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I've just got back from a long trip to pick up this thread. I can fill in
a couple of pieces of the jigsaw puzzle for you. This M8 was part of a
batch of about 15 that I purchased near Livorno in Italy
some ten years ago. About eight or ten of them went to Budge in the good
old days when they had money to burn. In the subsequent bankruptcy about
six filtered out through Bob Fleming and about four of those went to
Australia via
James Swan. Doug's may well be one of them. Look for a 9" cut on each
side of the armoured body underneath the drivers and passengers feet area -
The Italians had somewhat baroque ideas of demilitarisation! Apart from
this, the vehicles were very complete and were exceptionally low mileage
since full army rebuild. Guns and mantlets were missing. They were all on
hydraulic throttle when I bought them. As you would expect, all the brakes
were in trouble. Having resided
in Italy, there was very little rust. Allan Cors is an extremely
experienced collector and restorer. He is a good customer and as such is
extremely picky. His man, Peter Jones, came to Italy with me to select the
M8's he wanted and I took care of transport, etc via the UK. I see the word
restoration has been stated 'restoration' implying a not so good job. I saw
the work Allan did on the vehicles and I thought they had been done to a
very high standard - certainly not a paint and scrape - I don't think I've
ever seen Allan do such a thing unless to a specific customer order. I also
saw the Stuart he took in exchange and was not overly impressed. It looks
to me like the fellow in question uses his restored vehicles pretty hard, so
reducing them to ex restored vehicles. The fundamental vehicle you are
looking at is
probably a good one though it may have been abused since it left Allan's. I
myself find the asking price at least $10,000 high considering the amount of
refurbishing required and the arse ache of following up title and
registration. As a point of reference, we have a scabby 'ex restored'
complete running M20 in the yard for sale at $22,000. If only you could get
a form 6! Hope this is of interest. Mike at RR Services.
----- Original Message -----
From: Douglas Greville <dgrev@apollo.ruralnet.net.au>
To: Military Vehicles List <mil-veh@uller.skylee.com>
Sent: 08 March 2000 01:58
Subject: Re: [MV] HELP! Reality check on M8 Greyhound Purchase
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Apr 04 2000 - 21:57:11 PDT