I’m still perusing Dean Edwards’ massive download at the Cohort. I just scan them until one grabs me, and this one did just that. It’s one of those shots that was undoubtedly highly spontaneous, and results in a great picture. In this case, it’s of two women just about to go butterfly catching, having parked their trusty Ford Anglia. Looks to have been taken some time back; maybe the same 1990 trip to Europe as the shot of the two goddesses in Paris?
Rather curiously, this is a car we’ve never profiled here.
The new Anglia 100E arrived in 1953, looking quite modern for the times, especially in Old Blighty. It replaced the old Anglia, which dated back to 1939, and looked like it.
Under the hood it didn’t look quite as modern; its 1172cc flathead four looked a bit antiquated, although it was technically “new”. Undoubtedly it was an evolution of its predecessor’s rather similar little mill. It churned out 36hp, which was about right for 1953. But the world was changing, and towards the latter part of its life, which ended in 1959, it was certainly not as “freeway proof” as a lot of more modern engines, especially the VW and the Anglia’s replacement, which had the first of the ultra short-stroke “Kent” ohv fours.
The Anglia 100E was sold in America, and competed against the VW and others in its price class. I’m guessing the little long-stroke flathead four was not exactly ideal for America’s wide open highways and freeways, but it would have made an adequate round-town second car. It advertised a “US-type gear shift”, meaning a three-speed column shifted manual.
There was even a “Squire” wagon version, with a bit of wood trim, like this one I did profile here a few years back. The regular version of the wagon was named “Escort”.
That’s going to do it for today. Back to butterfly hunting and Give Peace A Chance.
Cool little car . I have a 56 Thames panel chassis on 50s jeep 4×4 axles waiting for its turn in the shop. third in line after the 89 hot rod wheelchair van and the 67 bug. It was my daily driver 17 yrs ago.
This was taken around 1988 in Shropshire, with the left net being my cousin the environmental biologist and her friend/assistant. They were probably laughing at my attempts to drive off in her clapped out Mini. The folks who had the 100e walked the talk with that car and their lifestyle, daily driving it and living in a house that had hens scratching around, kept bees, huge garden, the works.
As far as I know, no 100E ever had a column shift. I wonder if by “US-style” they mean a dogleg pattern with reverse all the way to the left and forward with first straight back from it, albeit a floor shift.
Never heard of a tree shift on a 100E they were very common in NZ when I was a teen all British cars were fortunately a 1340cc OHV engine and gearbox from already rusted out and unpopular Ford Consul Classic goes into these with very little effort as does any Kent type four but being broke teens the cheapest things in wrecking yards were most attracrive, The feeble sidevalve the factory fitted the 100E with was its downfall Ford modernised its 10hp flat head for the new car, fitting shell big ends and altering the cam drive arrangement to achieve that giddy 35hp sending it thru a 3 speed gear box with massive canyons between gears the performance if you can call it that was woefull even around town a sidevalve Hillman also incredibly slow would leave one for dead, the better 4 speed gearbox helped Fords cheapness in building cars was legendary, a simple engine gearbox swap changed all that and made these cars go quite well, later model front struts with disc brakes also fit so modernising these quite pretty little cars to suit then modern 70s traffic was a back yard industry and we did it to every make and model we could get our greasy paws on, British cars are like Lego Ive done the same to my old Hillman its a very hard habit to break. Original 100Es are quite rare here now 100Es in general are quite rare age rust and old school boy racers have thinned the ranks considerably.
They did indeed seem to be popular for hotting up when I was a kid, both as hot fours and as mean, rough n’ ready custom jobs complete with V8’s and huge rear wheels and forward rake. Perhaps they were valueless in the ’70’s, with no financial risk in chopping into them.
I used to drive around with a friend at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska who had one of these. He didn’t like driving that much, so I was usually at the wheel, and since my own car was a much slower Fiat 500 I was pretty happy about it. Ten years later I bought a Squire off a lot in Sonora, CA – I think for $150, and worth (just) every penny – by which time its cranky Englishness was losing much of its charm. The 3-speed tranny was TOO typically Brit: Stump-puller 1st, a 2nd gear low enough to start in, then a looong jump to direct 3rd! And my daily commute home began with a short downhill then a mile+ uphill grade. I could make it a little over halfway before either the engine overheated or the fuel line got vapor-locked – any roadside snow could speed recovery – but we always made it somehow, and on flat snow the car was actually lots of fun.
Its one bad trick was the starter ring gear’s tendency to hang up and lock at one certain point. I could yank it free by using the plug-in starting crank, forcing it back a little and then forward … but one day, parked at a laundromat in Twain Harte, I was doing this until suddenly there was a loud SPING! and the crank turned freely and uselessly. I’d broken the crankshaft!
A Buyer’s Guide article in Classic & Sports Car magazine several years ago did in fact list projected mileage between engine rebuilds as somewhere around 20K miles, but except for the ridiculously heavy iron block this would be a kitchen-table job, and probably the work of a week or less, even for a klutz like me. And since one of these would be a very pleasant little grocery-getter, I could see adopting another one. Imagine a little modern car with a miniature Model A engine, and that’s about it!
Great tales. I’ve never heard of breaking a crank with a crank, but it seems to fit the weak-chested mechanical nature of the beasts.
The odd thing about these is the “V” badge on their front fenders. As a kid I knew that Ford had a V4, so I rather assumed these must have had that engine. Why else put a V badge on it there?
The little V badge appears on Anglias and contemporary Zephyrs. It’s more of a triangle than a V. The center says Ford Motor Company Ltd England. It’s kinda like the Chrysler pentastar makers mark.
It points down towards hell, from whence the driving experience was extracted and installed.
LOL!
To my eye, this style has aged better than that of its successor, the 105e
Sad then that generation of Anglia didn’t have the popularity of the following generation. the 105e, who was a “car star” being featured in tv and movies like Harry Potter.
Not an ugly thing, but still something a bit postwar-rationing-uptight-class-misery about it (yet still rising far above the epitome of such, the so-miserable-its-boot-doesn’t-open contemporary Standard Ten).
Mind, I might be conflating the looks with the driving experience described so well by Will Owens above.
The butterflies are quite safe. You couldn’t keep up with one in a 100E.
They were quite the rage at the drag strips…. probably mostly for the Adrenalin High Created by the huge power planted in a hopelessly under built, under braked and understeered death trap. But they were fun!
One of these was probably the oddest new car purchase my parents ever made. When they got married in mid 1958 they started with a 57 Buick Super or Roadmaster my Dad had bought used and the 53 Chevy sedan my Mom had bought in 1954. Within a year they had an Anglia and a Karmann Ghia.
The Ghia was fondly remembered, but the Anglia was not – by my mother particularly. She always made a face when she said “English Ford.” 🙂 My father spent a lot of time on the road in the Willow Run-Ypsilanti-Detroit corridor then, and I now understand that the highway driving probably killed that car quickly. I never got much info on it, but it would have definitely been a 58 or 59 model. By 1961 both were gone, replaced by a 61 F-85 wagon.
But it sure looked appealing in the advertising. 🙂
Honey, I shrunk the car.
I had a vague memory of you pointing this out, but had forgotten it. Wow; your dad sure went from the extremes of Ford products: Anglia to Mk. IV! Now that’s about as vast a jump in sizes as possible.
They really were perfect examples of the import boom buyers, of the ones that then ditched imports for domestics after 1960. There were a lot of them! Imports had a 11% market share in 1959; by 1961, it was 4.9%
I never saw any of these growing up and don’t recall any of the local Ford dealers carrying them. OTOH, there were lots of Opels (sold by Buick dealers) and a fair number of Vauxhalls (sold by Pontiac dealers). I recall seeing an article about a Ford Squire of this vintage whose owner lived in New England. Supposedly it had a metal plate on the dashboard advising the driver not to exceed 45 mph.