Thursday, April 23, 2015

Rotting In Style - 1950s Elva Courier

1958 1959 elva courier abandoned frank g nichols dylan benson rotting in style














Just like the past few times I have been posting, I say “sorry it’s been a while since my last post.”  I would just like to let you know that nothing has changed, so sorry it’s been a while since my last post.  However, I plan on making up for it by bringing you not only a rare car, but probably one you might not have even heard of before.  Here I give to you a 1958 or 1959 Elva Courier!

This car is part of the Gabel Collection.  I featured a bunch of cars from here in the past before I started covering the Alaska Collection.  However, I still have a bunch of cars left over, and this Elva Courier is one of them.  Now, normally I don’t post THAT much in terms of facts, but since this car is quite rare, I tried to gather some in the event someone stumbles across this blog for actual research.  The owner did tell me a bit, but I filmed this quite some time ago.  I will say the Elva Courier Facebook page did help me out quite a bit.

So anyway, back to this car: the 1958 or 1959 Elva Courier.  Frank G. Nichols founded Elva in 1955 and originally stated making race cars.  He decided to make a street car based on easily available components.  This car was the product.  Apparently Nichols was having some troubling exporting this British car to the US, so he said screw that, and went back to making race cars.

This car is number 23 of 200 original Nichols made Elva Couriers before the name was sold off to another company.  This car has been sitting under a car cover, including one just for the interior, but she’s pretty rough.  The paint has visible wear, the wheels are rough, and so on.  Mechanically, this car is supposed to be in good shape, but when we tried to start her up, the battery decided it had better things to do, and she only turned over a couple times.  I still think she would have sputtered to life with a fresh battery based off of what I heard.  The owner did offer to jump it, but this was near the end of my visit, so I declined because I didn’t want to overstay my welcome.

1958 1959 elva courier abandoned frank g nichols dylan benson rotting in style

Now, I have been told this is a MK1.  MK1s have a flat windshield, and MK2s are curved, but I could not find any good pictures online to tell me which was which.  Again, the Elva Courier Facebook page helped confirm the info, and again, again, the owner did tell me all this stuff, but at this point, it was so long ago.  Normally a MK1, it has a 1.5 liter engine that apparently makes 72 horsepower.  This would push the under 1600 pound car from zero to sixty in 12.4 seconds, but the engine plate this car has proves it has something different making it even rarer.  (Elva Courier Specs)

This is a pretty neat little car, but unless that battery gets charged, it’s going to remain sitting, rotting in style.  Don’t forget to check out the video of this car below and make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel.  Also be sure like us on Facebook, and be sure to follow us on Twitter for some exclusive content!  Thanks for stopping by!





1958 1959 elva courier abandoned frank g nichols dylan benson rotting in style

1958 1959 elva courier abandoned frank g nichols dylan benson rotting in style

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