TRio 6
For this month’s cover story our roving contributor, Stephen McEvoy has tracked down not one or two,but three beautiful red Triumph TR6s for our readers. As he outlines in this feature, each example has been subtly adapted (or not, as the case may be) to better suit the use to which its owner wishes to put it to, so they vary from a 100% correct original car to one that has received a number of modern upgrades to improve its reliability and performance. The TR6 was truly one of the very last British “muscle classics”, and having seen Stephen’s feature everyone in the Irish Vintage Scene office is longing for a big six-pot soft-top of their own!
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Grey Matter
In many ways, when you look up the word ‘tractor’ in the dictionary there should be a picture of a Fordson F or N beside the definition. The Model F might not have been the first tractor ever, or even the best tractor ever, but it most certainly was the one that put new tractor ownership into more hands than any other that had gone before. The Model N that followed featured some detail improvements but was still unmistakeably a ‘Fordson’, and the one Andrew Pollock brings us this month is the most sought-after type of all; an original Cork-built N, that spent its whole life in Nebraska in the US. It’s now been restored to beautiful condition, but it wasn’t an easy project…
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The Big CAT
We’re pretty sure that this month’s classic commercial feature is the largest vehicle we’ve ever put in the magazine, or at the very least the most imposing! This simply enormous Oshkosh R-Series isn’t your “usual” recent US import, though; this one in fact has worked in Ireland from new, being one of only three right-hand-drive examples ever built. Having spent its time hauling heavy gear for Irish Caterpillar dealers (it is fitted with a CAT V8 engine) it has now been restored and customised by Johnny Fee from Dungannon, complete with some amazing airbrush work by his son, Michael, and caught the eye of our Stephen McEvoy at a recent truck event.
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Easy Riders
As any motorcycle enthusiast will know, the seventies were a time of huge change in the industry. It was the decade in which the tide of motorcycle manufacturing truly turned from Europe to the East, which saw to it that a great many legendary manufacturers were caught on the back foot. This month Norbert Sheerin meets with two bikers who own two machines very representative of the shifting tides of the time. The Italian Morini 3½ was a very fine motorcycle, well designed and with very high-quality components, but it simply couldn’t compete with the excellent value, reliability and outright performance of the Honda CB400/Four, as Norbert outlines for us.
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