My R4 memories...

[R4Nostalgic]

Hello,
My dad always had R4s and loved them. The ones I remember are:

• J reg dark green 4 : I was a bit young to remember it but there are some family photos of it
  
• K reg brown : I remember it was lightly crashed a few times. My dad always said it was because of the colour.
  
• P reg bright yellow 4. Never got hit by another car but did tend to attract wasps.
  
• T reg white 4TL. Big rust spots on the roof, right in the middle, possibly from our rusty roof rack
  
• X reg dark blue 4GTL with the 1108cc engine. His last R4.

We travelled right across Europe in all of those cars every year, doing about 5000 miles over 6 weeks, fully loaded with 4 people, full camping gear and roof rack. We didn't break down much but we had a lot of punctures, presumably due to excessive overloading of the tyres (I can still remember exactly how to change an R4 wheel - on one holiday we had a puncture within 1 mile of our house).

Some fond memories of these R4s include

• The exhaust of the white one getting dragged off on the Dover Calais ferry ramp. A temporary repair with wire lasted several thousand miles.
  
• My dad putting diesel in the blue one in France by mistake. The car was stretchered off the scene to a local garage who stripped, cleaned and rebuilt the carburettor in record time and did a super service at the same time. Ran better than ever after that.
• Driving over an unsecured roof rack at speed that fell off the car in front of us on a motorway in Greece. Amazingly there was no damage to the R4. The roof rack didn't fare quite as well.
  
• Driving through Yugoslavia with a smashed windscreen and then being held in the repair garage compound against our will when we tried to pay them with AA five star breakdown cover "repair vouchers" instead of cash
  
• All 3 passengers having to jump out to push the car up a steep mountain pass when 1st gear just wasn't enough!
• Having to put a very mature Camembert cheese on the roof when the smell in the car became too unbearable.
• Fighting continuously with my brother in the back of the car whilst we drove 700 miles through Yugoslavia
• The totally unique smell of a brand new R4, and the silence of an idling R4 engine after the car came back from a service.

What my dad really liked about the R4 was the flat floorpan (no transmission or gear / exhaust tunnel): this proved to be very practical as you could put boxes (usually an elaborate picnic) between the front passengers on the floor. The earlier cars also had front bench seats. He also liked the boot which is low lipped and almost as wide as the car (our large frame tent frame went in sideways - when considering other cars he had been known to take the frame with him to try it in the boot of the prospective new car and it would never fit). I also suspect he liked them because they were cheap and we weren't very careful car owners so after 3 years and 60,000 very hard miles he would trade them in for a new one.

Now I always hated the R4 when I was growing up and was delighted when my dad eventually got a different car but upon reflection they were great cars. And I think I want one myself now, so my next forum post may well be in the Wanted section!