Thread: One for the car experts - station wagons of the 60s and 70's...

Originally Posted by bee utey

It would be interesting to see if the W123 230 wagon was sold in Australia before 1980, the type was was introduced in 1976. I can only find references to post 1980 ones in Australia.

There is a W111 220SE estate floating around Australia somewhere but that was a private import.
A lot of the W111 finnies in Australia were CKD assembled at AMI.
My guess is later model estates from the 1970's would also have been private imports.

Originally Posted by rainman

Oh no! Not the Sigma. Hasn't that been deleted from motoring history yet? Shocking car.

Did you ever drive a Sigma?

I would suggest that there are plenty of Datsun and Toyota's that were less drivable and more problematic than the Sigma. I owned a Chrysler Sigma from new (the only 2X4 car I have ever owned I drove it for 12 months and then used my SIIa S/W while my sister-in-law drove the Sigma.) It went up to Cairns, while my parent's Chrysler sigma wagon went all over the eastern states. Our family never had any mechanical issues with any of the 4 Sigmas in the family. We swapped to Toyota when our local Chrysler->Mitsubishi dealer became the Toyota dealer.

Originally Posted by strangy

There was the Humber Super Snipe wagon also, 3litre six.

cheers

Now that is one seriously classy looking wagon. Anyone know how many were sold in AU? Was the Series V the only wagon, or were there others???

Originally Posted by Lotz-A-Landies

Did you ever drive a Sigma?

I will admit I have never driven a Sigma, but probably because there were none left operable by the time I got my license .

Seriously - I have no personal experience. I can really only go on what other people have told me, but most notably my boss who, as a young mechanic, worked on his fair share of problematic Astron motors in the early eighties.

Every car has it's fans. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to defend the humble Sigma.

I still think my Fiat 2300 was a mean looking monster of a car, look at that grille:



Sadly like all Fiats of the era it had terminal rust so its long gone. Did manage to get 100MPH out of it though, repeatedly...

Originally Posted by rainman

I will admit I have never driven a Sigma, but probably because there were none left operable by the time I got my license .

Seriously - I have no personal experience. I can really only go on what other people have told me, but most notably my boss who, as a young mechanic, worked on his fair share of problematic Astron motors in the early eighties.

Every car has it's fans. I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to defend the humble Sigma.

You know, if Mitsubishi ever had the guts to release the 3.0 V6 in the Sigma, it would have been twice the car. That fate was left to the Magna instead. The Astron was a bit of a dodgy lump, although with the balance shafts removed they could go very hard in 2.6 form.

Originally Posted by JDNSW

One glaring omission I note is the EK Holden, and the Ford Zephyr probably fell into the sixties as well, but were quite rare. I seem to remember the EK Holden as the first mass market wagon in Australia.

John

'twas the FE, John. First Holden Station Wagon in production. FC & FB also had wagons. I seem to recall a few Vauxhall wagons getting about. What about Chrysler Royals? What was their engine size? The six cylinder versions were < 4 litres. Does anyone else remember the Renault Prairie?

Originally Posted by bee utey

You know, if Mitsubishi ever had the guts to release the 3.0 V6 in the Sigma, it would have been twice the car. That fate was left to the Magna instead. The Astron was a bit of a dodgy lump, although with the balance shafts removed they could go very hard in 2.6 form.

Oh . It's so hard to not keep Sigma bashing (sorry Diana).......

If you removed the balance shafts surely you're opening up a while new can of worms? It would only get a few kilometres down the road before it shook the body apart into it's individual pieces.