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Four door convertible Herald anyone?


Freebird

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Posted

My friend took these pictures whilst on holiday in India over Christmas. Interesting eh? Well a bit. Looks like an Indian 4 door saloon with the roof removed to me. Just imagine how flexible it would have been on their ropey old roads!!

Past saving even if you were local probably. Keep an eye out for it in PC's "Rust in peace"

Posted

Nick_Jones wrote:
poor old thing needs rescuing!


Not doing that again, though with hindsight I can see the benefits of a four door saloon over the estate. Not a big fan of the fibreglass roof and tailgate on mine, the saloons were all steel.
As well as the roof, that one's lost the window frames around the door glass.
Cheers,
Bill.

Posted

mk2vitesses wrote:
Surely if this a "factory" made car it must be worth saving???


It's not a factory made convertible, it's a home conversion from an original four door Standard Herald Mk3 Saloon. Any Herald would now be considered quite rare in India, but there are only a handful of people there with any real interest in them.
Let's just say that if I was seriously considering exporting another Indian car, I would be looking for one which was more substantially original,
Cheers,
Bill.

Posted

heraldcoupe wrote:


...with hindsight I can see the benefits of a four door saloon over the estate....
Admittedly, that's one thing that always puzzled me a bit about the Herald. It's predecessor, the Standard 8 and 10, were four-door cars, and its supposed successor, the 1300, was also a four-door. (Oddly, when the 1300 morphed into the Toledo, it was as a two-door, but then the four-door version was introduced; perhaps Triumph saw the mistake and fixed it?)

Only real rationale I can come up with is that staying with just the basic two-door style on the Herald made it even more economically feasible to develop so many variants with a minimum of extra tooling costs. Yet they did go to the trouble to produce the prototype (and ultimately offer it to STAMPRO), so.... ?

Posted

My four door estate is quite robust, certainly more rigid than any Herald or Vitesse convertible I've been involved with. I imagine that a saloon with a steel roof would have been stronger still. The four door saloons had a much thicker rear roof pillar which I assume would contribute substantially to the overall structure.
Cheers,
Bill.

Posted

I have a bunch of photographs taken when the four door estate first arrived. These predate my use of a digital camera, and I can't find the prints.....
I'll search out the prints, in the meantime, here are a couple of pictures taken just before it left India,
Cheers,
Bill.

Posted

All of the Herald Mk3 Companions had this style of tailgate, which is made of fibreglass. There were reputedly Companion (Estate) versions of the later Standard Gazel, but I have never seen a photograph of one,
Cheers,
Bill.

  • 2 years later...
Posted

Freebird wrote:
My friend took these pictures whilst on holiday in India over Christmas. Interesting eh? Well a bit. Looks like an Indian 4 door saloon with the roof removed to me. Just imagine how flexible it would have been on their ropey old roads!!

Past saving even if you were local probably. Keep an eye out for it in PC's "Rust in peace"

Sorry for the really late reply but just came across this thread!

That indeed is a sad looking mk3 Herald! As Bill says, the roof (which is detachable even for these models) as well as the side-window frames are lost, so its sadly an irreversible modification! Besides, the missing parts cant even be sourced locally, considering there are hardly any scrappers showing up nowadays!

Having seen Heralds in a similar state, I can presume that it ended up being used as a 'wedding car' on hire, and the 'owner' probably couldnt get his hands on a 2-door Herald for the purpose.

Most of the cosmetics is missing on this car but it could still serve as a parts donor then. It most likely doesnt even exist now!

I had seen pics. of another 4-door saloon with the roof etc taken off with a 'collector' down south.....it was then turned into- a 2-door convertible!!

'trying to find the pics. Reg. the body rigidity, the 4-door saloons certainly didnt have the kind of rigidity that the 2-door ones had. Contrary to what they might appear as, their bodyshells were primarily of thinner metal than the CKD 2-doorers and are far more prone to rust etc., also being less rigid. These models were also notorious for rattling of the rear doors.
The Gazel didnt seem to have this problem (atleast not the one my dad had), maybe because of the roof being integrated with the bodyshell, making it almost a monocoque.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

heraldcoupe wrote:
There were reputedly Companion (Estate) versions of the later Standard Gazel, but I have never seen a photograph of one,

Hi Bill,

In response to your post, here is what would be a period photo of a Gazel estate sent to me by a Max Derrez from NL. He scanned this pic. from an article that was published in what seems to be a French auto mag dated 1979. It was an article covering the then current cars produced all over the world, including 'Indian' cars of the time.

Ironically, I used to actually see one of these often here, nearly 10 years ago. It was parked at some garage and appeared to be well-maintained. But unfortunately, looking at the rear hatch, had taken it for some local body-mod (it had the normal saloon rear glass and the lower part of the hatch was shaped much like the normal saloon bootlid of the Gazel) so didn't bother to take any pics. then!

I haven't seen the car since either!

I also was in touch with a Gazel owner from Madras (now Chennai) many years ago, who'd claimed his neighbour had one that was unfortunately sold for scrap!
A friend from Pune too had once sent me a pic. of just the rear hatch from one such car that was also sadly scrapped! It (hatch) appeared to be made of fibreglass, but looked much different from that of the 4-door Herald estate. The rear windscreen for instance, was the same as the saloon's. The side-window glasses (rear) seem to be carried on from the Herald Companion though.

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