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One night Magnette in Bangkok
During one of my visits to Thailand I was lucky enough to meet a lady in Bangkok, who owns two Magnettes . While one car is undergoing restoration, the other is roadworthy. Although the car is not absolutly original, it has some nice features.
First there was a nice wooden dashboard "Made in Thailand", which incorporated some additional gauges. The car is RHD, but the speedometer reads in kilometres. This could be an indicator that the car was delievered to Thailand from new. Abingdon recorded the destinations only from 1954, so records do not as to exist how many Magnettes were delivered to Thailand. I assume that these cars were exported from new, as the tax on cars in Thailand is several hundred percent nowadays! The current owner bought this car 18 years ago and used it as daily transport to the embassy, where she worked. Around this time the car got a new engine - presumably Toyota! What made me wonder was, that the block looked nearly like the B-series engine! The gearbox is also from a Toyota. What makes this conversion interesting is it hasĀ air-conditioning. This also was a modern type and worked well. The regulator was very small and fitted well under the dashboard.
Unfortunately I couldn't obtain any further information.
The other Magnette is awaiting restoration. But she told me that her mechanic, who did all the work over the years, found out that his job was too strenuous. Now he's breeding fish. That's Thai mentality.
Everything is a bit different in Asia.She told me that after one New Year's Eve, there was a hole in the Magnette's roof. A drunken Thai shot with his gun in the air ( or what he supposed to be air).