Wrangle, 1975

These are two photos of our amazing Ford Anglia, that was given to us in London by our friend Mark Awerbuch (now Dr A, in Adelaide).  Given, mind you, because, as he said, "it's a pile of junk, I'm going to throw it out, but do you want it?"  I said why not, and then decided to drive it to India.  Along came Sal, Ray and Robin....

Here are a couple of photos of the amazing "Wrangle", so named by Sally.  And "it" became "her"....

Sal, Anne and Forse, January 1975 in Lenk, Switzerland

My mum, "Mutti",  reminded me that when I drove Wrangle down the mountain from Lenk, Sally decided to take the bus instead, as she didn't trust the brakes (wise not to, btw; they were crap drum brakes...)

Wrangle on the Khyber Pass (Sal's photo).  May 1975.
Note the Contac paper that we had to add to the rust holes to get
by the Swiss authorities, who would otherwise have forced her off the road....

While she may look like a pile of junk, she took us (4 big folk) 16,000 trouble-free
kilometres, from London to Delhi, through deserts and mountain passes, with
nary a blip: we didn't even have to use that spare tyre on the roof.  What a car!

Here's something else I remember about Wrangle.  That it had a really bad wheel wobble at around 50 mph.  So much that you couldn't go any faster for fear of running off the road.  But when we loaded her up with Sally and me and  Ray & Robin, and headed out along the highway to the Ferry to France, the wobble magically disappeared.  Must have been the change of weight distribution, which you can see from the photo above, where she sits down at the arse with just Ray in the back.
We were shockingly ill-prepared for such a trip. I know this even more strongly now from having done the trip across Africa... you'd never leave with such a pile of junk today... not that you could do it now, as you probably couldn't cross Iran and certainly couldn't cross Afghanistan.