai, Kia) the past week are by "Anal" who has been using my handle, so just ignore them...
  • 3-On-The-Tree I was disappointed that when I bought my 2002 Suzuki GSX1300R that the Europeans put a mandatory speed limiter on it from 197mph down to 186mph for the 2002 year U.S models.