First Cars-car tales and pictures

[bobins]

Back in the olden days they used to be a bit creative when they drew up the illustrations for the cars. They'd make the car occupants somewhat smaller than real life


https://www.amazon.co.uk/POST-BABY-AUST ... 0850457106

And yes - it's that James Hunt

[mickthemaverick]

Looks like Morris played the same game:

borrowed from ebay

[mickthemaverick]

The spec sheet makes interesting reading:

borrowed from ebay

[mickthemaverick]

Reading through that spec I clearly had the Deluxe 4 door model in Black with red leather interior, heater and , presumably, dealer aftermarket windscreen washers.The floor button was actually the spring loaded piston for what was an elaborate water pistol squirting twin jets from a centrally mounted nozzle. It had been my sister's car before me, (she is 6 years older than me), and I remember having to operate the washer from the passenger seat, while I was too young to drive, as she couldn't actually reach the button from the driver's seat. Probably why they made such an impression on me!!! I learnt to drive in that car and had a few undesirable adventures which I'll save for another day!!

[NewcastleFalcon]

I hope you cut your car maintenance teeth by repairing holes in the wing with a cornflake packet and some filler!

Regards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

We couldn't afford Corn Flakes, I had to use the recycled brown paper wrapping from the vegetables and flour and water paste!! Funnily enough though not on the wings, doors and rear arches and some on the rear bumper but I kept it going for 7 months after my sister had "scrapped" it! In actual fact we inadvertantly yumped it at an unexpected hump back bridge, after which the floor line didn't look straight so I sold it for £10 to a chap in the pub. He came back in the following week to demand his money back as he had taken it for an inspection and it had been condemned with end to end chassis rot !! I pointed out it had been "sold as seen" but gave him back £7 which was all I had left of his cash. The rest had gone to my sister as my final payment on the £20 deal I had done with her over 6 months!! Then I bought my first mini , 659 DON, and that's another story altogether!!

[NewcastleFalcon]

I treated my Mini to sills "repaired" with aluminium litho plates courtesy of a friend who worked at a printers. It was the vehicle which was the start of repairing stuff myself. First job....new subframe, new front to back hydralastic pipes. Electric fuel pump had rotted off its mountings on the old subframe. Followed by an engine out clutch replacement. Felt I could give anything a go after that

REgards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

My Dad was a printer and old litho plates were a valuable resource for many things from the shed window frame through the coal bunker lid handles to the surround for the kitchen airbrick. I used one to repair the fairing on my Lambretta SX150 and an old bed from the Webb offset machine to replace part of the rear floor in my mate's mini van. Happy days! Imagine the MOT tester's face if you turned up with a silencer wired in place with pipe cleaners nowadays!!

[van ordinaire]

Deals in pubs, how about a Mk2 Zodiac for a pint?

My Wolseley 6/110 (which has figured here before) I saved from scrap for £10, the sills had been replaced (not repaired) with sheet aly & the holes in the front foot wells repaired (well, covered over) with Formica. (it also had two broken springs, a detached front shocker & a knock. Largely thanks to my father (his Zintec repair panel for between the seat & inner sill where the handbrake is mounted, was a work of art). 12 months & 10,000 miles later (still my only car to have been to Lands End AND John o' Groats) it still knocked - but was stolen while I was deciding what to about it.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Maybe the FCF class of 2023 has something to add to this old thread.

This is the first family car we had, a bluey green as I recall.

I remember our previously empty garage getting that car smell-probably the product of oil and petrol, exhaust, touch-up paint, and start-ups. I think it had a large white round gearstick knob. I do remember a friend of my Dad coming round to do a cylinder head gasket, and it consumed oil. There is no other word for it, we loved that car! I literally cried my eyes out when Dad decided to get another car. Can you blame me......he had decided to buy, on the recommendation of the travelling baker shop man Maurice...who also had one of these monstrosities...

... a 1955 Morris Cowley. To make matters worse it wasn't a proper car......it was a huge hunk of black metal, the most old-fashioned shape known to man, with hideous "bench seats" in the front, probably red vinyl, and a gear stick that was on the steering column.....probably to make room for that bench seat. I think it also had the pathetic semaphore indicators (although when my eldest daughter saw my pic of the A30 Semaphore indicators thought they were cool, and asked me if I could fit some to her Clio!)

I look back through different eyes now of course but at the time the black Morris Cowley was just awful, awful, awful! and my dad bought it off a field of cars at a scrapyard/makeshift garage in Durham known to locals as Olaf's.

Next one was a white Vauxhall Victor Super-that was better. Still column change and bench seats but...cooler by miles. We got a recon engine for that one and used one of those stickers which you just never see these days "Please Pass-Running in" Remember them

Neil

[mickthemaverick]

Easy for me as neither of my parents drove so we never had a car at all. Dad went to work on his bike while my sister and I went to school by bus. Mum stayed at home as a proper housewife until I went to secondary school when she got a job in a TV shop and walked to work until the TV engineer bought the house next door and she got a lift in the moggy work van!!

[CitroJim]

No pictures but I do recall most of our family cars... First conscious memory was our A35 Van with rear windows to convert it tio a Countryman. Then a couple of A40 Farinas, a Mini saloon, a MK I Escort - for a very short time - hated by dad but not hated by me. Then a wooden Soggy Moggy, seen off in short time as intensely disliked by us all. Followed by a Vauxhall Viva HA SL, then a Viva HB, the blue Mini Traveller I've spoken of in the past, a Marina Coupe, the one I learned to drive in. Then an early Renault 5 followed by a later Renault 5. By the time the Renaults came along I'd left home and was running my own car.

Dad then had an early Mini Metro, a MK II Ford Fiesta and then a MK III Fiesta. Latterly he had a couple of Pug 205 Diesels via me and finally, a Nissan Pixo that still lives with me...

[NewcastleFalcon]

Now this comes close to mimicking the black Morris Cowley as I remember it down to those red bench seats!
No fancy chrome embellishment down the front sides by the name badge which I have seen on some versions.
Interior wise the clocks do deserve a bit of an outing on the appropriate thread.

Only 36 seconds awful background "beat", but a bit of nostalgia for yours truly at least even if at the time I thought it was awful



Neil

[Huskyxantia]

My first was a Mini. Old English White, Delux and 1964 vintage. I passed my test 9first time) in it.

Second was an Austin 1300 then my first R4, then a Poxhall Viva (worst car ever) then another R4 and R5, then lots of Metros and then French from there on in. And then there were the motorbikes.

This was one of mine:



I have many tales to tell about them all but time precludes right now. If interested I'll tell all. sadly no pictures.

Jim , you had hair back then ....

[NewcastleFalcon]

Found one picture of the actual Cowley. Looks like we had a white steering wheel Getting cooler by the minute! Appropriate seeing as it's basic spec didn't include a heater

Neil