Who really killed Ford Timelord?

One of my favourite blog pieces of 2019 was the final one, detailing the remarkable history of the KLF's famous Ford Timelord police car. After a year of extensive research and separating myth from fact the conclusion was that the car was most definitely dead, having been banger raced at Swaffham in June 1991 by Paul Bickers after an eventful few years in the hands of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. That seemed to be that and the case was finally closed after so many years of rumours, but now there have been fascinating further developments that shed some very different light on the situation and mean it may not be as straightforward as everyone thought...

Did Paul Bickers really kill Ford Timelord?

Who killed Ford Timelord?

It all started with a simple question: what happened to Ford Timelord? I knew nothing at all about that car or its owner but I do love a good mystery and was soon captivated by its incredible story. For those who don't know, Ford Timelord was the name of the 1968 Ford Galaxie police car (WGU 18G) owned by Jimmy Cauty, one half of the anarchic musical or artistic duo variously known as the KLF, the JAMs and the Timelords alongside Bill Drummond. The car rose to fame through their hit single 'Doctorin' the Tardis' and featured heavily in the pair's work for three eventful years but then disappeared without trace.

An icon and a very cool car but what became of it?

Rumours abound as to its fate: some say it was banger raced, some that it was destroyed by the KLF in the name of art, and others that it still exists in a storage compound somewhere waiting for the day that Drummond and Cauty resurrect it, but nobody knew for sure. As with everything KLF-related, the car's history is enigmatic and misinformation is plentiful, but after a year of many members hunting high and low and reaching out to people involved with the band, the Autoshite forum community have finally reached a definitive answer so read on to find out more about the exciting life and death of this iconic car.

Unsung heroes: Jaguar X-type

More than a Mondeo?

It's been more than a year since my last unsung hero, but the series makes its long-overdue return with the most modern choice so far. With Jaguar experiencing a renaissance at the hands of its current Indian owners, the cars built under Ford's ownership are often derided or forgotten, especially the subject of today's piece that is commonly regarded as a low point in the marque's history. Ford-era Jaguars get a bad press, none more so than the X-type thanks to its controversial platform-sharing with the Mondeo that dooms it to be forever classed as not a real Jaguar in the eyes of many. Is that really fair though, or is it so overshadowed by the Mondeo comparisons that it deserves a second chance?

Just a Mondeo pretending to be a Jag, or something more?
(Image: Amazon.com)

Time for T

Well hello to all my readers, it's been a very long time since my last post for various not very interesting reasons. I'm back to a hopefully more regular schedule now though and will start with an unexpected beginning to the car show season. It all started last summer with a Wolseley 1500 owned by a local chap called George, who had noticed I was a fellow classic car enthusiast. We soon became friends and George recently mentioned that the Model T Ford Register were holding their annual April Fool's road run and his friend was hosting a rest stop at his farm that we might be interested in attending. Of course I said yes as any opportunity to look at classic cars is difficult to turn down!

It's difficult to pick a favourite from such a large turnout but I did like this pickup

More Bobmobiles

Work on the Renault 6 continues at a steady pace and there will be an update soon. In the meantime, an envelope arrived a few weeks ago from Barry, who had been sorting Bob's photos and found some not just of our Renault but of various other cars he owned over the years. Looking at what he drove provides an interesting insight into his character: he seems to have been a Ford man originally before getting into Renaults, then towards the end of his life he had a couple of Vauxhalls. Even though he never married and spent his whole life living alone so he didn't really need two cars, there were times he owned more than one, and of course the R6 sat unused in the garage for more than 20 years while other cars came and went.

Retro Review: Ford Simulator

Although I work in the IT industry I've never really been one for games. I'd describe myself as a very casual gamer who maybe spends a couple of hours a month gaming, and I'm an impatient sort who wants to make quick progress so I tend to stick to simple fast-paced games. As a car enthusiast, naturally it is driving games that appeal most to me and nowadays there is no shortage of ultra-realistic games and simulators to suit all tastes. I grew up in the simpler time of the late eighties and early nineties though, and here I look back at a very odd, obscure and crude program (I hesitate to even call it a game) from 30 years ago that played a part in shaping my childhood.

What kind of super-realistic simulation awaits when I press the space bar?

Modelling the holy grey grille

Bringing the Hornby Sierra up to scratch

I haven't written about model vehicles on this blog for some time, so here's the story of a recent project that has kept me busy for a few hours and turned a piece of rubbish that most people wouldn't give a second glance into an accurate scale model. I work exclusively in 1/76 scale, the same as OO gauge model railways, which is well-served for bus and lorry models but not so much for cars until recently, and the subject of this piece may be nostalgic for those who modelled modern-image railways in the 1990s.

The old plastic Ford Sierra made by Hornby was just about all you could get at the time but doesn't seem to have much potential to make a decent model from first impressions and is now all but ignored as it is so inferior to the model cars now available. Don't write it off completely though: with a bit of hard work, as I have proved here, it can be transformed into something that wouldn't look out of place alongside the new generation of diecast cars. The car I have chosen to model is well-known in certain circles and its fascinating story has already been told here, so read on to find out how I replicated it in this small scale... 

A Hornby Sierra that actually looks like a Sierra, and the all-important grey grille is in place

The holy grey grille

It's all about that Base...

It's amazing how certain car registration marks become memorable considering they're just semi-random combinations of letters and numbers. Take GVG 510Y for example. This may not be particularly famous and probably means nothing to most of you, having never been owned by a celebrity or featured on television, but the car spotting community on Flickr will recognise it immediately as a legend among them, and those lucky enough to have encountered it speak of it in hushed tones of reverence.

Why are those guys looking so happy to see a crusty old Sierra?

So what is the vehicle this ordinary-seeming numberplate belongs to? A priceless supercar? Maybe a unique prototype? A car involved in an historic event? Nope, to the casual observer it's nothing more than a grotty old Ford Sierra that looks fit for scrap and isn't remotely exciting, so what's so special about it? Well, it's the only known surviving example of the rare early base model with the unpainted grey plastic front grille, long thought to be an extinct or mythical beast that existed only in the brochure and was never actually built, so the discovery of this specimen in the wild a few years ago caused a sensation among those who appreciate the underdogs of the motoring world.

Only Connect

A tale of three four Transits...

It's the curse of modelmakers. You have a great idea to make something unique that isn't available commercially and spend hours working on it, but no sooner is it finished than a manufacturer announces something very similar that can be bought off the shelf and would have saved all that effort. I'm sure we've all suffered from this curse at one time or another, but it's managed to strike me no less than three times in a short period while modelling Ford Transit Connect vans! Here's the story of this run of bad luck...

The last Healey

As you've probably guessed by now, I am a self-confessed car geek. I pride myself on my knowledge of obscure cars as they are one of the few things in life I am really passionate about, so when I come across something I had never heard of before, curiosity always gets the better of me and I have to find out all about it. As my first car was a Mark 1 Ford Fiesta I naturally have a sentimental attraction to them and it always pleases me to see one, but surely everyone knows what a Fiesta is and it can hardly be considered even remotely obscure. How many of you are aware however that the Mark 1 was sold in the USA and along the way has a surprising connection with a famous British sports car manufacturer? I certainly wasn't until I recently stumbled across the car in question...

A Ford Fiesta but not as we know it

Unsung heroes: Ford R-series

Today I pay tribute to a type of coach that was a familiar part of my childhood but seems to have been overlooked by many enthusiasts: the humble Ford R-series. While the heavyweight chassis built by AEC and Leyland, and later the flashy products of continental coachbuilders, got all the attention from enthusiasts, the R-series was the bread and butter, always there in the background quietly and reliably working away on less glamorous duties and no doubt earning its operator a decent income. These coaches were the mainstays of many independent operators until fairly recently, but having been discontinued in 1985, even the newest examples are now approaching thirty years old and survivors have become very rare.

One of the R-series chassis shortened to 8 metres by Tricentrol, this one still exists but hasn't been used for many years.

The death of Mondeo Man

It recently came to my attention that Ford have quietly launched a brand new Mondeo for 2015. This must have been a low-key event as the new model completely passed me and several other car enthusiasts by and I have seen little advertising, but not so long ago the debut of a new Mondeo would have been a cause of major excitement among company car drivers and fleet managers eager to get their hands on something new to show off to their colleagues. That just shows how marginal this once-universal model has become - the ubiquity of Mondeos was such that they even entered popular culture by spawning a nickname for the type of people who typically drove them, sales reps in the 1990s being almost universally characterised as 'Mondeo Man'. Nowadays though, it seems Mondeo Man is becoming an endangered species and has been usurped by 'German Saloon Man' as the traditional Mondeo users are turning en masse to 'prestige' brands such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes.