Avid car collector finds Express gem in his latest addition
The most expensive car advertised in the May 1,1991 issue of Kempton Express was selling for R35 700.
Pieces of a 28-year-old Kempton Express were dug out from underneath the seat of a 1978 Volkswagen Passat by an avid Birchleigh car collector.
Niven Maduramuthu (32) found the outside four pages of a 1991 Express on November 12 when cleaning the latest addition to his old car collection.
Maduramuthu said he found the crumpled pages while spending seven hours to get the car cleaned up of rats’ nests and pet fur.
“I could tell the previous owner probably had dogs as the seats where covered in fur and then also the old dog bowl under the seat.”
The front page headline of this May 1, 1991 edition was: “SBG-ontwikkeling kom” (central business district to be developed). The article was about negotiations between “nay-sayers” and the council.
Another headline on the front page addressed an issue we all know of too well: “Tembisa in darkness”. The article discussed power issues which seemed to have been a headache even more than 25 years ago.
The owner of the Passat approached Maduramuthu thanks to a referral by a mutual neighbour, who noticed Maduramuthu had a collection of old model cars, such as a 1981 Nissan 280zx, a 1982 Nissan Skyline GTX, as well as a 1964 Ford Zodiac.
“The owner rang my doorbell and said he might have something I would be interested in. He took me to the car and I noticed it was an old 1978 Passat station wagon that runs on diesel,” Maduramuthu said.
“The car, with over 106 000km on the clock, looked like it had been parked there since 1995, as it has an old licence sticker from that year. It’s not running and has no keys. I will get keys cut after I have removed the door handle and ignition.
“I’m going to drain the fluids, pull off the tank, clean it up, blow out all the fuel lines, change the oil filter and bleed the system. Then I’ll give it a crank to see if it’ll fire up.”
The owner of the vehicle is believed to be in Ireland as he had moved there 28 years ago. He used to return for visits, as his parents remained in South Africa, but this time around he came to get his parents to go to Ireland with him to be taken care of in an old age home.
“He told me the car had belonged to his uncle who used to be an aircraft engineer.
“The car had been parked in mint condition with all its original parts, from the original mountings, original VW wheel nuts, VW ignition and two original VW door handles.”
