First Cars-car tales and pictures

[NewcastleFalcon]

We have boxes full of photos and slides in a state which you could call practically impossible to catalogue and organise without spending a couple of centuries putting them into order. Although maybe desirable it isnt going to happen.

But occasionally you come across a random find which if you had been looking for specifically you would never find.

Yes its a picture of our first ever car.

nf own work

...and its got most of the registration on it, not that I suspect it will have survived lovingly preserved to this day, but I have always half remembered it and now I know (773 GVW). Thing is I always thought it was a 1958 car, but the reg puts it roughly JUly/August 1956 and an Essex Registration.

For those of you viewing in black and white its the bluey green car behind the small boy!

regards Neil

[Gibbo2286]

Your 'Forgot the anti freeze' story

One of my customers asked if I could sell his Hillman Avenger for him, he left it on my forecourt, when the weather got suddenly very cold I called him and asked if it had antifreeze, "Oh yes plenty."

A few days later a potential buyer wanted to look over it, I lifted the bonnet and could see on the floor below the engine a chunk of cast iron about four inches square.

[mickthemaverick]

Well Neil that first car has got my memory twitching again!! Would I be right in saying that the three bar grille on your 100E made it the Anglia?

[NewcastleFalcon]

Well Neil that first car has got my memory twitching again!! Would I be right in saying that the three bar grille on your 100E made it the Anglia?

Yes it was an Anglia 100E, two door and much weeping and wailing from me when we traded it in for a 1955 black Morris Cowley which was big ugly and old fashioned in comparison.

Regards Neil

[van ordinaire]

Know what you mean but nostalgia wouldn't be enough to get me back in a 100E again but another Cowley (the 1200 6-seater you could almost walk around in) MIGHT tempt me*, although I always aspired to an Isis - especially a Traveller (or perhaps that was only retrospectively, having been seduced by the delights of that old Austin truck engine, courtesy of a friend's Big Healey & latterly my Wolseley 6/110: still one of my favourites!)

* especially on the same "If you can get it going, you can have it" basis

[NewcastleFalcon]

Worth a digging up of this thread fromn time to time.

Autocar has a bit of a gallery of the "The first cars of famous car enthusiasts"

Some of them do appear to be a bit too well-heeled to be interesting so as an example this is from a lad from Consett. I liked James May's Cavalier as well

https://www.autocar.co.uk/slideshow/fir ... nthusiasts

REgards Neil

[bobins]

I note that they've illustrated Jackie Stewart's first car - an A30 - with a picture of an A35

[NewcastleFalcon]

I note that they've illustrated Jackie Stewart's first car - an A30 - with a picture of an A35

So whats peanut? (yes thats what the owners called their little car?)


Regards Neil

[bobins]

Back in the day I used to own an A35. They had, amongst other differences, a bigger rear window than the A30.

[NewcastleFalcon]

More Peanut?



REgards Neil

[NewcastleFalcon]

and finally


REgards Neil

[bobins]

A30s weren't exactly sprightly to start with, so I've never understood why people would want to fit an air-brake above the windscreen

[mickthemaverick]

Wasn't that an early plan to lighten the steering

[NewcastleFalcon]

In my searching the forum for "Peanut" which I photographed in Keswick a few years ago I came across this revealing assessment of the A30/A35 from the keyboard of Gibbo...

The comments about the Morris 1000 and Austin A35 surprise me, the A30/35 was a terribly cramped car, claustrophobic and gave you a blinding headache if you drove it more that about thirty miles.

In our showroom in Birmingham we had new A35s sitting around for months waiting for a buyer at the same time as there was a twelve week waiting list for the Minor1000s

REgards Neil

[mickthemaverick]

The Minor 1000 was my first car, VYV 333. Very spacious compared to my mate's dad's A35. Four door model with floor operated windscreen washers, nothing but the best!!!