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A postcard from Cyprus

by John Cooper

Every month we all flick through the pages of our favourite classic car magazines and invariably find a feature about unearthed cars suitable for restoration, usually under a snappy and witty title containing a clever pun. As the number of genuine barn finds is ever decreasing, these articles increasingly detail overseas finds. Favourite amongst these are the warmer countries where the cars survived due to a warm and relatively dry climate.

So this year, purely in the name of investigative journalism, I arranged our family holiday to Cyprus, a country that boasts over 300 days of sunshine per year and which I had seen in numerous of the aforementioned articles.

Due to the limited availability and timings of flights and the fact that I didn’t book until the 11th hour we ended up not flying to the nearest airport to the villa we had booked, but to one a 2 hour drive away. Not really a problem, more car-spotting opportunities.

We landed safely, collected the hired jeep and set off. The idea behind getting a jeep was that a bit of open-top motoring all adds to the adventure for the kids. Having a long drive ahead under the strong afternoon sun, we thought it better to leave the roof up for the time being.

With the hustle and bustle of the airport the jeep had looked fine, but a few miles down the motorway squeals from the kids was quickly followed by flapping sounds as the side windows started to detach themselves. After a few hasty stops on the hard shoulder, we resigned ourselves to a noisy and draughty onward journey.

Like most things in life, when it comes to car hire you get what you pay for. If you shop around and book the cheapest jeep you can find, there’s a fair chance that you will end up with the roughest example on the island. To be fair to the hire company, when the final straw came a few days later when we couldn’t use the windscreen washers (handy in a dusty climate) they gladly exchanged and upgraded the jeep for us. But I digress.

We proceeded to the villa spotting a couple of old Mercedes and a Rover P4 en route. The villa we were staying at was on a small banana plantation. When we arrived, the scene greeting us was almost unbelievable. As if staged for our very arrival, at the corner of the plantation, nestled under olive tress was a Hillman Minx. My wife to her credit managed to contain her excitement when we saw this! Subsequent inspection showed that it was used for storing some sort of farming chemicals and clearly hadn’t moved for some time.

I have probably over-elaborated so far. This was a family holiday, so most of the time was spent around the pool, not actively searching out cars. Though to be honest, this makes what we saw all the more interesting, as it was genuine, not contrived. It would be wrong to suggest the streets of Cyprus are lined with classics, but at the same time there are plenty around. While driving around we saw Beetles, Morris Minors, MGBs, and lots of Mercedes and Land Rovers seemingly being used as everyday cars.

As we were usually driving ourselves, these mostly evaded my camera. Of all of the roadworthy cars we did see, a Triumph Spitfire 1500 was probably in the best condition. However, during the 2 weeks, despite passing it many times each day and at all different times of day, it didn’t turn a wheel. That was until the very last day when it was found to be facing in the other direction, though still in the same parking space.

What were equally interesting were the abandoned cars that seemed to litter every piece of wasteland or yard. You can’t help getting the feeling that the owners simply run the cars until they stop, and the simply leaving them exactly where they did stop. I lost count of the number of Mercedes I spotted that fit this description.

The one common factor about the cars I saw, running or abandoned, was that they didn’t really display any signs of being loved and cosseted as we would expect in Britain. The Cypriots seem to have a very practical view of the cars. The reason they continue to use a Beetle on a daily basis is probably as simple as the fact that it still runs.

The one exception I found to the sweeping generalisation I’ve just made was a car hire firm called Vannas. Prior to the holiday I had read a magazine article about this company in Paphos that hired out classic cars so I kept an eye open for them. Sure enough I located Vannas and found that their cars to be positively pampered – they were kept indoors! They had a Morris Minor, a Triumph Herald, a Mini and an Escort. I would say that all of these were condition 2 at best by UK standards, the Herald having cardboard for the rear windows for example. To the rear of the premises was another collection of motley vehicles including a Rover P6.

However, to my disappointment, when I enquired about possibly hiring one of the classics I was told that they were not for hire, but were for private use. Whether they’d had a recent change in policy regarding these cars or had simply passed judgement on me and my driving as I arrived in the hired jeep I’ll never know, but either way it was not to be. How was I going to break the news to my family that we couldn’t have the MkII Escort (the car my wife learned to drive in)? In reality it probably saved me from the "what on earth is that" conversation!

One common usage I did notice for older cars seems to be as 'mobile' advertisements. I use the term 'mobile' loosely in acknowledgement of the fact that they may have got to their current locations under their own steam, though as the following examples show it was probably some time ago.

So there you have it – we have now published our first article about unearthed restoration cases and I feel that Classic Car Times has come of age. Let’s sit back and ask a few probing questions. Were the cars beyond restoration? Hard to say to an untrained eye with what was usually just a quick glimpse. Would the cars make viable restorations when you factor in shipping costs? Unlikely. Would the cars even be available? With most of them it would probably be extremely difficult to identify the owner to even ask the question.

Do any of these questions really matter? Going back to the magazine articles mentioned at the outset, they sometimes state that the cars are most definitely not available which makes me wonder if they are anything more than gratuitous car photos. Don’t get me wrong I don’t have a problem with gratuity and in reality this article is nothing more than that itself.

If you are interested in any of the cars shown here then I’m afraid that I probably can’t be of any help to you, however if you want a good villa recommending …

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