Dad’s Cars

[66tim99]

Ah, I so very nearly bought one of those (second hand) while I was stationed in Germany in the army. Not sure why I didn't, but later I always wished I had. Absolutely beautiful cars, prettier than a Porsche 356 and on par with an Alfa Giulietta. They were commonplace in Germany in the late seventies and eighties, I haven't seen one out and about in Britain for very many years but when they come up for sale they are sensibly priced versus other classics. I'd have one if I had garage space.

A picture is worth many more words than mine:
View attachment 75136

There's a great looking one in a carport near me in Hackney
EDIT: took a photo on my walk this morning.

 

[Rich20]

I remember my Dad having an Austin Cambridge LTK43 where I would stand up on the passenger seat as we were travelling in the days long before seat belts. I can recall the last journey we made was to the scrapyard where he got £2 for it.

 

[Swiss Cheese]

Green Ford Cortina Mk3 reg. PEL 359R

Just remembered that prior to the Cortina he had a Ford Corsair in very dark green (V4 engine I guess?), and a reg. "FOT nnnD" is stirring somewhere in my brain.

In those days if you lived on a late 60's/early 70's housing estate, there was a 'garage area' and he used to park it outside sometimes if the garage was full.

I recall I was in hospital having my tonsils removed when he sold it (for the above mentioned Cortina), and the last I saw of it was looking down from the ward window and there was a huge dent in the roof where one of the neighbour's kids had jump off the garage onto it!

 

[Eber123]

I know we speak about our Dad's car. But I spend some time to google my first car:



it was a used Ford Taunus 15m (the picture is not from my car, just an example. At that time we had no camera in our family).

Installing and changing all sorts of things (young lad and first car...) I chose to ignore all the information from my dad. Because of this I managed to burn that car once and damaged a good bit which I had to spend a lot of money to replace parts. Well, I guess that is the best way to learn.

Well, now I feel very old ... I need to comfort myself over a good lunch.

Happy California
Eberhard

 

[Borris]

Well if my dad's cars had been donkeys he would have been up before the Beak for neglect. He was a serial offender because to him they were first and foremost a tools to be used and abused until they expired. He was a very creative self taught engineer who always had a project on the go. Therefore his cars had to carry all sorts of assorted metalwork both inside and on top. Consequently the paintwork was the least of his concerns and it showed. Whilst usually mechanically sound he rarely washed them and only cleaned the windscreen once every blue moon and usually only then to appease my mum.

His cars whilst I was at home were:
1. A battered ex GPO Telephone Engineers Morris Z van with windows and seats in.
2. An early side valve 4 door Morris Minor Saloon.
3. A 1098cc Morris Minor Traveller complete with timber rot and moss filled window boxes.
4. A Morris 1100 four door saloon.
5. A Morris Marina 1.3 four door saloon in a delicious shade of baby poo beige.

As you can see his tastes were very conservative. Never the less, I have many interesting and humorous memories of him with each of these vehicles.

 

[bob_summers]

@Borris I watched an episode of Bangers and Cash last week, they auctioned a GPO telephone engineers Morris van with all the period tools in the back. Proper time warp car.

@Jabberwocky lovely pics, assuming scanned Kodachrome!

 

[dripster]

Feeling left out, my parents never had a car!!!

My brother some interesting ones though, including a proper Fiat 500 (that sounded like a dustbin full of empty cans) and an X1/9. He fell out of love with Italian cars when his Alfasud rusted over between rubbing down the patch of rust on the wheel arch and returning from making a cup of tea. Lovely cars but not built for climates with more rain than sun.

 

[Amarillo]

It’s my neighbour’s mum’s car I recall most vividly. Morris Minor with rust holes so you could see the road below.

As a baby I was carted about on the parcel shelf of a VW bus in a Moses basket. I have no recollection. The first car I remember is a white Peugeot 404, with us four brothers, all in short trousers, sitting on the hot plastic bench seat. We then moved onto a beige Volvo with two rear facing seats in the boot.

As the time of my Grandfather’s death, who had a “1 BAR” registered Bentley, dad bought a Hertfordshire registered Ford Prefect purely to transfer the number plate as DVLA Swansea was on strike and that was the only way to transfer the plates.

 

[Vagophile]

My dad's first car was a pre-war Morris 12, I can't remember the registration. I might be mistaken, but as well as a sunroof, I think that it had some sort of automatic jacking system. Both my (elder) sister and I learned to drive using it. One night, returning with my sister from a dance, the engine gave up and on looking under the bonnet, the cylinder head was glowing red. A friend was travelling with us in another car, so we were given a lift home. We returned the next day, started it up and drove it to our local garage for a diagnosis. I can't properly remember now, but I think that it was something to do with gaskets.

 

[Borris]

@Borris I watched an episode of Bangers and Cash last week, they auctioned a GPO telephone engineers Morris van with all the period tools in the back. Proper time warp car.

@Jabberwocky lovely pics, assuming scanned Kodachrome!

I've not seen that episode.

My father was also a very naughty boy. When he acquired his Z van it had a very noisy back axle. He told me that one day he had heard that the local GPO Telephones Z van fleet were scheduled for a complete refurbishment. So whilst out in his works van, also Morris Z van, going about his duties as a GPO Telephone engineer he discovered that purely by chance he just happened to have the noisy axle and some tools in the back of the van. Whilst parked up in a remote spot, his dastardly plan to swop the rear axles over nearly fell apart when a passing Posty stopped to ask if he was OK. " I'll notify the GPO fleet garage to send someone out to give you a hand" he said. My father hastily reassured him that there was no need.

Apparently that van was withdrawn from service, spruced up and reappeared with the same noisy axle!

 

[Jabberwocky]

@Borris I watched an episode of Bangers and Cash last week, they auctioned a GPO telephone engineers Morris van with all the period tools in the back. Proper time warp car.

@Jabberwocky lovely pics, assuming scanned Kodachrome!

Indeed scanned Kodachrome photos. Here is another scanned photo of my Grandfathers "Car" just setting off for school with my dad complete with his satchel. (I know just a tad off topic but worth digging it out).

 

[Borris]

Indeed scanned Kodachrome photos. Here is another scanned photo of my Grandfathers "Car" just setting off for school with my dad complete with his satchel. (I know just a tad off topic but worth digging it out).

View attachment 75157

Do you know what motorcycle he had?

 

[Velma's Dad]

He fell out of love with Italian cars when his Alfasud rusted over between rubbing down the patch of rust on the wheel arch and returning from making a cup of tea. Lovely cars but not built for climates with more rain than sun.

I have a 1960s Alfa and like its connazionali from that era doesn't have particularly bad rust problems (other than in a few places because Alfa decided not to bother to paint some of the hidden panel work at all).

However Italian cars of the seventies had a justifiably awful reputation for tinworm, usually ascribed to the use of Russian comedy metal. In about 1970 Fiat sold the licence to some of its models to Russia, which became the Lada. The USSR, being foreign currency-strapped, made payments in kind, in the form of very inferior steel stock. Alfa still wasn't part of the Fiat group at that time but being state owned was probably forced to buy the cheapest steel which was the dumped Soviet stuff.

The Sud, fantastic car that it was to drive, was produced at the new Alfa southern plant which went through terrible quality issues due to strikes, and that probably didn't help.

(Even before the Lada, Russian cars certainly were deeply crap. I remember my dad looking around a Moskvitch at a dealership in London when they were first imported in the last sixties and musing that he might be able to afford one, which would be his first brand new car. Then he saw how the bodywork was rusting already, in the showroom.)

 

[Jabberwocky]

Do you know what motorcycle he had?

Hi Borris, sadly I have only a guess.
A quick look around the internet and I think its a Norton of around 1923 - 1927, probably a model 16H 490cc sidevalve.

 

[barry]

First car I remember was a blue and grey Rover 14. Reg HFM something something something. I'd be about 6. It had a fabulous blue leather interior that I can still smell 70 years later.

 

[Vagophile]

I think that it had some sort of automatic jacking system.

One for the Anoraks. I wasn't mistaken.

 

[Velma's Dad]

One for the Anoraks. I wasn't mistaken.

Quite a few pre- and post-war cars had built-in jacking systems. Riley, Wolseley, Austin, Standard etc offered them as an option. On surviving cars they have often been removed because they added a lot of weight for limited utility (versus just carrying a jack in the boot).

Other clever stuff included automatic chassis oiling systems - great until they gummed up and starved oil from crucial trunnions etc. As with the jacks, commonly disabled or removed completely in favour of a trusty grease gun.

 

[clarinetbcn]

This was my Dad's car when I was growing up in the 60s, a 1963 Checker Marathon Station Wagon. The civilian version of the classic New York taxi cab, Chevy 283 c.i. small block V8, GM Turbo-Hydramatic auto gearbox, made in Kalamazoo, Michigan. My father hated the planned obsolescence of American cars, and this design stayed basically unchanged from 1956 to 1982.

My sister demanded to be let out to walk a block from wherever anyone that knew her might recognize her.

 

[Hamish S]

A varied little list: - Morris Oxford, Austin Cambridge with red leather, Triumph 2000 MK 1 with overdrive CMW 208C white with a black roof, Triumph 2000 MK 2 automatic dark blue XWV 528K (1st car I ever did a handbrake turn in, almost drove it into a wall coming out the pub as I forgot to turn the lights on. If he had know I would never have been aloud to borrow it again. Mind you he only let me borrow it so that I would pick him up after he'd had a few) and then a Triumph Dolomite 1850 British racing green LMR 22P.

 

[SpikeMcBike]

My Old Man had some great cars, that I only wish I could have now;

Datsun 260Z in metallic sh!t brown (don't know the reg but circa 1979)
Ford Capri 3.0S in green (DPN689V) - he put a bag of cement in the boot to keep the wheels on the tarmac.
Saab 900 Turbo dark red (NYJ60W). This had a red velour interior.
BMW 735i - was the size of a small barge.

He now drives a Kia and tows a caravan.

 

[Bellcrew]

My Old Man had some great cars, that I only wish I could have now;

Datsun 260Z in metallic sh!t brown (don't know the reg but circa 1979)
Ford Capri 3.0S in green (DPN689V) - he put a bag of cement in the boot to keep the wheels on the tarmac.
Saab 900 Turbo dark red (NYJ60W). This had a red velour interior.
BMW 735i - was the size of a small barge.

He now drives a Kia and tows a caravan.

Shame the manufacturers had not perfected paint protection systems that actually worked, sadly most just disappeared in a puff of rust. Todays cars will be condemned to the recycling pit by their complex electronics and the green meanies.

 

[Auberg-ine]

While still fitting in a suitcase my dad drove me around with this:


At the age of 5 he brought me and mom ànd their friends couple for excursions to the coast in this:


At the age of 18 he had the fabulous idea to let me get my drivers licence with this:

... Must have been for the 3m crumple zone at both ends,... ;-)

 

[Borris]

As an aside I found it interesting that they choose to air this Top Gear episode on Mothering Sunday. However, given the age of many of us that own Californias, I doubt if many of our mothers would have owned their own car when we were young. So section about Mum's cars probably wouldn't have been quite so good.

 

[Magic Bus]

The car that my dad owned that sticks in my mind was a 1960’s Maroon Ford Anglia - reg no JOE 898. I’m sure that reg number would be worth a bit today.

My mum never learned to drive, though she did try - having lessons for about 18 months, but she could not consistently get to a standard good enough to pass her test. She never learned to ride a bike either.

 

[soulstyledevon]

I didn't have a Dad growing up.
But my Grandad was always there, in his White with Red stripes (80s) Ford Capri.
He was the coolest old man on the council estate. He always wore a suit too.
A suit wearing Ford Capri driver...