Practically Classics Forum

You definitely did the right thing. A 1300 HL was never built. Sadly, they did put the long stroke, 1500cc version of the large journal OHV engine into some later Dolomites as an alternative to a real engine and some of those were given the HL badge and the four lamps, the Dolly instruments and the black bits.
MK1 Cavaliers were a cracking thing to drive IIRC. I've worked at a few but only owned mine for three days and left it at the auction to go through again without lifting a finger to earn the resulting profit on the £80 it cost me.

^^^thanks. Memory fail no doubt. It was a 1300 maybe not HL? I liked it a lot.
At that Time Dad had a Carlton 2ltr auto in white with the same boudoir red trim ..... Nuff said

Yes, and I'd forgotten those! There was a basic, bare bones 1300 in the Dolomite range after they started shoving the older, simpler iron pushrod engines in, around the time they stopped selling Toledos most likely so somewhere around 1975/76? David, a.k.a. Toledo Man will know and doubtless he'll drop in to correct anything I got wrong there. Please.

AIRC the base Dolomite 1300 (Also available as a 1500) had the flat Toledo dash, a HUGE steering wheel and thinner seats with square headlights. Essentially a Toledo with the extended Dolomite back end. No HL version in 1300 but the 1500HL had all the add-on trim options in the rest of the Dolmite range.

My missed opportunity? Back in 1970 I was offered a MK5 Bentley WITH MOT! for £75. Didn't buy it because the exhaust was blowing!

Didn't learn my lesson either because in '78/9 along came an Aston DBS for £3K beautiful metallic blue but a mysteriously very rusty front bumper. Passed on that one too.

Close. The HL designation was simply a later badge for the car that had never before then had its engine capacity mentioned on the boot lid. Introduced when they put that horrid iron engine from the older FWD 1500 and RWD TC into the Dolomite, or more correctly; changed the 1500TC's name to Dolomite as it was the same shape so making it resemble the car with the real engine must have been a good move from the marketing POV.
And yes, the 1500's steering wheel did feel big, but never having compared one to the three spoke, leather bound wheel in my own Dolomatics I'm not sure whether it was bigger or simply felt that way because its rim was so thin and it only had the one bar across the middle which made it seem roomier than the Dolly's wheel.

Apparently, the flat dash 1500 with the BW auto option is the rarest of all the range now. I'd have one in spite of having worked at so many prematurely knackered large journal engines simply because it's not another effing Sprint!

The Toledo was dropped and the Dolomite "family" was introduced in March '76.

I found my old car for sale at http://www.classiccarshq.co.uk/ads/koug ... sale-1967/

I am not sure if I should buy her back - she looks much better now than when I sold her (for about £5k). What do you think I should do? Looks like they have spent a lot of time and money on her

When it comes to "fun" cars, I tend to go with heart rather than head. If I like something it's "known issues" don't matter.
If you like it and you have the funds available, get your cheque book out and get it.

Thanks Terry. You are right and I think I am going to go for it. It needed lots of work - at least I don't have the headache of rebuilding it!

The very least you should do is go for a test drive and make up your mind after going for a spin.