LONDON TO CAPE TOWN, PEKING TO PARIS, PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA, PENNY TO HELSINKI

About Penny

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This is the working Penny that we all know and love.

 

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See, it has full climate control!! The climate INSIDE the car, is exactly the climate OUTSIDE the car.

However, at the beginning of the year we rebuilt her engine for more power (of course) but came across a little problem about 500km’s into the new wizz-bang rebuilt one….. blew a head gasket and cracked the block. Just in case you have zero mechanical-know-how, there is NOT suppose to be water in those holes!

 

 

In the quest for more power, we put high compression pistons in (ratio WAS 5.0:1, now is around 7.5:1), reduced the flywheel weight in half, a counter-balanced crankshaft and lightweight alluminium conrods to get more revs (of course!)

Everything about her is still laregly original, still leaf springs and hartford shockies, same diff, same gearbox, same engine block (only re-machined and specced for more power). We put the bucket seats in for the extreme long distances we will drive, roll bar for safety and we completly rebuilt the dashboard to suite rally equipment such as trip meters and GPS’s.

 

LONDON TO CAPE TOWN, PENNY IN SOUTH AMERICA

Introductions

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Hi, I’m James

 

And this is my Dad, Max.

 

Now for the most important introduction; Everyone, this is Penny.

Penny is a 1923, 23/60 Vuaxhall. A beast of a car with an enormous 4.3 Liter 4-cylinder engine pulling her all around the world. Me and dad are doing what almost everyone has told us is crazy, we are driving her from London, England all the way down to Cape Town, South Africa….. In a race!!

What??!!! WHY??!!! You might say? Welllllll, the best reason we can come up with, is because we can!

Penny has been amogsnt us for about 4 years now, and Dad has allready successfully completed a previous international vintage car rally from Peking to Paris in 2010 coming in second place in class. In preperation for her first long distance rally, she was completlely stripped down, restored and strengthened for the sole purpose of a vintage rally car. Hence bucket seats for long distance comfort and roll bar for protection. After coming home from Peking to Paris, the seed was sown for another crazy adventure in Penny, this time with me, so why not London to Cape Town, sounds perfect to me!