Rusty But Trusty

Thanks to our self-imposed price ceiling, you’ll probably never see a Rolls Royce here on these pages. And while you might have heard that the Vanden Plas Princess was at one point powered by a 4-liter Rolls Royce FB60 engine with a pretty stout 175hp, this is not that car, but its predecessor. That said, for the fancy pants trim level of the Austin Westminster, you’ll get an elegantly trimmed interior, with burr walnut, leather and high-grade carpeting. And since this is a 1964 version, you get the upgraded brakes, drop-down rear picnic tables, and the 120hp version of the Austin C-series inline six. Take a look at this 1964 Austin Princess Vanden Plas for sale for $4500 in Cool Ridge, WV.

This car seems to offer a lot of luxury for the money. The top Farina Austin will get you to 60 in about 16 seconds, which sounds slow, but was respectable for its time and is probably offset to some degree by low-end torque. This particular car has a license plate that probably made 13-year-old boys in Gloucester giggle when the car was new. Interestingly, a B-registration is actually correct for a 1964 car, so this is likely to have been the plate the car wore from new. The owner does not give details on the car’s importation, so he may not have been the one to import the car.

The interior is said to be in good condition, and the exterior shows minor blemishes and some light rust – you’ll definitely want to do your homework and a careful inspection. The paint is said to be all original – again, something to check, but definitely adds to the cool factor of this old luxury car. The car lives in a humid climate, and Britain’s climate probably didn’t help either, but the fact it survived at all means there’s reason for hope.

The car has had a full hydraulic and fuel system rebuild, so hopefully it’s ready for some regular driving. With the Austin (actually, Morris-designed) six running through a 3-speed manual with overdrive, you’ve basically got the sedan version of an Austin Healey 3000. Wiht some straight pipes you might even get some of the growl that’ll grow hair on your chest. Does luxury with a dose of sport sound like a recipe for fun?

Tags: austin, british, Feature, princess, sedan, vanden plas

This entry was posted on September 28, 2014 at 5:00 am and is filed under Feature. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.