David Burrell's question - "Anyone ever had experiences with ex-press cars?" One of the Press Mk II 1800s went through a fairly traumatic time in its short life. ABF 455 was at the press launch which was held at the Old Brittania Hostelry near the factory for a ‘night in the 1800s’. We were all dressed up in period costume; from extreme left, Evan Green, Bill Tuckey, Alan Kemp, Tom Floyd in the back seat and yours truly done up as a town crier… The invitation to the press was actually printed on a sample of the new trim colour, Parchment. It was then photographed for the brochure driven by an ad agency guy who neglected to wear his seat belt. Modern Motor put it through ‘several hundred very comfortable miles’. Wheels magazine then borrowed it for their 5000 mile dash in 5 days, with a pic of the interior on their cover for January 1969. It came back from that trip intact, but they hadn’t taken enough photos to graphically illustrate the article. In the meantime, it was taken up to Queensland by another journalist to cover the races at Surfers Paradise. On the way home, he fell asleep and the car hit a tree in a big way – he and his passenger survived. It was brought back to Sydney where the engineers did a full analysis and some recommendations. In the meantime, because Wheels didn’t have any ‘action’ photos in colour, we lent them ABF 456, a green automatic, which they took into the bush just out of Sydney. Then they artworked the number plate from 455 to 456 in the article. At least one or two of the other press Mk II 1800s were sold to motoring journalists after their tenure.