Matra Murena in Sydney

murramor

Member
Tadpole
Joined
Nov 19, 2010
Messages
32
Location
Sydney
I completed my Murena earlier this year and I meant to 'unveil' it at the French Car Day which is usually held around July 14th. However Covid has put paid to that so i thought I would put some pictures here. I bought it unseen in England about 20 years ago and when I got it here found it was in poor condition. Even though the chassis was hot dipped galvanised, the English winters had caused rust to take hold quite badly. The body panels were in poor condition and the interior had been treated very badly and needed a complete retrim. Even the steering wheel was held together by gaffer tape. Fortunately PM Leather in Adelaide was able to re-construct the rim and cover it with leather as good ones are more or less unobtainable. As the car was dropped off at our storage, the right hand side rear sustpension collapsed as the spring seat had rusted through.

The effort required to convert the asymmetric design of the floorpans to RHD was judged to be too much and I decided to store it until it was 30 years old and to register it as LHD. The only other Murena that I know of in Sydney has been a 20 year conversion project and it is still not completed. Over the years I collected spares and the supply is still quite good with the supplier in Germany being very fast and honest. Unfortunately life got in the way and the restoration took longer than expected so the car is now 38 years old.
 

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I completed my Murena earlier this year and I meant to 'unveil' it at the French Car Day which is usually held around July 14th. However Covid has put paid to that so i thought I would put some pictures here. I bought it unseen in England about 20 years ago and when I got it here found it was in poor condition. Even though the chassis was hot dipped galvanised, the English winters had caused rust to take hold quite badly. The body panels were in poor condition and the interior had been treated very badly and needed a complete retrim. Even the steering wheel was held together by gaffer tape. Fortunately PM Leather in Adelaide was able to re-construct the rim and cover it with leather as good ones are more or less unobtainable. As the car was dropped off at our storage, the right hand side rear sustpension collapsed as the spring seat had rusted through.

The effort required to convert the asymmetric design of the floorpans to RHD was judged to be too much and I decided to store it until it was 30 years old and to register it as LHD. The only other Murena that I know of in Sydney has been a 20 year conversion project and it is still not completed. Over the years I collected spares and the supply is still quite good with the supplier in Germany being very fast and honest. Unfortunately life got in the way and the restoration took longer than expected so the car is now 38 years old.
Oh wow, lovely car and well done.
 
Very nicely done. They can be long projects, but you obviously came through with a very good and rare car. Very nice.

Ray
 
Congratulations on courage/folly on the purchase ( :) ), patience and superb work. Dear God, that rust..... Lucky it was galvanised.

Great to have such a French classic in Oz. You'd know of a small number of others I imagine.
 
Hi Murramor,
Congrats on your car and the job you've done. It looks so good. From another Matra fan.
Frans.
 

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