Ford 8
My parents bought a car like this in the 1930s for £105. During WWII when there was no petrol for private cars they kept the car in the garage raised on blocks to keep the tyres from degrading. After the wae we had a car. People who had sole their cars at the beginning of the war found themselves carless for several years after the war because of the multi-year waiting lists. Ww eventually got a new car about 6 years after the end of the war!
Ford Anglia
I think we were able to buy a Ford Anglia like this in 1952. We sold the Ford 8 for £115 ... a little more money than my parents had paid for it more 15 years earlier! I learned to drive in this car and later on it was bequeathed to me as I transitioned into adulthood.
Austin A40
My parents migrated from the Ford Anglia to the Austin A40 around 1960. This was an early front wheel drive car. Its handling characteristics were very good.
Fiat 127
My parents migrated from the Austin A40 to a Fiat around 1975. By this time the British auto industry had fallen on hard times and a variety of foregn brands were better value.
Morris 8 Convertible
This was a superb little car ... very sporty but 4 full sized seats ... convertible ... with room for more passengers sitting on the folded down canvas top! This worked well except that stearage was lost when the car went over a bump and the front wheels became airborne!
Wolseley Hornet
I traded the Morris Eight for an even more exciting car ... a 6 cylinder Wolseley Hornet with some racing pedigree! Unfortunately, we ... that is Barry Hook and I ... 'blew' the engine when we were 'tuning' it. The engine had two carbureters and maximum power was achieved when these were 'tuned'. During this process a connecting rod came loose and crashed out of the side of the crankcase! and that was the end of that engine. Barry and I found a 6 cylinder MG engine in a junk yard, purchased it and eventually installed it in the Wolseley! How we actually accomplished this, I cannor recollect. It wa a miracle that we got this vehicle back on the road!
Chevrolet WWII Military Truck
Though I was never in the British military, I was in the ROTC while I was at Cambridge and one of my assignments was to serve as a 'driving instructor'. I was 19 years old with about 3 years of driving experience in a small car. I did the instruction in a 25 year old army truck similar to this that had been used in WWII and was very poorly maintained! The steering wheel had a huge amount of 'slack'. It is a miracle that I never had an accident!
Cadillac DeVille
I drove a car like this from Montreal in Quebec to Edmonton in Alberta during my visit to North America in the summer of 1960. Two of us took the car from a dealer in Montreal to a dealer in Edmonton. We paid the gas, but otherwise nothing. The dealers were able to sell the car for substantially more money out-West in Edmonton than in Montreal. I had never driven an 'automatic' before, nor had such a powerful engine so drove from Montreal to Sudbury ... a distance of around 430 miles ... without releasing the handbrake! By the time we realized that we had a problem we had ruined our brakes which could have been a disaster ... but we survived the remaining 1,800 miles!
Dodge
Three of us bought a car like this ... but much near the end of its life ... in Toronto, Canada for $30 ... that is $10 each! We then set off for Florida where two of us had tickets to travel by boat from Key West to Cuba. This did not work out because a hurricane intervened and wrecked the road bridge access to Key West! But that was not the only misfortune. By the time we got to Georgia, the engine was consuming more lubricating oil than gasoline ... and we were laying down a perfect smoke screen was we proceeded down the highway!. When we crossed into Florida we were stopped by the Highway Patrol who informed us that 'we could drive our car in Georgia in that state of repair, but not in Florida'. They gave us 24 hours to fix the smoking or get the car off the road! We continued to Jacksonville which had had race riots during the weekend two days before. As we went down the main street in Jacksonville, our car was backfiring very noisily and folk on the sidewalks were flattening themselves thinking that this was more gunfire as it had been during the riot. We found a junkyard ... dropped off our car, and then completed the journey to Miami by Greyhound bus.
In the summer vacation of 1961, I had a summer job working for Austin of Canada. For part of that time I worked in the main maintenance facility for the company as a cost clerk working up the quotes and invoices for the customers. I was seriously unimpressed by the 'top management' of this marketing outpost of the British car industry and even more unimpressed when one of the executives in the (failing) Canadian operation transferred to the company head office in the UK in the very top echelon of their management. They did, however, give me a loaner vehicle for several weeks after my working stint which gave me the opportunity to travel extensively and intensely to visit steel mills througout the Northeast United States.
Austin Mini ... I bought an Austin Mini van like this as soon as I returned from the summer trip to Canada in 1961. I went to work doing a Management Training program with the Davy Ashmore Group(Davy) at the Darnall Works in Sheffield. Davy had an amazing machine shop handling the huge casting that were at the core of rolling mills in the steel industry. The mini performed very well, but it was limited to a maximum legal speed or 30 mph because it was a 'commercial' vehicle. Because it was a commercial vehicle I did not have to pay 'Purchase Tax' and accordingly saved myself more than 30% off the normal retail price! During my first year of minivan ownership I did not get caught speeding ... but that changed when I moved to London and was heading to the 'three striekds and your out' limit to my driving licence!
In 1963 I became the owner of a Jaguar Mark 7 saloon car. It was an exciting vehicle but not economical for someone starting out on a career. The petrol consumption was considerable and the cost of petrol severely curtailed my use of the vehicle. From time to time I got to drive on the M5 motorway and I recall racing a Triumph TR4 sports car and leaving that vehicle far behind. This Jaguar could travel at 105 miles per hour ... but stopping was a challenge. This was before disc brakes were a standard feature!
Plymouth Valient
I bought a car like this new in Texas for $1,620 in 1967. It served me and my wife very well for a good number of years. We upgraded to bigger and better in 1974.
Chevrolet Biscayne Station Wagon
I bought this vehicle second hand quite soon after moving from Texas to Connecticut. It served as a 'seconf car' but also was very useful for moving all sorts of bulky material and, once in a while, as a 'camper'.
Dodge Polara
While I was working with Gulton Industries I was assigned to serve as the Co-President of the company's Southern States subsidiary in Georgia. For some reason, the previous President had chosen to sell off two company cars, and given that I had no vehicle in Georgia, I chose to buy one of them. When there was no taker for the second one, I bought that one as well so that there would be a car available for my wife. In the time that I was working as co-president the company had record performance which was very gratifying ... but for me it came at a cost. In my position as Co-President at Southern States, I reported to a Group Vice President. In my previous position at the parent company I had been 'Budget Manager' with a specific responsibility to help 'turn around' a company (gulton Industries) that was weeks away from likely bankruptcy. My job was to use the 'budget process' to 'save' a huge amount of cash disbursement in order to stave off bankruptcy. This did not make me any friends in the company who lost their 'pet projects' but kept the company alive. In this process the Group Vice President who was now my immediate boss chose to get rid of me in favor of someone ... a new hire ... who did not have my baggage. The individual ... Jim Gladstone ... who had hired me into Gulton was appalled at the turn of events, but powerless to do much about it as he was having to fight other battles himself.
VW diesel Rabbit
I bought this car in 1974 in response to the oil shock of 1973 and the massive increase in the price of crude oil courtesy of the Arab oil embargo and the subsequent increase in the retail price of gasoline in the USA. This diesel Rabbit got around 55 mpg compared to the under 10 mpg of the Dodge Polara gas guzzlers.
Subaru
This small Subaru seemed like 'good value for money' though it was fairly clear that Subaru engineering was considerably inferior to VW German engineering.
BMW
This car was a 'hand-me-down' from a friend living in Washington DC who was returning to Kenya. The car had had an interesing life being used to race in its early days. Compared to most cars, this BMW was beautifully engineered. However, when it went wrong, it was expensive to fix!
Dodge Neon
THis was a pretty basic vehicle ...
Mitsubishi station wagon
I owned a Mitsubishi sedan in the USA in the 1990s. It was a good basic vehicle. At the time we lived in Manhattan and used a car for infrequent trips away from the city. Otherwise the car lived in a parking garage rather than being a status symbol in a suburban driveway!
I owned a Honda Accord for several years in the early 2000s. It eventually 'died' with more than 300,000 miles on the clock. I was impressed by the Honda engineering and what I saw at the time as Honda value!
Nissan Versa
This is a very basic vehicle ... but it turns out that its performance is quite good. I have a 'stick shift' which might enable me to compensate some for the rather modest power of the engine ... but it does all the basics better than most of the cars that I have driven in the past.
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