Ops-Normal.org

By request

A recent survey suggests that the first car you owned is as memorable as your first kiss.
Mine was a mucky old escort that had to be hand cranked.
I can’t remember what make the car was.

ricardian wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 09, 2024 6:36 pm

A recent survey suggests that the first car you owned is as memorable as your first kiss.
Mine was a mucky old escort that had to be hand cranked.
I can’t remember what make the car was.

Mine was an old Standard 10 with a rough body, that almost got me to where I wanted to go, sometimes.

Mine was a Standard 8. Green, red leather interior !

Vauxhall Velox,bench seat. The bench seat was a plus!! Seemed a big car when I had it, saw one last year and it looked very small..

Mini 1071 Cooper 'S' all known defects were OK everthing else broke.

Re a couple of posts back.

Mine was a 1936 Austin 10.

Bought for £5 and which disintegrated on the partially built Northam Bridge in Southampton, 1965?.

My second was a Ford Poplar 100E, which my sister rolled.

It didn't do too well after that, but my sister survived.

Hydromet wrote: ↑

Wed Apr 10, 2024 11:40 am

ricardian wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 09, 2024 6:36 pm

A recent survey suggests that the first car you owned is as memorable as your first kiss.
Mine was a mucky old escort that had to be hand cranked.
I can’t remember what make the car was.

Mine was an old Standard 10 with a rough body, that almost got me to where I wanted to go, sometimes.

I learned on my parents' Standard 10 - like a tank it was! Remember the boot space that didn't have a lid and could only be accessed by pulling forward the back seat rest?!

My first car was a Morris 1000 Traveller which I modified for track use with a Formula Junior engine and (all-round) lowered suspension. Only unintended modification was to roll it end-over-end during an unofficial practice session on the perimeter track of a no-longer-used RAF airfield (we had the permission of the Commanding Officer (well, sort of) when battling to overtake a Mini Cooper.
The Moggie was returned to road (and track) use and competed in many official events after minor (!) superficial body repairs.

The Moggie was driven to Le Mans and served as an unofficial track car for the Standard Triumph signalling team based at Mulsanne Corner and was driven around the track after the track was officially closed.
I say unofficial, because the track access pass was probably a facsimile of the previous year's genuine track pass which had somehow been doctored to display the appropriate date.
Cambridge undergraduates are resourceful chaps.

It was traded-in for a Lotus 3-7 replica (along with my legacy/inheritance from my grandmother).

The Lotus suffered a catastrophic failure of a rear (independent) suspension radius control arm, and was written off with the wreck being sold for 'restoration'.

My next one, after writing off a Mk 2 Sprite was a sensible Morris 1000 Traveller as well. The brakes never worked very well, which led to scrape with a Mk 10 Jag which took up most of the road - well he knew the Chief Constable etc as his wife told me - so it was me who got the warning from the cops. Deserved really but the Sprite was fun - lots of noise and bad on corners but fun for the girls. It accounted for three other cars one Saturday night in Edinburgh...well I did I suppose.

My first was a lovely escort in red, handled nicely and could really go if revved up.

Amazing! Did we use the same agency?

A suggestion to Admin1; Maybe move the 'First Car....' to its own thread?

I would suggest that a few 'interesting' posts might be made...

A35 van, purchased in 1969 for £199/19s/11d and paid for on HP. One previous owner - a fish merchant in Torpoint. Reliable runabout which took me from Plymouth to Manchester via the A38 several times. I had the van for about 5 years. However, despite scrubbing the interior with a variety of industrial cleansers, every morning when I opened the van's door there was an aroma of fish.

My first car was a grey 1956 Austin A35 Reg. 975KMV bought secondhand in 1964 for £175. Paid for with a £5 deposit and the rest was a bank loan that my bank manager father set up for me. About 6 months later later I was driving overnight from a weekend assignation in Bournemouth with my girlfriend - later to be the first Mrs C16 - to Culdrose. I fell asleep at about 0100 in St Blazey near St Austell, failed to take a left hand bend and demolished the car by losing an argument with a dry stone wall. A kindly Officer of the Watch sent a Tilly Van with a Wren driver to collect a very shaken C16! Next car was an Austin A40.

Learnt to drive in *my* 1933 Austin 7 (motorised roller skate, turning circle ~10ft) and a friend's Daimler 1938 Light 20 - Mulliner coachwork. (Preselector gearbox, turning circle half a mile, but diddnarf go - for the time, anyway.) Interesting as a learner to discover that they drove slightly differently.

First half-decent car was a 1960 Skoda Octavia built like a tank - well it used the same x-beam "chassis" as their military ambulances anyway - and taught me all I ever needed to know about uncontrollable understeer. Ex-Motor-Show demonstrator, so put together well and a batch with closely-adjacent serial numbers were rallied in the UK and went on to win their class in the Rallye Monte Carlo.
An 'orrible beast, and I loved it.

Hillman Imp

Gearstick came off in my hand on day 3 as I went to work at the airport GCI - no harm done

Girlfriend did the same that evening

My first car was a 1954 Morris Minor Convertible, the roof fabric was a bit stretched to the point where 45mph would see the roof flap up and down with a
noise like hitting it with a baseball bat. The noise was so bad that it was a warning that I was speeding, as back then most speed limits were 30mph and
it probably saved me from a few speeding tickets.

Opsboi wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 12, 2024 11:27 pm

Hillman Imp

Gearstick came off in my hand on day 3 as I went to work at the airport GCI - no harm done

Girlfriend did the same that evening

In my first car, the Stranded 10, the accelerator pedal broke off one night as I was driving home. Fortunately, I had some twine with me (probably rolling around the floor or among the rest of the junk stowed in odd places) and was able to jury-rig a hand throttle until I could obtain a replacement from the scrap yard.

Mine was the ubiquitous Morris 1000, 1963 vintage. Bought it for £50 after I finished my degree course in 1974 and got a job as a plasterers labourer. Third party, fire and theft insurance cost me £52! Got me to work every day around numerous work sites in London and made quite a few trips from London to Cornwall, including the one to my wedding in Penzance. It was generally reliable but suffered from a common problem, a sticking fuel pump. Car would regularly stop from fuel starvation which could be cured by lifting the bonnet (hood to some) and hitting the fuel pump with something. I kept a wooden spatula in the car that I used to clean mortar and plaster buckets at work, a few short blows with it usually did the trick or at least it did until the time, halfway to Cornwall when no amount of beating would get it to work. It meant that the girlfriend and I had to spent the night in a nearby farmhouse where we got some black looks (can one still say that?) from the lady of the house as I'm sure she knew that we were not married and strongly disapproved. New fuel pump fitted by local garage next day and we made it to Cornwall.

Sold it for £21 when we emigrated to South Africa in early 1975 (I had to haggle for the last pound!) The car has long since gone to make baked bean cans or similar but the number lives on, 5908 PH, it is now on a VW according to the DVLA website.

Austin A35, not my first car. Bought it in Sydney for $40 and drove it down to Melbourne where I met up with a girl who was waiting to hear about a job in Townsville so we drove north and continued on as far as Cooktown then back to Townsville where she was to meet her employers. One of the Townsville locals offered me a ride to Darwin so I parked the Austin in a back corner of the car park at the airport and we headed west, west as far as Cloncurry where we had an accident, I had a week in hospital but the driver never recovered. There was a daily bus heading west so I bought a ticket to Darwin. A short while in Darwin and it was time to head home starting with a ride to Three Ways then a ride in a big truck back to Townsville. The faithful A35 was still in the car park and a few minutes with the crank had it running. A few days later and I was back in Sydney to get my flight back to NZ. A bit over 4,000 miles in the A35, yes, I was able to sell it and made a small profit, sold for $45!