A Varied Car History - as told by my 70-year-old Dad.
Discussion
The idea for this trip down memory lane started when I’d injured my back a few years ago. I was bedbound for a week at home and my Dad came up most of those days to keep me company and provide moral support. Having a shared interest in motoring meant a lot of conversation about cars. It sparked an idea that I should record his memories of his cars as he was telling me a lot about his old cars. And so few weeks later when I was better, I spent an evening with my mum and dad jotting my notes for most of this post. It was a really fun night with a lot of laughter and a great trip down memory lane for my parents.
These are all old cars - ones I've probably never seen on the road - certainly not on Pistonheads - so I thought I'd share and hope you enjoy.
My Dad completed his driving test in 1966 at the age of 17, just eight weeks after his birthday. He had eight lessons and then passed. He has always loved cars and I’m also a huge car-fan (obviously, being on this forum), and so I thought it might be fun to share some of his stories of his past cars with the people of the internet. He will be 71 this year, has never spent a huge amount on cars (as you can see from some of the descriptions) but it points to a time when rust was a frequent hazard and ‘hands-on’ was very much the order of the day with automobile ownership. It also reads like he might not have been the greatest driver in these early years (haha!) with a few bumps along the way but in all my 42 years of being on Planet Earth, he has never had so much as a scrape or a kerbed wheel. His stories gave me a mental image less of the serious business of driving that we do nowadays, more like a giant dodgem track to which anyone was invited back in the 50s and 60s.
There is a lot of old stuff in here, most of which doesn’t get a mention in the annals of car ownership, so I hope you enjoy my/his trip down memory lane! He is also a Yorkshireman, reflected in some of the language which I’ve tried to emulate in the text.
We couldn’t find pictures of a lot of these cars, although Dad is sure they do have them somewhere, so they are probably in the loft. I’ve used family photos where I can, and Google for the ones where I can’t, which are credited accordingly. I've included pictures of cars that were the same colour or near-as, apart from one which is pointed out in the text.
1962 Mini (likely the Morris version)
Image source: Wikipedia
My Dad’s first car was, as for many men of a certain age, a Mini. It was painted in Old English White and he owned and ran it for a couple of years until it met an untimely end as Dad explains; “I ‘did’ my Mini at Fir Vale”, he recalls (a suburb of Sheffield), “I was going around a corner and a Mini Van was on the wrong side of the road, coming straight at me. I swerved and went up the causeway before hitting a parked Mini in the rear and pushing it into a gas lamp. ‘Him in the Mini Van took his ‘uke!”.
Dad says it was it was quite unusual for someone to just leave the scene of an accident ‘in them days’, but reflecting on it he added “But it was down at Fir Vale. Its always been rough down there”.
Next came the Renault R8.
(Imagine this but in black!)
Image source: Google search
“I wrote it off”, is how this memory begins. “I got it off my Dad’s workmate in 1967 because he couldn’t afford to run it. He couldn’t afford to put petrol in it and so he kept it in his garage the whole time. He told me that he initially wanted more money for it than what I bought it for, but said that "since I was Albert’s lad [my Grandad] ‘you can have it for that’”. My Grandad was very well respected in the workplace from what I can gather and he was well liked.
The R8 was black and to the best of my Dad’s knowledge, it was the only one in England that was specially made in that colour. It was about three years old, had an 850cc engine and he owned it for about six months.
“It was brilliant in snow,” my Dad recalls, “It was rear engine and rear wheel drive but it went anywhere in snow, never had a problem. Its tyres were sized 135/15 – there were no such thing as wide tyres back then”. Funny some of the more inconsequential details that you remember isn’t it.
“I had to take the carburettor off every single day,” Dad says. Because the previous owner couldn’t really afford to run it, he had been “running it on bottom of tank so all the muck got into it”. And so, every day Dad had the task of taking it off, stripping it down and cleaning the float off. “Bits of grit would get between float and jets, you see” he tells me.
And how did this one meet its end? “I went straight across a main road, on my way back to Kimberworth, on back lanes from Greensborough. They had put the ‘Give Way’ sign in someone’s garden, which was at the back of a wall. The road markings worn off and there was no street lighting so I just carried on”.
“It went to court, but the Copper stood in witness box and also said that the sign was in someone else’s garden, obliterated from view by trees and no markings on road. I was fined £5 and had an endorsement on my licence, but I think was only given something so that I couldn’t sue the council.”
Austin A40 Summerset.
Source: Google image search
A 1953 model, which belonged to one of my Dad’s old school teachers. “Beige”, my Dad said. “Horrible Gold”, my mum replied, “We called it Alfred – it was the only car we ever named”.
My Dad went on to say this car was one that had winkers which came out of the side. “Was that the one I had to bang to make the indicator come out?!”, Mum asked. It was. Apparently to turn on the indicators, you moved a lever in the cabin to whichever side you want to turn on, and then bang on inside of the car to make it come out!
It was also the first car my Dad had every come across that had a metal sunroof. It didn’t work of course, but it was still the only one.
Needless to say, hand signals were used frequently in place of the indicators. That’s right, all of you youths reading this, our parents used to stick their hands out of the windows to indicate their intentions.
Austin a35
Picture of the actual car
"To look at it’s the same as the A40 summerset but only one third the size. Like a mini", Dad says.
This was a 1957 model, registration TWR 153. “It had a 1200cc engine, but probably made about 35bhp. It had a crank too”. Mum laughed at this point, “I used to call your Dad ‘Noddy’ with this car, because he had to wind up his car in front of all of his work mates at the firm because it had a rubbish battery”. Dad smiles, “It needed replacing but I didn’t want to spend any money on it. It was black colour from the factory and it was a rare car because it was a four-door model. It cost me £50”.
“The stripes on the picture are coloured Sellotape, which I added. I just thought it improved the looks”.
“I got a brand new ‘gold seal’ engine for it eventually. I bought it from a guy who put it in an A35 van, but he turned it over [literally] so I got the engine from it”.
My Uncle and his friend helped my Dad take the engine out, but it didn’t end well transitioning into my Dad’s car. Apparently, the engine slid down the bar that they were using to hold it and the weight split the wing of the car on a rusted joint. At that point it was parked in my parents back garden and abandoned until Dad got fed up of looking at it. Six months later, he sent for the scrap man. “He went to get it and a weed had grown right up through the car!”, he laughed.
Next came the Sunbeam Rapier.
Thats Dad sat on the bonnet of his car!!
“It was a Mark 3a model in Corinth Blue”, my Dad said, “I still remember the colour because I bought new sills for it. I thought it was a light blue but actual was dark blue. I bought it off a racing driver who had all the engine blueprinted”.
And why did we get rid of that one? “Because I got pulled up for a spot check by a Copper for a routine check in Fitzwilliam square, and he poked his finger right through the body!”, Dad laughed. It was quite a sporty car for the time, my Dad recalls and the policeman saw a young lad in a sporty car and so pulled him over.
“I owned it for a couple of years. It was a bit rusty and the bloke who bought it off me bought it for spares, but it was in better nick than his own, so he swapped the cars around and used his own for spares instead”.
Next came what Mum called “The Little Black Car”. It was a Vauxhall HA Viva.
Source: Google Image search, which I recoloured quickly in black to give you a better idea
This was actually a white car which was painted black. 1056cc engine.
“I bought off the bloke who worked downstairs in Pickling”. (My Dad worked in a steel works, ‘pickling’ is where they pickle steel in acid).
This particular car brought back some uneasy memories for Mum and Dad. After having guests around (my Auntie Brenda and her two children, aged 5 and 4 at the time, my Uncle Brian, Nan and my Grandad (mums Dad)) it was time for them to leave and catch the bus. There was a bus stop at the bottom of the road and my Dad took Brenda and the kids home but this left no room for Brian and my Grandad, so they would have to catch the bus. It was a cold day and my mum wanted them all crammed in the car but Dad refused saying it’ll “do his suspension in”. My Grandad was starting to get poorly at this time with his lung problems and although they didn’t know it at the time, his lung problems would worsen and ultimately take him from us some years later.
“We had a row for a week about that decision at the time”, Mum said.
This did however prompt some light relief in the memory, in that my Nan was still talking to my Mum with Auntie Brenda at the house, whilst Brian and Grandad had set off walking. The two gents had almost got to the bottom of the hill, when my Nan saw the bus in the distance from her vantage point and could see it heading down, and so she started shouting and waiving at them. Wondering what was up, my Grandad and Uncle then hot-footed it back up the hill to find out what was going on, only for my Nan to tell them the bus was on its way and they might miss it! That action caused them to miss the bus and they had to start their journey down the hill all over again!
My Dad was also into biking, and around this time he had a Honda 50 as well, before passing his test and buying a bigger bike not long after.
Next up in Car ownership came the Mk3 Ford Zepher 4
My Dad with his car, looking quite pleased with it!
“I went to view that at a garage – under petrol station lights to see what it was like,” Dad recalls, “I wanted the biggest thing I could get hands on. It was bright red with rust,” he laughed.
It didn’t stay red for long, he repainted it to black. No fancy paint booths here, he hand-painted it with black paint”! “It looked good though,” Dad says proudly, “Hand painted but there were no brush strokes!”. Mum concurred that it was actually a fine paint job.
Dad really liked this car, I could tell as he was very animated telling me about its leather seats, 1700cc engine and its big fins that were on the back. It also had a column change gearbox too. He went on to tell me that a Zepha 6 was a higher-powered model, whereas the Zodiac model had the same power but with more luxury.
He recalled getting stuck in the snow in it, and people came out to help “except the stupid students. They just stood there throwing snowballs”.
This was another one of Dads cars that met an untimely end. It was Boxing day and they headed to my Grans for tea. My mum recalled they had been married for a year at that point. “It was a horrible weather night, really dark”, my Dad tells me, “When all of a sudden, this big black dog ran straight across the road and into the front of the car”. My Dad had no time to stop and the dog was dead on impact – it even pushed a headlight right back on the front. “The next thing I know, a woman came running across the street shouting ‘oh my baby, my baby!’ To which I replied ‘Why wasn’t your baby on a lead?!”. He had a point. When my mum saw all the damage caused to both car and dog, she fainted. Both my parents are dog lovers, so that car went shortly after that incident, but not before my Dad bodged the car up with newspaper and fibreglass to keep it running for the short time it stayed with them.
Then he bought the mk4 Sunbeam Rapier.
Thats Dad getting busy with a new paint job!
Dad says this was a nice sporty car, but by now I had just arrived into the world and there was nowhere for the pram. It was a two-door model so that went from ownership pretty quickly. Dad recalls he didn’t pay a lot for this, maybe about £50 or £100 at the time (this would have been around the late 70’s but now). “When I got it, someone had brush painted it a horrible brown, so I sanded it all off and it was gold underneath. I painted it two-tone black and silver. I owned it for about six months, but when driving one day, the oil pressure just dropped to zero. Luckily I was stopping anyway so I let it tick over for a bit then when I restarted it the oil pressure came back”. But this sealed the decision to sell it on.
After the work was done, the car is looking pretty smart! Dad is looking all kinds of '70s.
What came next was a mk3 Ford Cortina – two-door again for some reason but he couldn't remember why he chose this particular model.
Source: Google Image Search
This was a surprise to me as I didn’t know my Dad had owned a Cortina. Not that I knew about most of the other cars listed here, but I did know about ‘Cortinas’ as my Grandad had one. Plus, I’ve always loved Fords and didn’t think Dad had owned one as later down the road he always seems to prefer Vauxhalls, but I was wrong. Anyhow he bought this one off a guy called Matt Olar at work who couldn’t afford it and had to sell it quickly so my Dad got it cheap. There was a queue of people who wanted it so he only kept a year and sold for more than he paid for it. Result.
After this came a very bad accident. My Dad was out on his bike (an MZ). He was driving around a roundabout and a car pulled out straight on top of him. He broke both his arms and legs and badly damaged his back. Although he did recover, he still has problems with his back even now some 40 years later. He loved – and still loves – motorcycles, but has never ridden since.
He received a settlement pay-out as a result and, having always bought used cars, he decided to use that money to buy his first ever brand-new car as compensation to himself for never being able to ride a bike again (although on reflection he says he shouldn’t have gone for the early settlement, as the long-term effects of the injuries he should have received more financially). But his car of choice was a Renault 18.
Renault 18
Source: Google Image Search
He was over the moon with the car when he collected it and was very proud of it – until just three days after collecting the car someone scraped down the side of it and left without leaving a note. My Dad was absolutely gutted. He recalls it was a lovely car and he owned if for two years following that incident, but it was never quite the same after the repair of what was his brand-new car. It was white with a blue vinyl roof which matched the interior.
After a couple of years, my sister had made her arrival into the world as well and so he part-exchanged it for a....
Toyota Corolla estate.
Source: Google Image search
The dealer said he couldn’t sell the Renault 18 because it was too new - and he could see it had been in ‘a bump of some sort’ (that was the scratch repair), but Dad says he still gave him a good price. The dealer then sold to another garage who sold the Renault on. Dad owned the Corolla for three reliable years.
That brings us to roughly 1982, from this point I’m about 5 years old and I can remember most of these cars, so can share some of my own memories too for the next post!
I'm Looking to do the modern stuff over the next few months all being well. Watch this space, but hope you enjoyed this. If you Dad/mum are also car nuts, I'd recommend doing the same - some great family stories came out of this in addition to the stuff I've shared above as was a really fun night listening to my mum and dad talk, and watching how animated they got about some of the cars and the adventures they had in them!
Thanks for reading!
These are all old cars - ones I've probably never seen on the road - certainly not on Pistonheads - so I thought I'd share and hope you enjoy.
My Dad completed his driving test in 1966 at the age of 17, just eight weeks after his birthday. He had eight lessons and then passed. He has always loved cars and I’m also a huge car-fan (obviously, being on this forum), and so I thought it might be fun to share some of his stories of his past cars with the people of the internet. He will be 71 this year, has never spent a huge amount on cars (as you can see from some of the descriptions) but it points to a time when rust was a frequent hazard and ‘hands-on’ was very much the order of the day with automobile ownership. It also reads like he might not have been the greatest driver in these early years (haha!) with a few bumps along the way but in all my 42 years of being on Planet Earth, he has never had so much as a scrape or a kerbed wheel. His stories gave me a mental image less of the serious business of driving that we do nowadays, more like a giant dodgem track to which anyone was invited back in the 50s and 60s.
There is a lot of old stuff in here, most of which doesn’t get a mention in the annals of car ownership, so I hope you enjoy my/his trip down memory lane! He is also a Yorkshireman, reflected in some of the language which I’ve tried to emulate in the text.
We couldn’t find pictures of a lot of these cars, although Dad is sure they do have them somewhere, so they are probably in the loft. I’ve used family photos where I can, and Google for the ones where I can’t, which are credited accordingly. I've included pictures of cars that were the same colour or near-as, apart from one which is pointed out in the text.
1962 Mini (likely the Morris version)
Image source: Wikipedia
My Dad’s first car was, as for many men of a certain age, a Mini. It was painted in Old English White and he owned and ran it for a couple of years until it met an untimely end as Dad explains; “I ‘did’ my Mini at Fir Vale”, he recalls (a suburb of Sheffield), “I was going around a corner and a Mini Van was on the wrong side of the road, coming straight at me. I swerved and went up the causeway before hitting a parked Mini in the rear and pushing it into a gas lamp. ‘Him in the Mini Van took his ‘uke!”.
Dad says it was it was quite unusual for someone to just leave the scene of an accident ‘in them days’, but reflecting on it he added “But it was down at Fir Vale. Its always been rough down there”.
Next came the Renault R8.
(Imagine this but in black!)
Image source: Google search
“I wrote it off”, is how this memory begins. “I got it off my Dad’s workmate in 1967 because he couldn’t afford to run it. He couldn’t afford to put petrol in it and so he kept it in his garage the whole time. He told me that he initially wanted more money for it than what I bought it for, but said that "since I was Albert’s lad [my Grandad] ‘you can have it for that’”. My Grandad was very well respected in the workplace from what I can gather and he was well liked.
The R8 was black and to the best of my Dad’s knowledge, it was the only one in England that was specially made in that colour. It was about three years old, had an 850cc engine and he owned it for about six months.
“It was brilliant in snow,” my Dad recalls, “It was rear engine and rear wheel drive but it went anywhere in snow, never had a problem. Its tyres were sized 135/15 – there were no such thing as wide tyres back then”. Funny some of the more inconsequential details that you remember isn’t it.
“I had to take the carburettor off every single day,” Dad says. Because the previous owner couldn’t really afford to run it, he had been “running it on bottom of tank so all the muck got into it”. And so, every day Dad had the task of taking it off, stripping it down and cleaning the float off. “Bits of grit would get between float and jets, you see” he tells me.
And how did this one meet its end? “I went straight across a main road, on my way back to Kimberworth, on back lanes from Greensborough. They had put the ‘Give Way’ sign in someone’s garden, which was at the back of a wall. The road markings worn off and there was no street lighting so I just carried on”.
“It went to court, but the Copper stood in witness box and also said that the sign was in someone else’s garden, obliterated from view by trees and no markings on road. I was fined £5 and had an endorsement on my licence, but I think was only given something so that I couldn’t sue the council.”
Austin A40 Summerset.
Source: Google image search
A 1953 model, which belonged to one of my Dad’s old school teachers. “Beige”, my Dad said. “Horrible Gold”, my mum replied, “We called it Alfred – it was the only car we ever named”.
My Dad went on to say this car was one that had winkers which came out of the side. “Was that the one I had to bang to make the indicator come out?!”, Mum asked. It was. Apparently to turn on the indicators, you moved a lever in the cabin to whichever side you want to turn on, and then bang on inside of the car to make it come out!
It was also the first car my Dad had every come across that had a metal sunroof. It didn’t work of course, but it was still the only one.
Needless to say, hand signals were used frequently in place of the indicators. That’s right, all of you youths reading this, our parents used to stick their hands out of the windows to indicate their intentions.
Austin a35
Picture of the actual car
"To look at it’s the same as the A40 summerset but only one third the size. Like a mini", Dad says.
This was a 1957 model, registration TWR 153. “It had a 1200cc engine, but probably made about 35bhp. It had a crank too”. Mum laughed at this point, “I used to call your Dad ‘Noddy’ with this car, because he had to wind up his car in front of all of his work mates at the firm because it had a rubbish battery”. Dad smiles, “It needed replacing but I didn’t want to spend any money on it. It was black colour from the factory and it was a rare car because it was a four-door model. It cost me £50”.
“The stripes on the picture are coloured Sellotape, which I added. I just thought it improved the looks”.
“I got a brand new ‘gold seal’ engine for it eventually. I bought it from a guy who put it in an A35 van, but he turned it over [literally] so I got the engine from it”.
My Uncle and his friend helped my Dad take the engine out, but it didn’t end well transitioning into my Dad’s car. Apparently, the engine slid down the bar that they were using to hold it and the weight split the wing of the car on a rusted joint. At that point it was parked in my parents back garden and abandoned until Dad got fed up of looking at it. Six months later, he sent for the scrap man. “He went to get it and a weed had grown right up through the car!”, he laughed.
Next came the Sunbeam Rapier.
Thats Dad sat on the bonnet of his car!!
“It was a Mark 3a model in Corinth Blue”, my Dad said, “I still remember the colour because I bought new sills for it. I thought it was a light blue but actual was dark blue. I bought it off a racing driver who had all the engine blueprinted”.
And why did we get rid of that one? “Because I got pulled up for a spot check by a Copper for a routine check in Fitzwilliam square, and he poked his finger right through the body!”, Dad laughed. It was quite a sporty car for the time, my Dad recalls and the policeman saw a young lad in a sporty car and so pulled him over.
“I owned it for a couple of years. It was a bit rusty and the bloke who bought it off me bought it for spares, but it was in better nick than his own, so he swapped the cars around and used his own for spares instead”.
Next came what Mum called “The Little Black Car”. It was a Vauxhall HA Viva.
Source: Google Image search, which I recoloured quickly in black to give you a better idea
This was actually a white car which was painted black. 1056cc engine.
“I bought off the bloke who worked downstairs in Pickling”. (My Dad worked in a steel works, ‘pickling’ is where they pickle steel in acid).
This particular car brought back some uneasy memories for Mum and Dad. After having guests around (my Auntie Brenda and her two children, aged 5 and 4 at the time, my Uncle Brian, Nan and my Grandad (mums Dad)) it was time for them to leave and catch the bus. There was a bus stop at the bottom of the road and my Dad took Brenda and the kids home but this left no room for Brian and my Grandad, so they would have to catch the bus. It was a cold day and my mum wanted them all crammed in the car but Dad refused saying it’ll “do his suspension in”. My Grandad was starting to get poorly at this time with his lung problems and although they didn’t know it at the time, his lung problems would worsen and ultimately take him from us some years later.
“We had a row for a week about that decision at the time”, Mum said.
This did however prompt some light relief in the memory, in that my Nan was still talking to my Mum with Auntie Brenda at the house, whilst Brian and Grandad had set off walking. The two gents had almost got to the bottom of the hill, when my Nan saw the bus in the distance from her vantage point and could see it heading down, and so she started shouting and waiving at them. Wondering what was up, my Grandad and Uncle then hot-footed it back up the hill to find out what was going on, only for my Nan to tell them the bus was on its way and they might miss it! That action caused them to miss the bus and they had to start their journey down the hill all over again!
My Dad was also into biking, and around this time he had a Honda 50 as well, before passing his test and buying a bigger bike not long after.
Next up in Car ownership came the Mk3 Ford Zepher 4
My Dad with his car, looking quite pleased with it!
“I went to view that at a garage – under petrol station lights to see what it was like,” Dad recalls, “I wanted the biggest thing I could get hands on. It was bright red with rust,” he laughed.
It didn’t stay red for long, he repainted it to black. No fancy paint booths here, he hand-painted it with black paint”! “It looked good though,” Dad says proudly, “Hand painted but there were no brush strokes!”. Mum concurred that it was actually a fine paint job.
Dad really liked this car, I could tell as he was very animated telling me about its leather seats, 1700cc engine and its big fins that were on the back. It also had a column change gearbox too. He went on to tell me that a Zepha 6 was a higher-powered model, whereas the Zodiac model had the same power but with more luxury.
He recalled getting stuck in the snow in it, and people came out to help “except the stupid students. They just stood there throwing snowballs”.
This was another one of Dads cars that met an untimely end. It was Boxing day and they headed to my Grans for tea. My mum recalled they had been married for a year at that point. “It was a horrible weather night, really dark”, my Dad tells me, “When all of a sudden, this big black dog ran straight across the road and into the front of the car”. My Dad had no time to stop and the dog was dead on impact – it even pushed a headlight right back on the front. “The next thing I know, a woman came running across the street shouting ‘oh my baby, my baby!’ To which I replied ‘Why wasn’t your baby on a lead?!”. He had a point. When my mum saw all the damage caused to both car and dog, she fainted. Both my parents are dog lovers, so that car went shortly after that incident, but not before my Dad bodged the car up with newspaper and fibreglass to keep it running for the short time it stayed with them.
Then he bought the mk4 Sunbeam Rapier.
Thats Dad getting busy with a new paint job!
Dad says this was a nice sporty car, but by now I had just arrived into the world and there was nowhere for the pram. It was a two-door model so that went from ownership pretty quickly. Dad recalls he didn’t pay a lot for this, maybe about £50 or £100 at the time (this would have been around the late 70’s but now). “When I got it, someone had brush painted it a horrible brown, so I sanded it all off and it was gold underneath. I painted it two-tone black and silver. I owned it for about six months, but when driving one day, the oil pressure just dropped to zero. Luckily I was stopping anyway so I let it tick over for a bit then when I restarted it the oil pressure came back”. But this sealed the decision to sell it on.
After the work was done, the car is looking pretty smart! Dad is looking all kinds of '70s.
What came next was a mk3 Ford Cortina – two-door again for some reason but he couldn't remember why he chose this particular model.
Source: Google Image Search
This was a surprise to me as I didn’t know my Dad had owned a Cortina. Not that I knew about most of the other cars listed here, but I did know about ‘Cortinas’ as my Grandad had one. Plus, I’ve always loved Fords and didn’t think Dad had owned one as later down the road he always seems to prefer Vauxhalls, but I was wrong. Anyhow he bought this one off a guy called Matt Olar at work who couldn’t afford it and had to sell it quickly so my Dad got it cheap. There was a queue of people who wanted it so he only kept a year and sold for more than he paid for it. Result.
After this came a very bad accident. My Dad was out on his bike (an MZ). He was driving around a roundabout and a car pulled out straight on top of him. He broke both his arms and legs and badly damaged his back. Although he did recover, he still has problems with his back even now some 40 years later. He loved – and still loves – motorcycles, but has never ridden since.
He received a settlement pay-out as a result and, having always bought used cars, he decided to use that money to buy his first ever brand-new car as compensation to himself for never being able to ride a bike again (although on reflection he says he shouldn’t have gone for the early settlement, as the long-term effects of the injuries he should have received more financially). But his car of choice was a Renault 18.
Renault 18
Source: Google Image Search
He was over the moon with the car when he collected it and was very proud of it – until just three days after collecting the car someone scraped down the side of it and left without leaving a note. My Dad was absolutely gutted. He recalls it was a lovely car and he owned if for two years following that incident, but it was never quite the same after the repair of what was his brand-new car. It was white with a blue vinyl roof which matched the interior.
After a couple of years, my sister had made her arrival into the world as well and so he part-exchanged it for a....
Toyota Corolla estate.
Source: Google Image search
The dealer said he couldn’t sell the Renault 18 because it was too new - and he could see it had been in ‘a bump of some sort’ (that was the scratch repair), but Dad says he still gave him a good price. The dealer then sold to another garage who sold the Renault on. Dad owned the Corolla for three reliable years.
That brings us to roughly 1982, from this point I’m about 5 years old and I can remember most of these cars, so can share some of my own memories too for the next post!
I'm Looking to do the modern stuff over the next few months all being well. Watch this space, but hope you enjoyed this. If you Dad/mum are also car nuts, I'd recommend doing the same - some great family stories came out of this in addition to the stuff I've shared above as was a really fun night listening to my mum and dad talk, and watching how animated they got about some of the cars and the adventures they had in them!
Thanks for reading!
Edited by Cloudy147 on Friday 2nd December 20:46
Nice write up and history. I really wish I couldve spent a few days with my wifes grandfather and get some car and engineering history from him! After his apprenticeship at the old Austin car company, he joined the royal engineers for the war and took part in the DDay landings and advance into France. They were responsible for building pontoons and bridges for the troops. After the war he owned a car repair and sales garage in Leek (austin obviously). Unfortunately he died before I met my wife.
One of the A35s is still in the family (for about 47yrs I think) and will be in our possession at some point in the next few years.
I'd be surprised if the little A35 had a 1200cc engine as they were never available with an engine of this size iirc.
I think all the saloons (2 and 4 door) had a 948cc engine, but if a van engine was fitted then it couldve been a 1098cc. 34bhp does sound about right though.
Some real corkers there though and a few if never heard of!
One of the A35s is still in the family (for about 47yrs I think) and will be in our possession at some point in the next few years.
I'd be surprised if the little A35 had a 1200cc engine as they were never available with an engine of this size iirc.
I think all the saloons (2 and 4 door) had a 948cc engine, but if a van engine was fitted then it couldve been a 1098cc. 34bhp does sound about right though.
Some real corkers there though and a few if never heard of!
Brilliant thread made me think of my dad and the number of cars he had, sadly never really got round to talking about them all he passed away in 2014 been recently clearing out the house and found some paperwork relating to his cars purchase receipts and hp agreements between 1969 & 1973 he had 5 brand new cars! A Cortina, 2 Viva's, Datsun 1200 coupe & a Datsun 180B would love to ask him what was going on the last Viva was only 8 months old when he part exd it for the first Datsun, I thought I was bad for swapping cars now I know where I get it from! Can still remember going with him to pick up the 180B would have been about 5 it was the first car we had with cloth seats rather than red hot or freezing cold vynl!!
A much belated thanks for all your comments and memories that you've posted, I read them all last year but it was interesting reading them all again today.
Alto - yes you are correct with the typo, which I've just edited so it reads correctly.
Being a nice day today I thought I'd go and visit my folks as we could sit outside in the sun and have a chat and I've got all my notes for the remainder of their car history up to current which brought back some more funny memories. I'll be sure to share this as soon as I've compiled it over the next few days or so. The next update is where we became a two-car family, so it took a bit of head scratching to work out the approximate timeline, but we got there in the end!
Alto - yes you are correct with the typo, which I've just edited so it reads correctly.
Being a nice day today I thought I'd go and visit my folks as we could sit outside in the sun and have a chat and I've got all my notes for the remainder of their car history up to current which brought back some more funny memories. I'll be sure to share this as soon as I've compiled it over the next few days or so. The next update is where we became a two-car family, so it took a bit of head scratching to work out the approximate timeline, but we got there in the end!
Bonzo1930 said:
... would love to ask him what was going on the last Viva was only 8 months old when he part exd it for the first Datsun, I thought I was bad for swapping cars now I know where I get it from! Can still remember going with him to pick up the 180B would have been about 5 it was the first car we had with cloth seats rather than red hot or freezing cold vinyl!!
My dad once changed a car after two weeks. He part exchanged a Mk2 Consul (1700/4 as in the Mk3 above) for a Mk2 Zephyr (2553 straight 6), ran it for a couple of weeks, decided it used too much petrol, and bought a Wolseley 15/60 (1500/4).9 year old me was very disappointed that we went from that beautiful 2-tone blue and white Zephyr to a boring grey BMC Farina.
After the Wolseley he had had a couple of Mk3 Zephyr 6s. I wanted him to buy a Zodiac because it had twin headlamps.
Edited by gareth_r on Monday 5th April 04:00
Thread revival! I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, but it kept getting pushed down the to-do list for one reason or another, but I am back on it and thought I’d post part two! And thanks to those who replied previously, I enjoyed reading your comments!
This followed another sit-down session with mum and Dad to talk about the next tranche of cars on their ownership list! Here we go...!
Fiat Panda
Dad, giving it his best cool pose.
After around 2-3 years of the Corolla in the previous update, came the Fiat Panda. This was a brand-new car model from Fiat and my dad got one, on a Y reg I believe (1982). Even though it was a small car – certainly smaller than the Corolla before it, both mum and dad thought there was plenty of room in there, with mum recalling that there was lots of leg room under the dashboard. My Dad noted that it was also economical, and mum added “and it could fit in the garage”. Dad tells me that “It had fancy back seats that you could fold down. The front seats had a foam centre with material around it which then folded over backrest and then sewed up the sides. The back was the same, but the base part of the back of the seat could clip to the floor and made into a proper seat, but if you undid that it was just material and foam. For the rear seats, there was a pole at the front and you could lift that up and make the rear seats into a kind of hammock”. He added that this made the car ever so versatile, but it was not the comfiest of car. He recalls this being the ‘big engine one’, which he thinks was 1000cc, which was OK power wise and being such a light car, it never seemed to be lacking in power and was good in the snow.
Struggling to visualise these seats, I did some Googling and, with a picture painting a thousand words, here is what I think is what Dad was remembering:
I can’t find a hammock picture, but you can kind of imagine this transition looking at the design of the seats
1985 Fiat Uno
Looks a bit grey in this pic, but thats just old school photos for you. It was blue
After three years of the Panda, came the Uno, which was also purchased brand new. I can still remember the registration “B177 FHE”. This one was blue. “It was a nice little car that was affordable,” Dad says. “It was a 1.1 litre - the one with the real power!” he laughs. “It never let me down, I don’t remember any stories about that one”. My Mum could though, she remembered us going to Cornwall in this car from our home in Yorkshire several times. By this time, we had a trailer-tent and so went camping for our holidays. We used to set off really early and my sister and I would sleep in the back. My mum also remembered the time whereby some weird insect stowed away on the parcel shelf on the way home from one of these holidays. It had a hard shell and both my sister and I were freaking out about it. Our feeble attempts to kill it failed and we desperately wanted rid of it out of the car. My Dad said he would stop – which took ages as he continued on the motorway for what seemed like an hour. By the time we had stopped, my sister and I had taking rather a liking to our hard-shelled little friend and had even given it a name. My mum got it out of the car on some paper, much to our relief, but then panic ensued as we realised that it might get squashed by a lorry! So, this little creature was escorted over to the nearby woodland where we breathed a sigh of relief and continued on our journey. By this time, I was 8 and my sister was 5 years old, and mum recalls us playing the typical car journey games of eye-spy and counting cars over a certain distance, where we’d each pick a colour and see who got the most. No iPhones back then!
Fiat Strada
Our car
Internet pic for reference - The front was like this shape, but a non-Abarth version, and it was blue
This car was the one up from the Uno in the model range back in the day (for those who don’t know what this car is, it was a Ford Escort/Focus size as a modern-day equivalent) and Dad got a really good deal on it. I can remember us buying this car. We went to the dealership to buy it, and I can still remember it being in the handover bay ready to collect – and we didn’t collect it. Ha-ha! My dad gave it an inspection and found that they hadn’t fastened the back seats in properly, so they weren’t safe. The dealership apologised, fixed the issue fairly quickly and Dad got a free service by way of apology.
Mum tells me it was really good the in snow, there was one particular day where snow had fallen heavy. She had gone shopping with my sister at Meadowhall and she remembers lots of announcements, but the PA system wasn’t great, and they couldn’t hear them. There was hardly anyone in the shopping centre and when she left around 4pm the ground was covered in deep snow. We lived at the top of a hill and mum recalls that lots of cars had got stuck on the way up, but mum made it back home without any problems in the Strada. Mum remembers my sister proudly saying, “Well done mum, you are the only one that’s made it to the top!”
Cost wide, my dad thinks he paid about £5k for it, whereas the list should have been £7.5k. “In many ways, Fiat were their own worst enemy,” Dad recalls, “They would bring a new car out, put it on the market for a price, say £7.5k, then a year after, they’d discount it to £6k. It immediately knocked a lot of value for those who bought beforehand and must have put a lot of people off buying them”.
I remember this car being used for pretty much all of our outings. Shopping trips, family visits and holidays. The Strada did it all and was pretty reliable too – I don’t recall it breaking down on us. I can remember it being stacked to the ceiling when we went on camping trips and me and my sister being wedged in next to piles of camping stuff.
My Uncle Michael bought the same car a few years later. He also bought one because it was a bargain price, but he bought it used. Same colour and trim level – and it was just 2 digits different from ours on the registration number (ours being E832, his being E834)!
The Strada gets a bad reputation for being a crap car, but I always thought it was actually pretty good, relative to what you could buy back then. I always thought it looked pretty good and, being a new car, it smelt nice inside too!
The Strada met its untimely death when my mum crashed it into a parked car. I remember how shook up she was and my dad had to go and pick her up. Mum didn’t know what to do and she called the AA, she was in a terrible state of emotion and shock as she had her young Nephews with her at the time. She remembers that the AA were absolutely brilliant with her and sent someone out straight away. When the AA man arrived in his transit van my mum, still despairing and teary said to him “That’s no good, I told them we need a trailer”. “Yes, we know,” said the AA man reassuringly, “The operator on the call felt you were in such a state they wanted whoever was nearest to come and stay with you until the trailer arrives as this will take a bit longer”. And they did, they took over the scene and got the car recovered. Really outstanding service – and my parents have stayed with the AA ever since! This was a time when recovery services were more of a human outfit and less of a mass insurance conglomerate targeting profits over service and bogged down with all that procedure and s
t that makes big business so unsightly to deal with these days.
During the Strada ownership is where we became a two-car family. Although the Strada was initially my Dads car, it ultimately became my mums when Dad got an Audi 100. But before that came, here are my mums first three cars – all purchased by my dad in his trademark style (off a mate, on the cheap, and never anything desirable) ….
Mk3 Vauxhall Viva
.jpg)
Look at this beauty! (internet pic)
My mum was learning to drive at the time, “I’ve bought this for you to practice in!”, my dad said to my mum when he came home with it one day. “It was the biggest car on the street” my mum recalls. “It was a nice little car” my dad counters, trying to put a positive spin on the memory of this already multi-decade old car. “It wasn’t little, it was huge!” said mum.
This is mum in her actual car on the day she passed her driving test!
The day she passed her test, she recalls that she signed off to drive at around 1pm and got straight into the Viva to pick me and my sister up from school. She remembers being terrified going out in it for first time. It was used as a runabout, doing the typical mum-taxi and short commute duties back then. “I got that off our weighbridge man at work for £50”, Dad smiles. £50. It looked it too.
Morris Marina
They just keep getting better....
(internet pic)
Green.
“That leaked” is mums first reaction. “It dripped on my foot when driving. Mum clearly hated it, “My foot used to slide all over the clutch”. She didn’t like the car, or the colour. It was reliable though and nothing went wrong with it, my dad says.
“It leaked.”
“Yeah, but only on your foot”.
Volvo 244
Internet pic
I remember this car well. It was an ugly thing, as square as you like and in gold. Gold! But my word it was comfy, big too. It had leather interior which made it quite posh for us. Dad recalls it being a very safe car too, it had iron bars on the inside of the door. “We got quite fond of that,” recalls mum.
It wasn’t any good for towing though and my dad says it had to have an oil cooler fitted and the clutch started to slip as he towed the caravan with it one time. After that it started overheating. “With it over heating, the towing had done something to the rubber seals in the gearbox I think”, Dad tells me, “I was told that ‘Whilst ever you use it is, it’ll be fine, but not for towing.’”
I don’t remember this next bit, but mum does! Apparently on the journey to our caravan holiday, we got lost. This was a common occurrence on our trips, I can remember many a cross word as the wrong road was taken and my mum, who was a pretty good map reader to be fair, would get the blame and then an argument would ensue. Anyhow, we were lost and had to turn around, but we had ended up in a small crescent street and there was no way to reverse it round. We had to unhook the van, turn it around in the crescent and then hook it back on. We must have looked like a family from Only Fools and Horses!
As an aside, when I was older, I can remember another incident of us getting lost, in one of the other cars but I don’t recall which. Mum kept telling my dad to go this way, or that way, or turn around etc etc as she was tracing our tracks on the map, but my dad was obsessed with just going ‘Straight On’. We ended up miles and miles out of our way in the totally wrong direction and he just kept going ‘straight on’. It was so bizarre, but it has become a family joke now whenever we go anywhere.
Audi 100 5 cyl 2.2
Internet pic
Quattro car. “Nice car, very expensive for bits”, says Dad. He owned this one for two years and really liked it. I recall the Volvo was traded in for the Audi, and this is when the Strada became mum’s car. I can remember us picking this one up and, despite the Volvo being bloomin’ awful to look at, we’d got really attached to it, so I was determined to not like the Audi. I remember my mum telling me to shut up so as not to spoil my dad’s day, as I grumbled and protested under my breath in that way only a mardy child can do. Over time though I began to really appreciate the Audi. It was a step up in quality over anything we’d had before, and it was a really smooth car to ride about in. Looking on Google at the interior pictures of one, and even now they don’t look that old fashioned – at least when compared to other cars of their time. I can see how Audi got their reputation for 'soft touch plastics'.
My dad remembers it being really powerful – he recalls a time he went to overtake a caravan that was in front as it was going so slow. But there was a few more caravans in front of that one as well. They were all bunched together and he couldn’t get back in so instead had to overtake them all. “It just flew past them”, he says. I asked why he sold it and he said “just because it had had its day”, so I guess it was just getting old and past its best. It was a nice car though.
The next batch of cars gets to the more modern 90's era. Strap yourselves in for more of the same...
This followed another sit-down session with mum and Dad to talk about the next tranche of cars on their ownership list! Here we go...!
Fiat Panda
Dad, giving it his best cool pose.
After around 2-3 years of the Corolla in the previous update, came the Fiat Panda. This was a brand-new car model from Fiat and my dad got one, on a Y reg I believe (1982). Even though it was a small car – certainly smaller than the Corolla before it, both mum and dad thought there was plenty of room in there, with mum recalling that there was lots of leg room under the dashboard. My Dad noted that it was also economical, and mum added “and it could fit in the garage”. Dad tells me that “It had fancy back seats that you could fold down. The front seats had a foam centre with material around it which then folded over backrest and then sewed up the sides. The back was the same, but the base part of the back of the seat could clip to the floor and made into a proper seat, but if you undid that it was just material and foam. For the rear seats, there was a pole at the front and you could lift that up and make the rear seats into a kind of hammock”. He added that this made the car ever so versatile, but it was not the comfiest of car. He recalls this being the ‘big engine one’, which he thinks was 1000cc, which was OK power wise and being such a light car, it never seemed to be lacking in power and was good in the snow.
Struggling to visualise these seats, I did some Googling and, with a picture painting a thousand words, here is what I think is what Dad was remembering:
I can’t find a hammock picture, but you can kind of imagine this transition looking at the design of the seats
1985 Fiat Uno
Looks a bit grey in this pic, but thats just old school photos for you. It was blue
After three years of the Panda, came the Uno, which was also purchased brand new. I can still remember the registration “B177 FHE”. This one was blue. “It was a nice little car that was affordable,” Dad says. “It was a 1.1 litre - the one with the real power!” he laughs. “It never let me down, I don’t remember any stories about that one”. My Mum could though, she remembered us going to Cornwall in this car from our home in Yorkshire several times. By this time, we had a trailer-tent and so went camping for our holidays. We used to set off really early and my sister and I would sleep in the back. My mum also remembered the time whereby some weird insect stowed away on the parcel shelf on the way home from one of these holidays. It had a hard shell and both my sister and I were freaking out about it. Our feeble attempts to kill it failed and we desperately wanted rid of it out of the car. My Dad said he would stop – which took ages as he continued on the motorway for what seemed like an hour. By the time we had stopped, my sister and I had taking rather a liking to our hard-shelled little friend and had even given it a name. My mum got it out of the car on some paper, much to our relief, but then panic ensued as we realised that it might get squashed by a lorry! So, this little creature was escorted over to the nearby woodland where we breathed a sigh of relief and continued on our journey. By this time, I was 8 and my sister was 5 years old, and mum recalls us playing the typical car journey games of eye-spy and counting cars over a certain distance, where we’d each pick a colour and see who got the most. No iPhones back then!
Fiat Strada
Our car
Internet pic for reference - The front was like this shape, but a non-Abarth version, and it was blue
This car was the one up from the Uno in the model range back in the day (for those who don’t know what this car is, it was a Ford Escort/Focus size as a modern-day equivalent) and Dad got a really good deal on it. I can remember us buying this car. We went to the dealership to buy it, and I can still remember it being in the handover bay ready to collect – and we didn’t collect it. Ha-ha! My dad gave it an inspection and found that they hadn’t fastened the back seats in properly, so they weren’t safe. The dealership apologised, fixed the issue fairly quickly and Dad got a free service by way of apology.
Mum tells me it was really good the in snow, there was one particular day where snow had fallen heavy. She had gone shopping with my sister at Meadowhall and she remembers lots of announcements, but the PA system wasn’t great, and they couldn’t hear them. There was hardly anyone in the shopping centre and when she left around 4pm the ground was covered in deep snow. We lived at the top of a hill and mum recalls that lots of cars had got stuck on the way up, but mum made it back home without any problems in the Strada. Mum remembers my sister proudly saying, “Well done mum, you are the only one that’s made it to the top!”
Cost wide, my dad thinks he paid about £5k for it, whereas the list should have been £7.5k. “In many ways, Fiat were their own worst enemy,” Dad recalls, “They would bring a new car out, put it on the market for a price, say £7.5k, then a year after, they’d discount it to £6k. It immediately knocked a lot of value for those who bought beforehand and must have put a lot of people off buying them”.
I remember this car being used for pretty much all of our outings. Shopping trips, family visits and holidays. The Strada did it all and was pretty reliable too – I don’t recall it breaking down on us. I can remember it being stacked to the ceiling when we went on camping trips and me and my sister being wedged in next to piles of camping stuff.
My Uncle Michael bought the same car a few years later. He also bought one because it was a bargain price, but he bought it used. Same colour and trim level – and it was just 2 digits different from ours on the registration number (ours being E832, his being E834)!
The Strada gets a bad reputation for being a crap car, but I always thought it was actually pretty good, relative to what you could buy back then. I always thought it looked pretty good and, being a new car, it smelt nice inside too!
The Strada met its untimely death when my mum crashed it into a parked car. I remember how shook up she was and my dad had to go and pick her up. Mum didn’t know what to do and she called the AA, she was in a terrible state of emotion and shock as she had her young Nephews with her at the time. She remembers that the AA were absolutely brilliant with her and sent someone out straight away. When the AA man arrived in his transit van my mum, still despairing and teary said to him “That’s no good, I told them we need a trailer”. “Yes, we know,” said the AA man reassuringly, “The operator on the call felt you were in such a state they wanted whoever was nearest to come and stay with you until the trailer arrives as this will take a bit longer”. And they did, they took over the scene and got the car recovered. Really outstanding service – and my parents have stayed with the AA ever since! This was a time when recovery services were more of a human outfit and less of a mass insurance conglomerate targeting profits over service and bogged down with all that procedure and s
t that makes big business so unsightly to deal with these days.During the Strada ownership is where we became a two-car family. Although the Strada was initially my Dads car, it ultimately became my mums when Dad got an Audi 100. But before that came, here are my mums first three cars – all purchased by my dad in his trademark style (off a mate, on the cheap, and never anything desirable) ….
Mk3 Vauxhall Viva
Look at this beauty! (internet pic)
My mum was learning to drive at the time, “I’ve bought this for you to practice in!”, my dad said to my mum when he came home with it one day. “It was the biggest car on the street” my mum recalls. “It was a nice little car” my dad counters, trying to put a positive spin on the memory of this already multi-decade old car. “It wasn’t little, it was huge!” said mum.
This is mum in her actual car on the day she passed her driving test!
The day she passed her test, she recalls that she signed off to drive at around 1pm and got straight into the Viva to pick me and my sister up from school. She remembers being terrified going out in it for first time. It was used as a runabout, doing the typical mum-taxi and short commute duties back then. “I got that off our weighbridge man at work for £50”, Dad smiles. £50. It looked it too.
Morris Marina
They just keep getting better....
(internet pic)Green.
“That leaked” is mums first reaction. “It dripped on my foot when driving. Mum clearly hated it, “My foot used to slide all over the clutch”. She didn’t like the car, or the colour. It was reliable though and nothing went wrong with it, my dad says.
“It leaked.”
“Yeah, but only on your foot”.
Volvo 244
Internet pic
I remember this car well. It was an ugly thing, as square as you like and in gold. Gold! But my word it was comfy, big too. It had leather interior which made it quite posh for us. Dad recalls it being a very safe car too, it had iron bars on the inside of the door. “We got quite fond of that,” recalls mum.
It wasn’t any good for towing though and my dad says it had to have an oil cooler fitted and the clutch started to slip as he towed the caravan with it one time. After that it started overheating. “With it over heating, the towing had done something to the rubber seals in the gearbox I think”, Dad tells me, “I was told that ‘Whilst ever you use it is, it’ll be fine, but not for towing.’”
I don’t remember this next bit, but mum does! Apparently on the journey to our caravan holiday, we got lost. This was a common occurrence on our trips, I can remember many a cross word as the wrong road was taken and my mum, who was a pretty good map reader to be fair, would get the blame and then an argument would ensue. Anyhow, we were lost and had to turn around, but we had ended up in a small crescent street and there was no way to reverse it round. We had to unhook the van, turn it around in the crescent and then hook it back on. We must have looked like a family from Only Fools and Horses!
As an aside, when I was older, I can remember another incident of us getting lost, in one of the other cars but I don’t recall which. Mum kept telling my dad to go this way, or that way, or turn around etc etc as she was tracing our tracks on the map, but my dad was obsessed with just going ‘Straight On’. We ended up miles and miles out of our way in the totally wrong direction and he just kept going ‘straight on’. It was so bizarre, but it has become a family joke now whenever we go anywhere.
Audi 100 5 cyl 2.2
Internet pic
Quattro car. “Nice car, very expensive for bits”, says Dad. He owned this one for two years and really liked it. I recall the Volvo was traded in for the Audi, and this is when the Strada became mum’s car. I can remember us picking this one up and, despite the Volvo being bloomin’ awful to look at, we’d got really attached to it, so I was determined to not like the Audi. I remember my mum telling me to shut up so as not to spoil my dad’s day, as I grumbled and protested under my breath in that way only a mardy child can do. Over time though I began to really appreciate the Audi. It was a step up in quality over anything we’d had before, and it was a really smooth car to ride about in. Looking on Google at the interior pictures of one, and even now they don’t look that old fashioned – at least when compared to other cars of their time. I can see how Audi got their reputation for 'soft touch plastics'.
My dad remembers it being really powerful – he recalls a time he went to overtake a caravan that was in front as it was going so slow. But there was a few more caravans in front of that one as well. They were all bunched together and he couldn’t get back in so instead had to overtake them all. “It just flew past them”, he says. I asked why he sold it and he said “just because it had had its day”, so I guess it was just getting old and past its best. It was a nice car though.
The next batch of cars gets to the more modern 90's era. Strap yourselves in for more of the same...
Edited by Cloudy147 on Friday 2nd December 20:41
Great write up and such a varied car history too.. Sadly never got the chance to chat about cars with my late Dad..Mum never passed her driving test..I'm glad she gave up as her road awareness was terrible!!
Remember a few of Dad's cars..An Opel Kapitan two tone light blue/white..left hand drive brought over from RAF Guttesloh Germany to Norwich where we were based at the time circa 1959..
A black Ford Anglia RBY 165..Then an Aubergine Mk1 Cortina Gt spec GLD 964C
Another Anglia two tone yellow/white 6430 PX Then he left the Airforce and became a TV engineer for Rediffusion so over the next 15 yrs had company Vans/Estate cars all Ford Escorts barring one exception an 1985 C plate Maestro 5 door hatch.. !!
After redundancy from Granada TV (took over Rediffusion) he became a Taxi Driver..His first car he'd paid for in 15 yrs !! was a Y plate Fiat 131 Super Mirafiori in metallic silver lasted for about 3 yrs 100,000+ miles then p/x against a
six month old Red Fiat Regatta 1.6 comfort..As a taxi this was the most problematic one(the 131 ironically was excellent) after a few AA callouts !! he then moved that on for a White Ford Sierra GL 2.0. Brilliant car for its time, it did over 200,000 miles in 4 yrs with the biggest expence being a new ECU..
Then up to his retirement a Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 GLS in White..This car he owned privately after the taxi work finished..He really loved that car !! Up until he passed away he bought off me my Vectra 2.0Sri saloon in Verdi Green metallic..so a varied few there
Remember a few of Dad's cars..An Opel Kapitan two tone light blue/white..left hand drive brought over from RAF Guttesloh Germany to Norwich where we were based at the time circa 1959..
A black Ford Anglia RBY 165..Then an Aubergine Mk1 Cortina Gt spec GLD 964C
Another Anglia two tone yellow/white 6430 PX Then he left the Airforce and became a TV engineer for Rediffusion so over the next 15 yrs had company Vans/Estate cars all Ford Escorts barring one exception an 1985 C plate Maestro 5 door hatch.. !!
After redundancy from Granada TV (took over Rediffusion) he became a Taxi Driver..His first car he'd paid for in 15 yrs !! was a Y plate Fiat 131 Super Mirafiori in metallic silver lasted for about 3 yrs 100,000+ miles then p/x against a
six month old Red Fiat Regatta 1.6 comfort..As a taxi this was the most problematic one(the 131 ironically was excellent) after a few AA callouts !! he then moved that on for a White Ford Sierra GL 2.0. Brilliant car for its time, it did over 200,000 miles in 4 yrs with the biggest expence being a new ECU..
Then up to his retirement a Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 GLS in White..This car he owned privately after the taxi work finished..He really loved that car !! Up until he passed away he bought off me my Vectra 2.0Sri saloon in Verdi Green metallic..so a varied few there
Geffg said:
Great story. Nice seeing the cars of different times.
Thanks Geff nismo48 said:
Great write up and such a varied car history too.. Sadly never got the chance to chat about cars with my late Dad..Mum never passed her driving test..I'm glad she gave up as her road awareness was terrible!!
Remember a few of Dad's cars..An Opel Kapitan two tone light blue/white..left hand drive brought over from RAF Guttesloh Germany to Norwich where we were based at the time circa 1959..
A black Ford Anglia RBY 165..Then an Aubergine Mk1 Cortina Gt spec GLD 964C
Another Anglia two tone yellow/white 6430 PX Then he left the Airforce and became a TV engineer for Rediffusion so over the next 15 yrs had company Vans/Estate cars all Ford Escorts barring one exception an 1985 C plate Maestro 5 door hatch.. !!
After redundancy from Granada TV (took over Rediffusion) he became a Taxi Driver..His first car he'd paid for in 15 yrs !! was a Y plate Fiat 131 Super Mirafiori in metallic silver lasted for about 3 yrs 100,000+ miles then p/x against a six month old Red Fiat Regatta 1.6 comfort..As a taxi this was the most problematic one(the 131 ironically was excellent) after a few AA callouts !! he then moved that on for a White Ford Sierra GL 2.0. Brilliant car for its time, it did over 200,000 miles in 4 yrs with the biggest expence being a new ECU..
Then up to his retirement a Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 GLS in White..This car he owned privately after the taxi work finished..He really loved that car !! Up until he passed away he bought off me my Vectra 2.0Sri saloon in Verdi Green metallic..so a varied few there
Nice history - I had to google a few of those as not heard of them. Funny thing is, when you look back at these old cars of a similar era, I can't help but think "they all look pretty much the same", which ironically is what we often say about modern cars too! The more things change, the more the stay the same! Remember a few of Dad's cars..An Opel Kapitan two tone light blue/white..left hand drive brought over from RAF Guttesloh Germany to Norwich where we were based at the time circa 1959..
A black Ford Anglia RBY 165..Then an Aubergine Mk1 Cortina Gt spec GLD 964C
Another Anglia two tone yellow/white 6430 PX Then he left the Airforce and became a TV engineer for Rediffusion so over the next 15 yrs had company Vans/Estate cars all Ford Escorts barring one exception an 1985 C plate Maestro 5 door hatch.. !!
After redundancy from Granada TV (took over Rediffusion) he became a Taxi Driver..His first car he'd paid for in 15 yrs !! was a Y plate Fiat 131 Super Mirafiori in metallic silver lasted for about 3 yrs 100,000+ miles then p/x against a six month old Red Fiat Regatta 1.6 comfort..As a taxi this was the most problematic one(the 131 ironically was excellent) after a few AA callouts !! he then moved that on for a White Ford Sierra GL 2.0. Brilliant car for its time, it did over 200,000 miles in 4 yrs with the biggest expence being a new ECU..
Then up to his retirement a Vauxhall Cavalier 2.0 GLS in White..This car he owned privately after the taxi work finished..He really loved that car !! Up until he passed away he bought off me my Vectra 2.0Sri saloon in Verdi Green metallic..so a varied few there
I'm surprised your Dad managed to get any car up to 100,000 miles from those days - everything seemed to rust and break back then. He did well!
My dad is around the same age and had a lot of the same cars in the early 70's he reckons between 1965 and 1980 he had over 100 cars like MG 1100, Austin A30 and A35, Sunbeam Rapiers, Austin Cambridge, Morris Oxford He worked in garages, one was a Rootes so he got a lot of Hillman trade in's to pick from.
By mid 70's they were terribly unfashionable and therefore very cheap, he remembers he paid paid paid as little as a fiver for a Ford Anglia the door fell off and one he rolled down a hill and broke the half shaft.
He also had a lot of oddball motors like NSU Prinz, Wartburg Knight, DAF 33
By mid 70's they were terribly unfashionable and therefore very cheap, he remembers he paid paid paid as little as a fiver for a Ford Anglia the door fell off and one he rolled down a hill and broke the half shaft.
He also had a lot of oddball motors like NSU Prinz, Wartburg Knight, DAF 33
Good stories, thanks!!
My dad loved his cars too…bought his first car, an MG, with winnings from the dog track, so I was told.
I was a late arrival (he was 52 when I came along), so got the twilight years of his motoring: prior to that he had owned Jags & cars with running boards & all sorts. Was originally into motorbikes: he had a massive row with his father about being out late: his dad threw the bike across their front garden, my dad left home, joined the army and didn’t speak to him for some 30 years…..
I recall my dad owning a red Fiat 127 for about a year….I’d have been about 12 at the time.
Damn thing kept having punctures: I helped him swap wheels at least 7 or 8 times. At the next service, he asked them to take a look into why we had this problem. The garage fella reported back later with “I’m very sorry sir, but your car appears to be a ‘cut and shut’ - two cars welded together.” Tracking was all out of line: it had to go!
Before that, he owned a Ford Corsair - I joined him for a ‘father & son’ road trip from the IOW to Essex when I was quite small, the only time I can recall meeting his mum. The car had a judder around 70mph, but he found it stopped if he went to 80
Happy days.
He did encourage me into biking, then cars….one day I will write down my motoring history!
Keep it up.
My dad loved his cars too…bought his first car, an MG, with winnings from the dog track, so I was told.
I was a late arrival (he was 52 when I came along), so got the twilight years of his motoring: prior to that he had owned Jags & cars with running boards & all sorts. Was originally into motorbikes: he had a massive row with his father about being out late: his dad threw the bike across their front garden, my dad left home, joined the army and didn’t speak to him for some 30 years…..
I recall my dad owning a red Fiat 127 for about a year….I’d have been about 12 at the time.
Damn thing kept having punctures: I helped him swap wheels at least 7 or 8 times. At the next service, he asked them to take a look into why we had this problem. The garage fella reported back later with “I’m very sorry sir, but your car appears to be a ‘cut and shut’ - two cars welded together.” Tracking was all out of line: it had to go!
Before that, he owned a Ford Corsair - I joined him for a ‘father & son’ road trip from the IOW to Essex when I was quite small, the only time I can recall meeting his mum. The car had a judder around 70mph, but he found it stopped if he went to 80
Happy days.
He did encourage me into biking, then cars….one day I will write down my motoring history!
Keep it up.
Brilliant thread!
My Dad also had an Austin A40 Somerset but from 1954. Apparently I was brought home from the maternity ward in it!
In 1967 he replaced it with a 1964 Hillman Minx, then he went a bit off-piste in 1972 when he replaced that with a Fiat 125 that later became my 2nd car in 1977.
Some real gems there.
My Dad also had an Austin A40 Somerset but from 1954. Apparently I was brought home from the maternity ward in it!
In 1967 he replaced it with a 1964 Hillman Minx, then he went a bit off-piste in 1972 when he replaced that with a Fiat 125 that later became my 2nd car in 1977.
Some real gems there.
Mr Tidy said:
Brilliant thread!
My Dad also had an Austin A40 Somerset but from 1954. Apparently I was brought home from the maternity ward in it!
In 1967 he replaced it with a 1964 Hillman Minx, then he went a bit off-piste in 1972 when he replaced that with a Fiat 125 that later became my 2nd car in 1977.
Some real gems there.
I was born late 80's and he recalls he was driving a Fiat Uno they day I emerged, not a Turbo just a regular Fire with steel wheels. I have a photo of the back of it. The company he worked at the time bought them brand new for £3,000 and used them as run arounds. Then in a moment of madness he splashed out on a white facelift in about 1994. Then onto a Peugeot saloon which I remember had a sun logo so possibly an Aztec or Inca spec, then he bought a 1995 Jaguar XJ Sport.My Dad also had an Austin A40 Somerset but from 1954. Apparently I was brought home from the maternity ward in it!
In 1967 he replaced it with a 1964 Hillman Minx, then he went a bit off-piste in 1972 when he replaced that with a Fiat 125 that later became my 2nd car in 1977.
Some real gems there.
Heres a photo of the second Uno, not sure if it was some special edition but the Lancia rally-esque wheels look a bit special.
Edited by sutoka on Tuesday 29th November 03:28
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff