Ford Zephyr Mk1

The Zephyr Six EOTTA is the Consul with two more cylinders: 2262cc, 68bhp, a little over 80mph and 23mpg, three speeds on the column. Alongside the Consul it is the first hydraulic-braked Ford UK car — hydraulic drums all round — and it carries the MacPherson strut front suspension that made the 1950 Consul the first production car in the world to use it. At the back, a live axle on half-elliptical springs. If your car is the four-cylinder version, it is a Consul, not a Zephyr; the two share most of the body and very little of the driveline.

From autumn 1953, at the London Motor Show, the Zodiac joined as the luxury version — the same 2262cc but on a higher 7.5:1 compression for 71bhp, with two-tone paint, leather, a heater, windscreen washers, whitewalls and spot lamps. It is not a separate body, and its parts are on the Zodiac page. The Mk1 was assembled at Dagenham, at Cork in Ireland, at Geelong in Australia, at Seaview, Lower Hutt, at Salisbury in Rhodesia and at Port Elizabeth in South Africa — so a New Zealand car of this period is genuinely likely to be a locally assembled one.