This Horizon blue MkI is owned by Wilford Wing from the USA.
This 59 MKI Farina was purchased in 1997 as a father/daughter project car. It had been sitting high and dry since 1964 with 47,000 miles on it. Many NOS parts came with the car. It was to be restored as my daughters first car and to be her only daily driver. So I had to give it a few modern bits and some added safty features. The body was media blasted to bare metal and primed in epoxy primer. Tiffany picked the color and it is very close to the original green with almond roof. She also wanted to be the very first person to drive it since 1964 so with the new paint on, a rebuilt 1275 and a Toyota 5 speed, she hopped in, sat on a milk crate and drove it around the block. She was 15 at the time and never drove anything much less a stick shift. During the nine month restoration I made most of the interior panels, found a set of Chevy seats with built in headrests that fit perfectly. I did have the original back seat but no front seats came with the car. The huge original steering wheel had to go and I found a suitable junk yard replacement where the Austin logo replaced the Chevy logo exactly and it is a modern padded wheel. 3 point seatbelts were a must for the front seats and lap belts for sure on the back seat. These came from a VW golf. Now those funky windows.... I turned them into power windows with a bit of luck and some more VW junk yard bits. Puddle lights on the lower door panels was another safty idea I had so I found some small ones from a Nissan that fit the door panels I made. I also found a decent padded door pull set from another junk yard donor car. The 1275 and 5 speed along with a 3.90 diff from a late Sprite make the car cruise all day long at 75 mph. I have a TR7 radiator to keep it cool and besides, no radiator came with the car when I bought it. Nisonger instruments calibrated the NOS speedometer to the diff and wheels and it is dead on. I added an aftermarket Lucas column mounted signal switch, I used the original signal switch for the driving lamps. I added an oil/water gauge from a Sprite and a volt gauge from a Jaguar. I kept the original dash indicator lights and they all still work along with the added gauges. When Tiffany turned 16 and got her learners permit, she learned how to drive in this A40. It was her only car all thru highschool. The "class of 00" stickers are still on the rear windows. The Austin has a pretty good sound system in it mounted in a console I made out of an old no parking sign. I made a new parcel shelf out of 1/4" plywood and fiberglassed it so it will never rot out like the original cardboard shelf. Now for the real topper, I installed air conditioning in this car too! Some one had given me an Austin Marina and the air con worked. So I took it out of the Marina, made some minor adjustments to the brackets and installed it in the Farina. It worked very nice, no holes drilled in the car, but it did rob alot of what little power the 1275 had so after 2 years, I took the AC out. We still use this car but not as much as we used to. It goes up for sale every now and then but my daughter keeps taking the sign out. She wants to keep it as her "old" car for when she gets married. Right now she doesn't even have a steady boyfriend so it may be hanging around my house for many more years. -- Frank Clarici Toms River, NJ
Thank you for confirming the color of my (2nd) 1959 A40 Mk I. Now I can reply with confidence, rather than saying it's either this or that, and then being told it really looks green!
You are welcome to use the photo, of course. If you didn't get the story, I am the third owner (since May, 2003) and it was stored indoors for 34 years by the first owner after it burned a valve in 1964. Whether the first Canadian owner, who died in 1998, actually had it in the house, as claimed - not the garage - and never used it in the winter for the first five years, I can't prove. In any case the car is rust-free and in remarkable original condition. The vinyl mats were in tatters, so the car now sports a carpeted interior. The biggest problem is that I need a replacement glove box push-button/release mechanism! It has less than 30,000 miles total.
The above MkI Saloon is owned by Frank Clarici from the USA.
See Frank's other vehicles here.