Eddie Ritchie has two cars that he regularly takes to the shows – a 1980 Austin Princess and a 1972 Rover P6.
Both cars are beautiful inventions and have had a lot of time and care put into them by Eddie and his son, Eddie jun. But they receive very different reactions from people who come across them.
While the Rover evokes lovely childhood memories, the Austin provokes a more mix reaction.
“What I’ve found with the Princess is that although most people love the Rover, the Princess had a very bad reputation in its heyday,” Eddie, 75, from Invergordon, said.
“It was only built for a few years. I’ve had a lot of comments that the car was a load of rubbish. And I’ve had that quite a few times when we’ve been to shows or rallies. But with the same token there are those who say they love it.
“Somebody asked me to write an article for the Highland Classic Motor Show and I put it in that I get as many bad comments as I do good comments. Not bad comments on the condition of the car it is now, just its reputation.”
Eddie explained that the designer of the car wanted it to be a five-door with an opening tailgate but the company decided they had enough models with that design and this one was to be an upper end of the market saloon.
That didn’t turn out to be such a great idea and after a few years the car was dumped and changed to one with an opening tail gate and re-named the Ambassador.
“I have to be honest when my son was talking about it I did say ‘oh don’t bother with that, they had a horrible reputation’ and I hadn’t even seen the car by that point,” Eddie added.
Having owned the car for a few years now Eddie said it is a wonderful car and its design, in terms of its suspension and space, definitely doesn’t deserve the bad rep.
His son had heard about the car from its owner who lived in Alness. He wanted to sell the car but didn’t want to scrap it, he wanted it to go to someone who could do something with it.
That person was Eddie and his son who worked on the car for two years to restore it.
“The car was in a bit of a mess underneath,” he said.
“Where the Rover was a piece of cake and a pleasure to do, this was hard work. We tried to keep it as much as possible to the original look but the wheels had rusted that much that they were going to cause a bit of a problem for maintaining pressure so we replaced them with alloy wheels off of a Rover 800. We had seen it on another car and we liked the idea.”
Unlike the Princess, the Rover was in good condition when Eddie got it. It was his son that found it and bought it for his father’s Christmas in 2006. It had been lying in a garage for about five years at that point and he thought it’d be a good idea to get something to keep his father occupied.
“The car was beautifully built so all we had to do was unbolt the panels, take them off, clean them and put them back on again,” Eddie said.
“Under the bonnet, we just left the engine pretty much as it was. It was just the wings and some minor bodywork that needed attention.”
His son’s choice in car was a homage of sorts to the car the family had back when he was younger. Eddie said they had a Rover for a number of years, which his son remembered.
“When he saw this one he thought I might be interested in it, which of course I am,” Eddie said.
“The only difference between the two was that one was red and this one is almond.
“The Rover is used mainly for shows, we won quite a few prizes with it. On its first outing in 2007 we went to Dunrobin Castle and we hadn’t entered the car but we got third prize anyway. And over the next few years we’ve had a few others including best Rover and best home restoration.”
Unlike the mixed response the Princess receives, the Rover is something everyone knows and loves. Eddie said the most common reaction is that the person’s father or grandfather had one.
“There is always someone somewhere that had one in the family,”
he added.
“It’s quite pleasing because some people say to me ‘oh I am glad you kept that one, I don’t know what happened to ours’.”
First car:
192 Woolsley 1500 in sea island green
Dream car:
Wouldn’t mind seeing a Jaguar XF sitting in my driveway