As we grow up from young children on our journey through life into adulthood, we are very much influenced by our parent’s views and ideals, which very often will affect the way we think, what we choose and how we behave. That influence, among other things, extends to our sense of reasoning (or lack of it at times) when we select the car we drive, perticularly when it comes to choosing our very first car.

This is the story of the cars that were part of my life, right from when I could first remember anything up to the present day – the cars that I grew up with including those that I bought for my own use, and why my choice was made.

My earliest recollection of a family car was a blue1950’s VW Beetle with a small split rear screen and semaphore arm trafficators. The car was also left hand drive on account of my father, following a term of employment with a British company in West Germany, buying the Beetle in that country and then bringing it home with him. He and mum were living in Bremerhaven, West Germany, which is where I was born.  Dad spent a lot of time working in the shipyards on radar navigation systems there and was on a 3-year contract I believe.  The old Beetle had a previous life as a Bemerhaven taxi and as a consequence it has covered an inter-galactic mileage.

The picture shown here I recently discovered going through mum’s loft and unearthing a load of old photographic slides.  Taken in the winter of 1963 this is believed to be the only picture left of the car.  In fact, until I saw this photo I would have had no idea as to what the registration number was.

I do have some misty memories of the car though.  It always parked on the drive in front of the living room bay window and the cat used to sit on top of the front tyre under the wing when it rained so as to try and keep dry.  Funny what you remember as a kid.  I also have a recollection of dad out there on that drive with his toolbox, changing the driver controls from the left to the right-hand side of the car.

Mum could not drive at that time, but had taken up driving lessons. I used to kneel up on the sofa in the bay window of the living room and watch as her driving instructor called at the house to collect her in his learner car, an Austin A40, painted in that duck-egg blue colour and with a black roof. I was three years old then and once she passed her test she took me out in the Beetle and let me sit in the front passenger seat operating the twist knob on the centre-top of the dashboard to activate the trafficators, whilst Mum instructed me as to when and where. I remember that privilege coming to an end one day when I started to rebel by operating the switch when I thought it should be done instead of listening to the commands of my driver.

One of my most vivid memories of that old car was one winter’s morning when I awoke to find a dense covering of snow had appeared in the night. The house we lived in at the time had a driveway that, although flat, sloped down to the road edge for the last 15 feet or so at quite a steep angle. The road outside was also on a gradient falling away to the right – the opposite direction to that which nearly always was required to be used to get to the places we needed go.

Although I was too young to be aware of it at the time, the car was equipped only with 6-volt electrics and in this bitter cold it flatly refused to start. After helping, as best I could as a very small boy, in manhandling the thing to the end of the drive I sat bemused as we coasted out onto the snow-covered road and down the hill, attempting several bump starts as we went. I think the car must have started because I seem to remember my mother battling with the thing as we fishtailed up the road again towards our intended destination. By this time I was 6-years old, had a brother of four, a sister of two and I was at primary school. Also at about this time the old Beetle had gone 3-times around the clock on the same engine and its bodywork was so rotten is was in grave danger of being left behind in the road after the next bump it drove over. Dad thought this was such a “damn good car” (his exact words until the day he died) he went out and bought another. 4985DP was the registration number and it was jet black in colour with grey seats. He sold it a few months later on account that it continually broke down. He never touched a VW again.

By now Mum was back out at work doing her bit to bring more money into the home by returning to her vocation as a primary school teacher. In line with this it now became necessary for her to have her own transport and what she got was something that I really wish I had paid more attention to. To see a Riley One-Point-Five today is like spotting a pile of rocking horse poop on a country lane accompanied by a chicken with teeth. You see the occasional Wolesley 1500, but the Riley – no.

Built upon a Morris Minor 1000 floor pan, and with the same torsion bar suspension, the car was powered by a 1.5 litre 4-cylinder BMC lump breathing through two one and a half inch SU carburettors. This car could certainly lift up her skirts and run with the wind. It always had a nice small of leather as I recall. The colour was a mid-blue with a green tinted external sun visor hood thing that was fixed over the windscreen, and there were chrome ‘hat-peaks’ over the headlights. Inside it had blue and white leather seats, and boy oh boy, it had a rev counter! I would love to see one of these again, or even have the chance to drive one. The Wolesley was a much steadier machine, still with the same engine, but with a single SU carburettor and no rev counter. Whilst I can find many examples in photographed form of the Wolesley, the old Riley is not well represented.

One of my most vivid memories of that car was a rather painful one. We were on a family outing and upon parking the car at a Dorset beauty spot the family occupants all went to the boot to change into their wellies. Whilst I was sitting on the rear bumper, the stay to the boot lid gave way and the lid fell down hitting me straight on the top of the head. To say it hurt was like saying Everest is a hill. Some say that having learned of this episode in my life that it does explain a great deal about me today. I’m not entirely sure what is meant by that?

As I said, Dad was running the black VW, until he got fed up with it breaking down and so he got shot of it - to a vicar as it happens. My memories are a little confused about what happened then. I have fuzzy recollections of a pale blue Morris Minor 2-door saloon and then a dark blue Vauxhall HA Viva. I think there was something about these cars being on loan from the local garage. Mr. Johnson, the proprietor, and my father used to get on quite well and I think the two cars came from there. Certainly the next permanent car to arrive was sold to us by Mr. Johnson because I can remember going out in it with them both for a test drive.

LYL78D was a black Austin A60 Cambridge diesel saloon. Now, this was a period in time when diesel powered cars got their well-deserved reputation for being dirty, slow and smelly. Yep! It was all of those all right – and more! As I grew older, and could be trusted with the responsibility, it was my job on school mornings to go out and start up LYL so she would be ready and waiting (thawed out in winter) for when Dad came out. It had the ignition lock in the centre of the dash and the keyhole had little wings on either side with grooves that held the wide head-part of the old Union key. To start the car you had to turn the key, which also turned these wings, against a spring and keep the red light on the dash glowing for the count of 10 very slow seconds, a bit that always made my fingers sore. At the end of that you planted your foot hard down on the accelerator pedal, turned the key the rest of the way, which activated the starter motor, and kept the starter turning over until the engine coughed, spluttered and fired up. At this point there would be the biggest cloud of blue smoke, enough to blot out the light of day, whilst the engine roared into life before it settled to a rhythmic beat. This was a slow car. 0 – 60 time was around two and a half weeks I think, but once it got rolling nothing would stop it. Dad used to announce with such pride that he had taken us all on a two-week family holiday, done loads of site seeing and then driven back without having to refuel. If the enthusiasm of his proclamations equalled the level of reality, according to his scale of measurement I reckon that car used to go around the world twice on only one tank of diesel fuel!

One thing young boys delight in is rivalry, especially when it comes to motorcars, especially those driven by their father, and the level of their perceived importance in the motoring pecking order. Mum’s mother and father lived in the Dorset town of Weymouth, a place that my Grandfather retired to upon leaving the marine salvage business. The people next door, whom my Grandmother always referred to as Mr. & Mrs. Polly, had a white (with a black roof), D-registration Morris Oxford saloon diesel, and because there was only on-street parking, the two cars used to end up sitting one behind the other outside the front of the house. Mr. and Mrs. Polly had a son and a daughter, she being about the same age as my sister, and the discussions concerning the virtues of Austin vs. Morris went on for most of the school holidays, as I recall. It was amazing when both engines were started up together. Sunbathers on Weymouth beach would pack up their deck chairs and leave for home thinking night was upon them. Good old cars though - solid and robust.

Whilst I am on the subject of my Grand parents I think I should mention the car my Grandfather had – another vehicle that was very much part of my life. WKO 914 was a 1956 4-door Morris Minor saloon with red leather seats, red carpets and black bodywork. Although the same shape as the later Morris 1000 saloon the car had a smaller 805cc 4-cyclinder engine, a small back window, a split windscreen, larger rear wheel arches and semaphore arm trafficators. My Grandfather bought it second hand from a lady schoolteacher from London in 1957 and drove it until he died in 1975. He was a terrible driver as I recall. For a start he would ride the clutch pedal, which resulted in premature wear and failure of at least two clutch assemblies. At one point the engine was becoming so badly worn out that we used to have to get a good run at Boot Hill if any chance of making it to the top without stopping was to be had. Eventually it went to a local garage for the engine to be re-bored and re-conditioned. It came back painted blue – the engine that is, not the car.

This was the first car that I actually drove. I was about fourteen at the time and one bitterly cold winters day, in a gravel covered public seaside car park at Chesil Beach, I was allowed to drive the Morris up and down a few times. Although I was able to stop the car quite well, what I wasn’t told at the time was that I was using the wrong foot to operate the brakes. The driving lesson came to an end when I was ushered hurriedly from the drivers’ seat, something that seemed to coincide with the arrival of a marked police car! However, the aforementioned unnoticed flaw in my driving technique was to have worrying consequences not long afterwards, and when I was allowed to drive the car into Granddads garage. It all started off okay, until I went for the brake. As I was using the clutch foot to do this, as soon as I released that pedal to go for the brake, the car shot forward and crashed into the back of the garage. My Grandmother, being a frugal woman and a displaced native of Leeds, used to bottle fruit and make jam in quite large quantities. I think she never really got over World War Two and food rationing. I’m sure, looking back on things, that she was still expecting the supply ships to be torpedoed by German ‘U’ boats. Anyway, all her Kilner jars and bottles were stored on shelves at the back of the garage - that is until that day. With the impact the shelves tumbled off the wall and the front of the car became smothered in broken glass and all sorts of substances that stuck to the paintwork and smelled horrible, fortunately without any damage – to the car. I think my grandfather nearly had a heart attack though.

When you are young, time really does not have any real meaning or significance to you, and as a result it is often difficult in later life to recall events in accurate detail in relation to when they happened and in comparison to other events, together with your memory for precise detail. All I know is that at some stage during those tender years the Riley went and was replaced with 880FYY, a Morris 1000 Traveller in Rose Taupe finish. Now, I don’t know if anyone reading this knows what the colour Rose Taupe looks like? It is perhaps best described as having the appearance of a child’s pot of water, which they have been using for a whole afternoon to wash their watercolour paintbrushes in. A sort of murky mauve/brown dirty colour that has such a peculiar name that I have still remembered it some 40-years later! Anyway, this car was the one used by Mum and did the daily school run for perhaps the longest period of my life whilst I was in full-time education. Mum would drive up the road and pick up Annabel Fowler, from Spinney Close, making the total number of kids in the car at that point up to four, when you included my brother, my sister with me. Then it was on to Grosvenor Road to collect Sarah Holmes, a bit further down for Peter Sanderson and then Andrew Stevenson. It wouldn’t be allowed today though would it? One child in the front (no seatbelt), four in the rear seat (again no seatbelts) and two or three more in the luggage space at the back. It was all right for Mrs. Stevenson when it was her turn. Mum used to still do the first part, and then at Andrew’s house we would all pile out and get into a Rambler Shootingbrake. This was a huge white monster of a car with a bonnet large enough to land a Lynx helicopter on. Quite bewildering for a small boy it was.

880FYY was with us for what seemed an eternity. It certainly wasn’t new when Dad bought it and it was in a pretty poor state when it eventually went many, many years later. It was from this car that I received the beginnings of my education, and my initiation, into car repairs and maintenance procedures.

Dad worked long hours and would usually arrive home after 8pm, whereupon he would often be greeted with one tale of woe or another from Mum about a defect she had experienced with her car that day and how was she supposed to get to work in it next morning. Dad would then curse and complain, have his dinner, after which he and I would adjourn to the garage to start work. I can remember those cold dark winter evenings lying on a hard floor working by the light of an inspection lamp, being rebuked gruffly for not handing over the right spanner or for losing some small part or other somewhere in among the debris we had created. I seem to recall many evenings being spent this way and I couldn’t have been any older than thirteen. What baffles me now, when I think about it, is why this had to be done so regularly. Why wasn’t the problem fixed the first time and the rest of the evenings spent indoors watching telly like normal kids? The only explanation I can come up with is that as my father was as tight as a ducks bottom and probably bodged the jobs with string and sticky tape hoping to save six-pence only to end up spending more time and money trying to avoid spending time and money.

It had window boxes by the way. The car - at the bottom of the sliding rear side windows - lines of neatly grown moss at the edge of the channels in which the sliding glass side-windows moved forward and rearward. Mum was quite proud of them as I recall.

Whilst 880FYY was in our care Dad bought a Triumph 2000 Mkll, registration number XTC316H, finished in navy blue with tan coloured upholstery, and with overdrive. Now this was a posh car and he who drove it certainly went up in my estimation when that arrived on the driveway. They actually were lovely cars and that old school boy

rivalry was soon kicked back into life on account that the Dad of one of my friends from up the road drove a Rover 2000. Many a discussion concerning the merits of owning a Triumph over those of having a Rover were discussed in the top of the Elm tree at the bottom of the garden. I could be very persuasive in those days for a fourteen year old when it came to cars. That Triumph was with us for ages, and always looked immaculate.

When 880FYY gave up the ghost, Dad did something really quite rash. He spent some money! He ordered a brand new Morris 1000 Traveller in Glacier White with Navy trim. This was one of the very last Morris 1000’s to be made and carried the registration number GPK20K. Once the novelty of having a new car wore off it became quite boring as nothing seemed to go wrong with it. No more lying on a cold garage floor in the light of the inspection lamp, but I didn’t miss it that much really.

At the age of fifteen me and Bruce, a school chum at the time who’s parents lived in a huge country house with about 4-acres of land, used to drive around the paddock at the top of his garden, initially in a Renault Dauphine that he bought for about 10-shillings from someone his Dad knew. As well as the Renault Bruce got his hands on an old Standard 8, a car that I couldn’t quite get my head around on account that it did not have an opening boot lid and yet there was a drop-down flap in the region of the rear number plate behind which was stored the spare wheel. It appears you had to put your luggage into the boot compartment by tipping the rear seat forward and feeding it in through the aperture behind. Very awkward I should imagine. We had great fun rallying around that field in those cars and I always looked forward to my weekends when I would jump on by pedal cycle and ride the 12 miles or so to see Bruce and his cars, sometimes stopping at his village filling station to collect a gallon a fuel on the way.

The Renault was a little difficult to drive on mud as being rear engined the tail used to swing around with very little provocation. In fact I was responsible for stoving in the back wing against a tree during an over enthusiastic power slide, something that caused a bit if a rift in our friendship. Another car that we used to drive around the field was a black Austin A35 saloon. This car was quite tidy and once Bruce was old enough, and had passed his test, he used the car on the road. I, being a year younger, used to have to be content with sitting in the passenger seat and going out for a cruise with him.

In 1973, when I was sixteen years old, Dad did something unbelievably stupid. So stupid in fact that I find it hard to type the words. Not only did he spend some money again, but he traded the blue Triumph 2000 for a brand new ‘M’ registered Morris Marina 1.3 litre saloon in Teal Blue with tan interior. The excuse was that this car was the Morris 1000 replacement, according to British Leyland anyway, and therefore it must be good – especially as it had been Ziebarted to prevent rust. He had this car a long time, and even though I am embarrassed to admit to it, I drove it on occasions after I passed my driving test. What a horrible car! A gearshift that was like rattling a stick in an open manhole, suspension that I believe was constructed from elastic bands, styling that wasn’t, and all that cheap plastic! It was awful.

I said at the beginning of this story that parents have a strong influence on the way we think as we grow up and this was proved to be so at the time I bought my first car. I had just passed my test after only a handful of lessons, and much practical experience thanks to Bruce and GPK20K. I now thought I needed wheels. Having a part-time job I figured I could afford an old runabout providing it was relatively economical to run. Having scoured the local papers, and studied the pages of the Exchange and Mart, I ended up with a 1962 Morris Minor 1000 4-door saloon in Dove grey and with registration number 5494MW. This is where the parental influence came in. Dad took charge of ‘helping’ me choose my car and I am sure there would have been many other makes on offer that would have served me well for very little money and yet I was swayed into keeping up the family tradition by buying a Morris. Besides which, I already had developed quite a goos level of knowledge as to how to deal with the mechanics of the model.

Dad used to have a strong dislike for Fords. “Dagenham Dustbins,” he would call them, and would always seize upon any opportunity to run them down as being complete rubbish. No, he was a staunch Leyland fan, and being naïve, I initially went along with his opinions.

Being young and relatively stupid, as I believe I was when I look back and think about myself then (I really was quite idiotic in fact) I learned enough about the mechanics of Morris Minor 1000’s to either write a book about them or to build one from a box full of miscellaneous parts in the dark with one hand tied behind my back. I was always under the bonnet and often caused more problems with it than I solved, but learned a hell of a lot in the process.

The Morris Minor 1000 was launched in 1957 and replaced the Morris Minor, the type my Grandfather drove. It initially had a 948cc engine, over the 805 unit of the previous car, and direction indicators that doubled as side lights, which meant that when you were driving with your lights on, and indicated to turn, your side light on the appropriate side of the car would wink on and off. In 1963 the engine size was up rated to 1098cc and the direction indicators became separate lights to the sidelights, albeit they shared the same cluster unit. The windscreen wipers were upgraded from the clap-hands type arrangement to the modern sweep-format that we are familiar with today. My 1962 car therefore had the 984cc motor.

It cost me £115, and although in quite tidy physical condition, the gearbox had lost all its synchromesh. This meant I had to drive the car double-de-clutching through every gear-change to keep ratios matched with revs, both going up the box as well as down, so as to prevent leaving all the teeth from the gears behind on the road. Although seen as a pain at the time I actually think now the fault provided a good training exercise in understanding the needs of a car when changing gear, because if you got it wrong it very much told you about it! I drove the car like that for nearly a year and until I located an MOT failed 1964 saloon that was going for scrap. Dad and I set off in GPK20K, complete with a selection of tools, and lifted the engine out, complete with gearbox, from the scrap car and between us, and the owner of the dead car, we manhandled the lot into the back of Mum’s Traveller. Being the later model I took this opportunity to have the indicator light clusters from it as well.

In the garden at home was the remains of a kids garden swing, one that me and my siblings used to play on when very young. The wooden seat had rotted away and just the frame with the two dangling chains was left. This made an ideal stand from which to hang a block and tackle. On the next available weekend, Dad and I got the swing from the back garden, removed the bonnet of my car and positioned our make-shift stand and lifting gear over the engine compartment. The beauty of working on a Morris 1000 is that everything is so accessible and everything is held together with nuts and bolts. I am going to be very boring now and say that the reason there is so much room under the bonnet of these cars is that when the prototype was produced in the early 50’s (no Morris 1000 then – it was the Morris Minor, but much the same shape) the bosses at the Morris works looked at the car and decided is was too narrow and demanded it be widened by four inches. The story goes that this was the reason for that raised four-inch wide ridge down the centre of the bonnet, because in those days it was easier to do that than to have a new press to make it without. Another story is that when the car was in the design stage it was intended for it to have a flat-four engine like the VW Beetle, an engine that needed more lateral space than a conventional upright in-line four. Of course it was the conventional 4-cyclinder it ended up with, whether intentionally or not.

The front panel of the Minor would unbolt and once the radiator behind was out of the way as well, and with the bonnet off, everything was just there in front of you to do with whatever you needed. Inside, having lifted the carpets, most of the floor pan could be removed exposing the gearbox mountings and prop shaft connections. With the gearbox mounting bolts removed, and the ones from the engine mountings, you could just hoist the engine up a few inches and push the car backwards to leave the engine and gearbox out of the car.

Before the replacement unit went in we removed the sump and inspected the shell and main bearings. They seemed to be in good order so we replaced the gasket and bolted the sump back again. To get the engine back in was easy. We just hoisted it up by about three-feet, lined it up, still with gearbox still attached, and then pushed the car forward to meet it. Having got the engine into the car everything was bolted down in place, the radiator re-fitted, filled and the front panel put back on. At this stage we set about replacing the ignition points, spark plugs, oil and air filter and of course filled the engine with new oil. The bonnet went back on and the time had come to give it a try.

Anxiously I put the key in the ignition, switched on, pulled the starter knob and bingo! She started first time. At this Dad jumped in the passenger seat and we took off for a spin up the road – still with no floor in the car! She went like a bomb and not only did I have synchromesh on the gearbox, but I had an extra 150cc in the engine as well. I later fitted the indicators lamps to make the modification process complete.

That car used to whiz up and down the M4 between Reading and South Wales for 10-weeks whilst I went through my basic police training with the cassette player thumping out Status Quo’s ‘On The Level’ album all the way there and back each weekend. I drove it for thousands and thousands of miles in that car until one day I grew tired of it, this being the start of the long hot summer of 76. I fancied something a little more sporty and having now built up a bit of a no claims bonus I felt I could do with some open air motoring.

Upon examining the classifieds in the local paper I found a 1966 Triumph Spitfire Mkll for sale, priced at £165. Without further ado, and with very little thought, I telephoned the lady to make a viewing appointment, jumped in my car and I was off to have a look. I never did get a photograph of that car and I cannot remember the registration number either, except that is was HEA---D. I stupidly paid the asking price and drove it away, complete with worn out gear selector linkage and perforated body sills. I had that car six months and loved it, but the end of its life came to it on the A31, just passed the Rufus Stone in the New Forrest when, following a loud rattling noise from the engine, there came an almighty bang. The engine stopped dead, as would the car if I hadn’t quickly got to the clutch. As I coasted to the edge of the road great clouds of blue oily smoke billowed into the air and rivulets of hot oil ran from the trailing edge of the bonnet and up the windscreen glass.

After pulling onto the verge, lifted the bonnet, and after stepping back for a minute or so from the clouds that erupted from beneath, I moved in for a close look at what had happened. Sitting in little pools of oil around the engine bay area were fragments of alloy type metal and small lumps of cast iron. As the smoke dispersed I saw a large fist-size gaping hole in the drivers side of the engine crankcase. The motor had shot an end, which is a term used to describe what happens when a con-rod (the connecting rod between crank shaft and piston) becomes detached at one end and then smacks against the inside of the engine casing smashing a hole through the side of the engine. I wasn’t driving particularly fast when it happened but I think the engine was so clapped out that it literally fell to bits inside. The car had been faltering for a few miles prior to the incident and knowing what I do now I think this was a piston starting to become ‘wedged’ in the bore – catching every so often on the up-stroke until one time when it wedged completely. This would have caused the con rod to buckle, shear and then smash its way out of the engine.

The purpose of the journey through the New Forrest was that of driving to my Grandparents house in Weymouth on account of the recent death of my Grandfather. Mum and Dad had gone there earlier in the day and I was to join them to help sort out the house. After walking about 3-miles to a filling station I telephoned ahead to tell them what had happened and asked that Dad come out to rescue me. He was not best pleased when he turned up and after attaching a towrope between GPK20K and the stricken Spitfire, he towed my all the way to Weymouth.

So as to get home again I used WKO914, Granddads 1956 Morris Minor. This car would now became my regular transport whilst I set about trying to revive the Spitfire. It was my mother that had the unenviable task of towing me the hundred odd miles from Weymouth back to Reading. There was one junction where she had obviously not seen an approaching car from her right and had I not stamped on my brakes, causing her car to stall, I am quite sure she would have been T-boned. It was fortunate the towrope we were using was a strong one.

In the village of Twyford in Berkshire there was, and probably still is, an accident repair centre where, in the yard at the back, there were a number of cars that were insurance write-offs. Dad and the proprietor of this place used to go to school together and as a result of a friendly agreement my Spitfire was taken there, initially for scrapping. However, in the yard was a Triumph Vitesse 2-Litre Mkll convertable that had sustained front-end damage. Knowing that the Spitfire was a derivative of the Herald, and that the Vitesse was no more than a Herald with a bigger engine, I negotiated the acquisition of the Vitesse for parts. The plan was to transplant the 2-litre six-cylinder unit from the Vitesse into the Spitfire. After all Triumph produced a car called a GT6 that was a hardtop Spitfire coupe with a Vitesse engine in it, so the job should be relatively easy.

The fact that the Spitfire was riddled with rust and was nothing short of a heap of junk didn’t feature in my thought process. I was dazzled with the dream of having a 2-litre Spitfire to drive around in. I would have been far better off repairing the Vitesse, especially as this car was a convertible and had obviously been a write-off due to it being beyond economical repair rather than there being any real structural damage. I think it only needed a new bonnet, which of course on these cars formed the whole of the front of the body. Anyway, the project ran into one difficulty after another and eventually I threw in the towel, scrapped the lot and settled my mind to living with the old black Morris. I did say I was stupid, and this is exactly the type of thing that proved it.

However, whilst I was clearing up my tools, I looked up to see a Saffron Yellow Triumph GT6 Mklll drive into the yard. After the man had got out and disappeared into the reception office of the repair centre I wandered over to take a look. I had often seen these cars from a distance and admired them, but now looking at it close up I thought it was gorgeous. I was caught dribbling over it when the driver returned, and upon my admission of interest he informed me that he had a car sales business up the road and that the GT6 was up for grabs.

I followed him back to his used car lot and after much discussion we agreed on a discounted price for the car. I paid that man every last penny I had in my possession, plus a bit more I managed to scrounge from here and there. I think I paid something like £1,350 for a 4-year old car. Whilst I was there he had me look at a couple of other cars. There was an Alfa Romeo 1.3 GT Junior and an Austin-Healey Frog-Eye Sprite in metallic purple with a Ford 2-litre tuned engine. It looked terrific, but I dismissed it on account of there being no luggage space as the boot on these cars did not open. The strange thing was that the insurance quote for the Alfa was way above the cost of that for the Triumph, and yet the Triumph had a much larger engine.

XBP755L was a non-overdrive model of the GT6 and so had the higher ratio final drive to that of the overdrive model. It also had the roto-flex couplings in rear drive train, but I can’t quite work out why because this rear suspension layout should have only been on later cars, implemented to cure the tuck-under characteristics of the rear swing axle when engaging in enthusiastic cornering. It also meant the engine had not yet been nobbled by the USA emission control regulations yet (that came the following year). As a consequence of the higher final drive it didn’t accelerate that quickly from 0-60, but the 30-70mph was amazing! This car would go through this speed range completely in second gear and would eat MGB’s for breakfast. It sounded nice as well. Those old Triumph 6-cyclinder engines did have a nice exhaust note and they were quite economical too. During normal driving conditions I used to get around 40mpg with no problem.

Some have referred to the GT6 as being the poor mans E-Type, and sitting in the drivers seat you certainly got that E-Type feel when looking out over the bonnet with the power bulge down the middle. That’s as far as it went though. I still think, when I see these cars today, that they were a lovely looking machine and should have been a whole lot more successful than it was whilst in production.

As I had now got the GT6 I lost interest in the old black Morris Minor and so it was parked up on in the corner of my parents drive and just left to stand idle – until one day when my brother decided to use it to get himself to a party he was attending. Driving home that night he was involved in a collision, which marked the end of the life of the car on this planet. What we as a family should have done was to have it repaired, because it wasn’t that badly damaged, and if it was around today it would probably have been worth quite a lot of money. However, because of more burning issues, like my Grandmothers deteriorating health, WKO914 went to the grave.

Do you know what a swing axle suspension system is – or a transverse leaf spring? This was a famous suspension design that many Triumph’s were fitted with. These cars were rear wheel drive and what you had at the back was a differential unit that was solidly fixed to the car instead of being allowed to move with the suspension like on a conventional rear driven beam axle. Leading from this there were two drive shafts, one to each rear wheel assembly, that were jointed by a universal joint (UJ’s) at the inner end. The outer end, at the wheel assembly, there was a shackle fixing point where the end of the leaf spring was connected (leaf spring is a term used for a cart spring – a semi elliptical affair with several tempered steel strips sandwiched together) and it was the ends that were allowed to move up and down to provide the suspension travel. That spring ran across the rear of the car from wheel to wheel and was fixed in the centre on top of the differential with a clamping plate. That is why the rear wheels on the Spitfire, Herald, Vitesse and GT6 always splayed outwards at the bottom when under load. It was quite a clever idea really as during cornering the wheel on the outside of the car, this being the one doing the most work, would ‘bank’ itself into the curve and so create better grip. The more load that went on the more the wheel angle would change and dig the tyre into the ground. The trouble was that you could reach a point whereby the loading would come so great the wheel would suddenly reverse its angle and the bottom and the wheel would tuck under the car, lifting the back end up off the road and launching the whole thing into the nearest ditch. Although this condition took quite some abuse to initiate, Triumph went for years without rectifying it and when they did it wasn’t until 1969 with the Mk4 Spitfire where the roto-flex coupling drive, together with modifications with the centre spring mounting, were made.

I don’t know how it happened, but one day I notice that there was an oil leak coming from the axle differential of the GT6 and upon closer inspection I realised there was a split in the diff casing. After searching many scrap yards I actually found another GT6, albeit a Mkll, and bought the diff from it for my car. Fortunately this car too was a non overdrive model so the gear ratio was correct. The job of swapping it over for the damaged one was perhaps one of the worst car repair nightmares I have ever experienced. With the car up on axle stands in Dad’s garage I climbed into it and removed the small inspection panel from the floor above the rear axle. This gave access to six long bolts through a thick steel plate that clamped the centre of the transverse leaf spring to the top of the diff. Using an extension bar on the socket spanner I removed them one by one, and as the last one came out, BANG! The spring leapt up in the middle and came to rest against the underside of the car.

Pushing the thought out of my head of how the hell I was going to get the whole thing back together again I pressed on with removing the old unit and putting in the replacement, which went relatively smoothly. Smoothly that is until I got to the point where I was going to have to sort out the un sprung spring. What a pig of a job, and I was probably doing it all wrong. I undid one end and did up the middle, but that didn’t work. I undid both ends and did up the middle, but that didn’t work. I tried putting weight on the wheels to stretch out its shape, but that didn’t work either. In then end, after two days of struggling, and the assistance of my brother, I managed it. With him inside the car ready with the retaining bolts ready to fix in, I lay underneath. By looping a towrope over the top of the spring and tying it together under the diff I placed a steel bar through the rope and began to twist winding the rope up. Gradually, as the rope tightened, it pulled the middle of the spring down onto the top of the diff whereupon my brother managed to get a couple of the bolts started. I still do not know how this task should be done properly, but for me I managed it this way and vowed that I would never do it again.

Of course the car I always wanted and yearned for was the Triumph TR6. It would have to have been a pre ’72 model to have the 150bhp engine as later examples were detuned to 125bhp. Every time I saw one I would go all weak at the knees and just gorp like some idiotic imbecile. I thought this sports car was the dogs jewels and found it strange to the point of being ridiculous that many of my friends were lusting after Mini Coopers and Cortina 1600E’s. I still would love to have a TR6 today, but so many of them have been mucked around with, notably the PI system being removed in favour of twin or triple carburettors. Why do people have to ruin things like this? There was nothing wrong with the Lucas injection system, it’s just that people did not understand it, and when they do not understand they think it is no good.

After I had been driving the GT6 for about a year I bumped into the guy that sold it to me. He showed to me a 150bhp 1972 TR6 in white with overdrive, a black hood and chrome wires, a car that he was currently trying to sell. Now how do you cope with that? I was nineteen years of age without two pennies to rub together and I was looking at something that I had been lusting after with every sinew and bone in my body - and yet knew I couldn’t have it. That was cruel, really cruel.

I had at that time also noticed the TVR ‘S’ series, and as much as I thought they were really beautiful they always seemed to be too far out of reach to be given serious consideration. Somewhat out of my league I thought.

My other half, when I met her in 1976, had a 1967 green Morris 1000 2-door saloon. I was now convinced these cars were going to haunt me for the rest of my life as I couldn’t seem to get away from them. After a few months she changed it for a 1969 Ford Escort 1300 Delux that was a kind of duck-egg Blue and with rectangular headlights instead of the more usual round ones. Her Dad drove a Sapphire Blue ‘K’ registered Mklll Cortina XL saloon, and he too was a DIY man with cars.

I was still running the Yellow Flying Banana, as it became known at the time, and on account of having this serious relationship on the go, my subsequent engagement resulted in the sale of the GT6 for the sum of £750 and the acquisition of a Honda CB 125cc motorcycle, so as to save up sufficient cash for a house deposit. Later, when engagement turned into marriage, the Escort, which started off as hers, became ours. God, I hated that car! It had done 130,000 miles, the engine rattled like a bag of nails, frequently went wrong and religiously failed its MOT each year without exception. CYP796H was the registered number and when we eventually sold it I was not sorry to see it go. My wife still accuses me of having a personal vendetta against that car even today and that is 29-years later!

As a consequence of living away from home, in my own house with my new wife, I began to lose touch with the cars that were occupying my parents driveway, apart from the fact that I knew the Blue Marina had been left to die in the corner of the front garden and must have been one of the very few cars that you could have said was a piece of scrap that had only had one owner from new! At that time Dad had another abomination to drive, this time a company allocated Chysler Alpine, that is until he was made redundant less than 2-years later. During his period of Gardening Leave he bought another Triumph 2000 saloon, which by this stage was known as the 2000 TC. This one was a pale blue example on a ‘P’ plate. Once he got it he did nothing but moan and complain about its lack of power and poor quality interior. Of course he was making a direct comparison with the previous example he had owned and hadn’t realised that with a car of this age it had succumbed to the curse of the USA emission control regulations and had most of its power output strangled from it.

Around this time also, GPK20K, the white Morris Traveller, was subjected to an unhealthy thump up the rear in a traffic queue in Hampshire, and as a consequence of that, it was demoted to the rank and file of the insurance write-off brigade. Fortunately there was no injury, but a replacement car now had to be located.

I was talking to my mother on the phone one evening when she announced that Dad had got her a replacement car. Upon hearing further details I found I had to sit down and take deep breaths so as to avoid passing out with shock. Dad had bought a FORD! After all that he had said about them I couldn’t believe it. What ever happened to ‘Dagenham Dustbins?” What is more fantastic was that he would go on and on about how much stuff you could get into the back of it and how much weight it could carry. When I saw it, he had a Mkll Cortina estate in blue, rust and red oxide. It looked like something you would have entered into a banger race! It had all different coloured body panels and yet he was so proud of it. I think his pride, however, was more as a consequence of how little he managed to pay for it rather than how good he thought the car was. It just shows how even those who you have come to know inside out can still surprise you.

Later, having found new employment in 1987, Dad was issued with a ‘F’ registered blue Rover 216S. When he again was made redundant in the early 90’s, on account of his office relocating, he kept the car as part of the severance deal.

At around the same time Mum had a beige coloured Metro, a car that always seemed to have a list to port on account of a persistent problem with the suspension. I don’t know where that car came from, but it was another classic example of what not to buy. Mum was so embarrassed one day when she and Dad were driving through Newbury, as upon seeing a sign on a car dealership window they had to stop to investigate. “£1,000 off selected stock! Just bring in your old car with a valid MOT and we will give you a minimum of £1,000 trade in against your next car.” The MOT on the Metro had about 48-hours left to run, and the next day firing on three of its four cylinders, Dad heaved it coughing and spluttering up onto the garage forecourt as his offer of a part exchange. I’d love to have seen that salesman’s face. I bet it was a picture. They stood by their deal though and he came away with an identically coloured Austin Maestro 5-dor hatch in very good condition, although hardly my choice of car.

After the Rover 216 rotted away, as did the Maestro for that matter, Dad got himself a Rover 420 SDi and Mum a 1.2 Corsa. Dad died suddenly of a heart attack in 2001, after which his Rover was sold. Mum is still running her Corsa and can’t be bothered with the hassle of changing it.

As for me, once your priorities in life change, and you take on the responsibilities of marriage and a mortgage, your criteria when choosing a car is very different. At this stage in my life what I needed from a car was very different from what I wanted from a car. Having to watch the pennies I had to think about miles per gallon, the cost of parts, insurance and the general cost of keeping it on the road in terms of its reliability. As a result I am not even going to mention what I have been driving for the last quarter of a century as I have no doubt that you would find it to be far too boring to cope with. What I will say though is that every single one has been a Ford, because away from my parents influence I finally got to find out what was really best for me.

I think it would have been nice back then to have owned a powerful sports car, but this was obviously not meant to be. Besides, as I was working as a police traffic patrol officer at this time I was driving some nice cars at work, and I wasn’t paying for the petrol! Twenty-five years later, and with a daughter just about to embark upon further education at university, I think I had better hang on to my savings for the time being. One day, one way or another, I will have my ‘toy’ to play with. A Chimaera 500 would be fantastic, but a good TVR S3 or 4 would serve well. You never know, I might even get to realise my dream and find a reasonable pre ’72 TR6. If I do you will be one of the first to know.

Julian Smith
Ride Drive Limited