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My personal favorite ride was my ’78 Triumph Spitfire 1500. I had imported some of the original UK spec front springs to get rid of that nose up in the air look to meet US DOT standards and bring it back down the way it was meant to be.
I kept her as original as possible and had the factory original hardtop and all of the other accessories for my “quality” British Leyland motor.
I had crazy ideas of things of getting a 16v DOHC engine from a Dolomite Sprint or a GT 6 engine and fitting it to my Spitfire just to keep things British, but being in California, I had a hard enough time passing emissions as it was with the original engine back in those days.
I can no longer drive due to disability but I wanted to make something unique with an engine swap while keeping the front end weight down. These days with a Honda S2000 motor may have been the answer but that had already been done.
If there was one thing that I loved about that car, it was it’s mechanical simplicity. The other things I loved were it’s ride compliance and being able to to feel what every part of the suspension was doing through the double wishbones in the front and fully independent rear end. It really was a drivers car…
If I could still drive today, I’d likely buy another Spitfire project and after a frame off restoration with new parts available today that just weren’t around during the early 1990’s when I owned mine. Plus I’d love a lightweight four pot up front with fuel injection and a 6 speed manual box with a wider track on all four corners. One last thing/wish, aftermarket Air Conditioning! Living in the Central Valley with some 100 plus days in summer for weeks at a time snared in rush hour traffic really was a killer and I’d find myself behind the wheel in my Accord just for the cool air.
It’s sure a lot of fun to dream (and far less expensive) but if I had the means and the money, I’d make it happen one way or another…
Despite being retired these days, I have seen the examples of bus fuses going away as only three of them were used in my ’78 Triumph Spitfire and everything else was purely mechanical, even down to the fuel pump that ran off the camshaft on the side of the 1500cc engine block. Electronics were “mostly” repairable except when it called for major components such as a original Lucas branded Alternator.
I remember the first frustration set in when I had later owned a classic Saab 900 Turbo and the fuse madness inside the car was simply nuts as I had been trying to track down an electrical gremlin that would pop the fuse the moment I would use the AC. It turned out to to be a wire that over the years of vibration had not only gotten through the paint finish but the insulation as well after tracing other faults that had my brake lights always lit when I turned on the headlights. Back on point, the modular fuse box with tight spaces in between had made pulling difficult if I didn’t keep spares along with a set of needle nose pliers since the plastic removal tool had cracked and was slowly returning to the earth rendering it useless.
Smaller components to me also mean a higher possibility of breaking if exposed to enough heat under the hood and the space to replace consumables such as headlamp bulbs with ever more crowded engine bays on newer cars and it’s absolutely frustrating. Still, in the end, LED units will be the standard and replacing them under normal circumstances will be pretty much unheard of possibly to the point where the label of doom appears “no user serviceable parts inside”…
In theory, If you ever end up working on such a car with such a sealed LED headlamp due to collision damage would be an absolute nightmare. Hopefully in that case, they still can be adjusted manually if needed if a fender bender had broken a bracket to hold the unit in place.
This was one such problem when dealing with a ’87 Ford Escort that had flush glass enclosures installed instead of the previous sealed beam “buckets” from the pre-facelift models. One of the plastic adjustment retainers for aiming the driver side headlamp was completely broken. Giving the car a “lazy eye” the only way to fix it was a complete replacement of the entire left headlamp assembly which was over $175 and change. A definite example where smaller, cheaper, had evolved into a disposable part in what was essentially a disposable car.