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+--- Thread: Ruby for sale, 1974 (/showthread.php?tid=5316)
Ruby for sale, 1974 - Tony Griffiths - 27-11-2020
Just found this while tidying up: December 1974, a newspaper clipping of a Ruby for sale at a dealer in Ancotes, Manchester. The strapline was: "A poignant comment on the ever-increasing cost of motoring." Below the picture of the Ruby is a clip from an inflation calculator. One wonders if any of the cars on that dealer's forecourt survive today - but, come to that, does the Ruby?
RE: Ruby for sale, 1974 - andrew34ruby - 27-11-2020
Seems it was then used for about twenty years, but not since (from looking at dvla)
RE: Ruby for sale, 1974 - Malcolm Parker - 27-11-2020
I am sure there will probably be a thousand surviving Austin 7's for every surviving Vauxhall Victor of that era.
I paid £450 for a roadworthy (just!) Mk 1 Ruby back in 1975, at a time when £1000 bought you a very reasonable modern car. I probably paid a bit over the odds but it came with a ton of spares that I have been using up ever since.
RE: Ruby for sale, 1974 - Bruce Nicholls - 27-11-2020
My RP also just about useable cost £85 in 1971, also with a shed full of spares which I ran on for years.
RE: Ruby for sale, 1974 - Lance Sheldrick - 27-11-2020
I was only 14 in 1974 and £500 would have seemed an impossible sum of money to think about. I bought my first Ruby that year for £50, saved up from repairing and dealing in bicycles, plus my old pedal car, an Austin pathfinder (shaped like the twin cam racers). That Ruby was registered EGN 222 and I would think that the pedal car is now worth more than the Ruby, £25 was allowed for it in the deal! The Ruby was a runner but in poor condition and with youthful exuberence I completely dismantled it.
The following year I bought another Ruby EPP 313 again £50, but this one came with a transit load of spares and the car was an abandoned project but complete and very original. Later that year I also came across two pre war Morris Minors for £20 in very poor condition, MU 6683 and LJ 4***. I sold the whole lot in 1977 when my Box saloon VE 9567 came up for sale at £300 as a runner and which I was able to drive straight away. Luckily I still have it.
None of these cars were advertised, they were all obtained either through the Cambridge A7 cub or motor trade connections and I still think the best deals are had between members of any A7 club, another good reason for anyone looking for a car to join a club.