Hey guys,
Earlier in the year I visited Scotland for a good friend's wedding and not long beforehand, I realised that we had a new member "jeffgair" who claimed to be in Scotland.
Well, he totally was, because back in April we met him!
Jeff's been on the forum a fair bit, mainly in the technical sections. I seem to recall him saying he was not overly technical in the computer department so he was happy for me to post some pics for him. It's only taken me 3 months.
I met Jeff at the local pub in Jedburgh, in the Southern Borders area of Scotland and went back to his house afterwards. We agreed that the world is an amazing place and the Internet is great for things like this; two strangers from opposite sides of the world sharing beers and car talk. He joked that either of us could be a serial killer. Later, I ate his skin.
Jeff will probably be able to better tell the story than me, but from memory he said he was travelling around NZ about 8 yrs ago and saw this little car and went "I like that... I'll have it" and got it sent back to Scotland.
I found that astounding because he had no connection to it; he didn't use it to go travelling while in NZ as it was already a non-runner. Jeff just saw it and liked the aesthetics and enjoyed the fact it was completely different.
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Anyway, his abject insanity is our gain; it was so good to see the Bellett there; it was this little beacon of familiarity in a strange, cold land!
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Awesomely, following the arrival of a thermostat housing from South Australia, he'd only recently got the car running, so was able to drive it out of the shed under it's own steam.
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Being an NZ-assembled car, it was very interesting to check out. There were some detail differences, although perhaps the biggest one was the bench-seat/floor shift combination. I had a similar car once, but the gearbox gate was backwards because of the column-shift pattern being the reverse of a floor shift pattern...HOWEVER Jeff's gearbox is floor-shift correct.
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I thought it may have had the gearbox changed to just turn the whole thing to a floor-shift, but he said he wrecked another Bellett for parts before leaving NZ and it was the same spec; bench seat/floor shift.
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Given that NZ assembled their own cars, it makes me wonder if that was a regular option amongst the NZ cars. It certainly wasn't in the AusDM cars nor the JDM items although all the Aussie Wasps ran the same configuration (despite it not being even optional for the JDM Wasps...).
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This little sticker proclaimed it was assembled by Campbell Industries in Thames, NZ.
Given the bodies were stamped in Japan, it stands to reason that the chassis numbers would not stand outside of the usual chassis number lineage. I imagine that they would have been sequential though, at least in batches!
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Jeff's Bellett shares shed space with an AusDM Volkswagen Kombi; now this one Jeff DOES have a spiritual connection to as he drove it around Australia. If you look closely, you can see a modern, brown-on-white Qld numberplate offset on the driver's side of the van behind his welder!
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The light was a bit dodgy, but Jeff was patient while I fiddled with my digital SLR that I don't really know how to use properly. By the end it was actually very dark!
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The black rear panel looked factory, as did the black c-pillars.
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The alloy wheels looked like ROHs, however I can't remember what the brand was. Back in the 1970s, the alloys you bought were usually made fairly locally, so they may even be NZ wheels.
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Not sure what the front blinkers were from... they didn't look out of place though. I wonder if it got snotted in the front at some stage? I can't imagine NZ cars would have had orange blinkers; they have, like, no rules about anything when it comes to cars. Well, back then, anyway. And compared to bloody ADR rules!
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Love that NZDM numberplate!
Cheers for your time back in April, Jeff. I hope things are progressing and you get that sucker MOT'ed and start cruising it around!
Jeff wants to do a conversion to an MX5 engine for better reliability and speed, but I reckon once he starts driving it with the original motor he may think, "this is actually pretty good!".
Cheers,
Dave
