Wolseley 6/90 Revival Ep.10 - Driving on the Open Road!

Finally, after 7 months of work, the Wolseley 6/90 is back on the road for the first time in decades. Here it is put through its paces out on the open road to see how well it performs and how it feels to drive when pushed down country lanes. (This footage was filmed over one year before it was uploaded)

There is also some assessment of the history of the 6/90 as a Police car and as a Movie car, feature of 695 post-war movies and some impressive car-chase sequences. Also looking at the heritage of the C-series engine shared with the Big Healey.

This 6/90 is a very late Series 3 from 1958, towards the end of production. Follow the progress of this car from laying exposed in a storage yard to passing an MOT and driving on the open road by watching the previous episodes in this series of ten films on this channel. Catch up with future updates on this car by subscribing.

Relatively rare when new, with fewer than twelve thousand 6/90s made in total between 1954 and 1959, now only around 25 examples survive in Britain with fewer than 100 cars worldwide - mostly in Australia and New Zealand but including one car in Sri Lanka, Canada and the USA respectively.

These were fast cars, capable of 100mph and sharing mechanicals with the 2.6 litre Austin Healy 100/6. In 1955 at Montlhéry, a 6/90 achieved "100 miles in one hour" alongside BMC's other "Ton Up" cars, the MGA, Austin Healy, and Riley Pathfinder. Although marketed as solidly respectable, middle-class executive transport, more than half the cars made were used as Police Cars. This more exciting and hard-edged identity was immortalised by appearance in countless British films during the '50s, with a ratio of movie appearances to numbers produced that possibly exceeds that of any other car - and mostly in British Noir titles with plenty of tyre screeching on fast corners, most famously in "Hell is a City" . Only one genuine Police 6/90 is known to survive although there are several replica Police Cars (which is the intention for this car).

The 6/90 shares similar styling to the much smaller 4/44 & 15/50 models, which survive in reasonable numbers and share bodywork with the MG Magnette. The 6/90 itself shares basically the same chassis & bodyshell as the Riley Pathfinder (which is now also extremely rare), although mechanically little was shared. These were all designed by Gerald Palmer, who also designed the Jowett Javelin. The Palmer-designed Wolseleys & MGs were later replaced by the Farina designed cars, the 6/99 and 6/110, which had similar styling to the Westminsters, Oxfords & Cambridges and the Vandn Plas 3litre & 4litreR.

If you are seriously interested in 6/90s, visit The Wolseley Forum at http://www.wolseleyforum.com/ , where you can speak to owners, find out where to see examples and see when cars are sold. Contact me on the Forum by my username Edgar Lustgarten.

To see 6/90s in action visit Internet Movie Car Database - http://www.imcdb.org/ , and search model "Wolseley 6/90" for several pages of films with fantastic titles such as "Two Way Stretch", "The Man in the Back Seat" or "The Village of The Damned".