I'm between "new" cars right now so I've been making the 50 mile round-trip trek to work in my grandma's old '64 Valiant. It's fun, other than the scary 9-inch drum brakes, and gets about 20mpg with over 165,000 miles on the clock.
Anyone else use their classic as a regular car?
Here's a pic of '64 (as my grandma dubbed her) parked across the street from my office.
In the late '70s I had a 10 year old Valiant Signet 2 door as my DD. It had the "obigatory" slant 6 with auto combo and no power accessories other than A/C...if I remember correctly. Yeah, the brakes on these things are pretty bad, tho probably no worse than their contemporary's brakes from Ford or GM. The steering is even worse than the brakes (maybe mine did have PS) as it has absolutely no feel or friction to it.
When I was in H.S. one of my favorite cars in my town was a '66 Valiant convertible.
the PS is truly horrible, thankfully this one has manual steering. It actually feels pretty good on the road but it has something like 6 turns lock-to-lock so it's quite a workout in parking lots.
In my younger days I had a '63 Valiant 4 door sedan that I bought without about 12k miles on it, as I remember it was a decent car. I put a lot of miles on it.
Fast forward to about 1980, I picked up a '64 Valiant 2 door hardtop from my sister for $50.00. It had few rust spots and had seen better days, I cleaned it up, patched up the rust spots and sold it spot primer and all for $200.00. They were pretty neat little cars.
Your '64 looks like a clean little car.
This is a Valiant reunion! Back around 1974 I had a 1960 Valiant, white 4 door, slant 6 of course, push button Torqueflite tranny, no airco, no power anything.
Of course now I'm sure it classifies as a classic, and it's important to note that it was the first unibody construction car made in the U.S.!
When I had to pull the engine out of my '67 E-Type to replace the clutch I bought this Valiant from my friend's dad for $100. It had 43,000 miles on it and was in great condition, ran perfectly, no rust. I ran it until it had about 120k miles on it and then it was stolen for a couple weeks; then one day I found it parked near my house close to where it was stolen, but by then I bought a practically new conditon '65 LeSabre (with Wildcat V8 no less). So I gave the Valiant to my buddy...a few weeks later he used a hack saw to cut a recctangle out of the roof because he wanted a sun roof; used steel door hinges on it...a bit crude and very leaky but he liked it.
A friend of mine had a '64 4 door Valiant like RB's above, he got it from his parents when they got a new car; this one had that nice little 273ci V8 which he proceeded to modify with cams, carbs, headers, etc. and something like 413 rear end gears...that thing was extremely quick.
Ahhh, the mammaries.
Been a while since I've been down there, but there used to be a ratty orange MGTF in College Park that was being used as a daily driver by its owner.
A TF daily driver would be cool. Hardcore, but cool.
As for the valiant, that's pretty much my daily life - people stop me all the time and tell me about the '64 Valiant they owned, or their family owned, or they learned to drive in, or it was their first car...
They made something like 200,000 Valiants in 1964 alone.
I think a warmed over MG Magnette would make a sweet daily, if you didn't have to be paranoid about somebody dinging the body.
I imagine an old Volvo 122 or even 544 would acquit itself nicely.
Lot of old American stuff I could see driving daily, if I could afford to feed it.
Yeah, a couple of friends of mine have old Volvos as DD. They work really well though one has been sidelined with a loud diff for a while.
Most of the american 6-cylinders like the slant are good for 20 mpg with care.
Plenty of vintage VWs too...
That is an awesome Valiant. I drive my MGB GT almost every day, but just "around", I don't drive it to work or to run real errands.
Those no ps cars with the high steering ratios are tough. I always feel like the spokes on the steering wheel are just going to break in my hands.
Well I was driving my 1962 corvair fitch sprint station wagon to work 30 miles away from home on monday when the rear wheel on the right decided to fall off!!! I had replaced the tires and put datsun 260 z wheels on the car .I felt the vibration and slowed down to try to get to my office.I am on rural road no shoulders,and not many houses. I pull off and inspect the carnage. the wheel is off at about 40 deg negative camber ,no body damage!quick check shows all four wheel studs broken off. I had it towed to my buddies body shop about 3 miles away.Today I went over and put four new studs in and put the wheel back on with new bigger lug nuts. The brakes need adjusting since the drum fell off and the wheel cylinder probably over expanded but it rolls fine and stops with pumping the pedal. I will still drive it daily in good weather. this is the first problem with this car in 7 yrs of driving it.
I had a '65 Monza a few years back but it dropped a valve on the freeway one day and i was in college so couldn't afford to rebuild the motor.
Corvairs are cool drivers - every once in a while I see one without rust and start thinking about it.
as for the steering, they do make a 20:1 (4.5 turns) and a 16:1 (3.5 turns) chuck for it, but that would make parallel parking almost impossible.
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