First cars: Would you want to own it again?

AstraVanMan ( snipped-for-privacy@Whataloadofforeskinbollocks.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

I'll be impressed if "coach" turns out to be an SWB Transit minibus...

Reply to
Adrian
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I regularly used to fit nine in my 1959 Hillman Husky, and drive 30 miles or so. It was a bugger at night, with the headlights on low beam, they were still lighting up the trees.

Reply to
Dean Dark

It's just that it seems to be part of IAM teaching as well that hay bales leave straw behind them.

City based, the IAM, I suspect...

Reply to
Ian Dalziel

My brother had one of those, and I borrowed it a few times. It got a bit interesting when the throttle return spring broke on the M4 heading towards Hammersmith.....

But I agree with you - I would love one too.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Warren

My first car was in 1955 ( or was it 1956 )

It was one of the Colin Chapman Austin Seven Specials, modified even further for a certain degree of comfort.

Cambridge Alloy head with double valve springs and lightened flywheel. - could break the halfshafts - and it did. Brakes were cable so constantly needed adjustment and only sort of stoped the car!! Exhaust was just outside the passengers side and was a chrome straight through silencer with chicken wire inside to prevent the plod pushing a stick up and complaining about lack of baffles.

Headlamps had a tendancy to fall off at over 60 mph

Colour was red, of course. And it was a good bird puller!!!

Got rid of it when the shock absorbers collapsed.

Reply to
Ken Parker

In article , Dean Dark writes

At the risk of divulging that I may be the oldest fart of all, I can tell you that my first car was a 1945 VW Kübelwagen - the Wehrmacht's equivalent of the Willys Jeep.

I bought it in 1951 from a garage in Redhill, and was told that it had been one of two VWs, the other being a Beetle, that had been sent from Germany in 1948 for assessment by the Board of Trade, in order to decide whether to continue British controlled production at the Wolfsburg factory. Both vehicles were classified as rubbish and eventually sold at auction, and it was decided the VW plant could safely be given back to the Germans.

The story may even have been true, because there was no previous owner recorded in the old buff log book, and the official condemnation of VW: "The vehicle does not meet the fundamental technical requirements of a motorcar"; and the fact that the factory was returned to German control in 1949, are matters of record.

The car was of course left-hand drive, painted blue and grey, and I drove it all over the UK for about a year - mostly with the hood down to dispel the notion that there was a motorcycle right behind me. It had no ignition key, but a screwdriver or penknife in the lock served just as well.

As a young regular soldier, I initially had misgivings about driving a German car so soon after the war, but I need not have worried, my colleagues considered it very sporting of me to drive an enemy vehicle.

Being permanently broke, I drove it once too often with the oil level dangerously low, and a big end started to knock. I could find no VW agents in the UK at that time, so I wrote to the factory at Wolfsburg. I received an extremely courteous reply from a German executive, offering to sell me a new 1131cc engine.

This was financially out of the question, of course, so I sold the car for a pittance to a mechanic in Barnard Castle. I heard later that he sold it to Monaco Motors, who may have been the first VW agents in the UK.

It is my belief that since I sold it, my old Kübelwagen has appeared in every WW2 film produced in Britain.

Peter

Reply to
Peter Adams

My first vehicle was a 1962 850 Mini Van, ex-Water Board. Cost £65 and ran until it finally rusted away. I still have parts of it on my Mini Marcos. Would I have another? No. I got fed up with steel cars long ago. I learned to drive on my parents' 1959 Austin Se7en and progressed through the Mini range - 998 Cooper, 1100 Clubman, 1275 Cooper 'S', Mini Marcos (same mechanicals), 1380 Mini Jem. A pick-up would be useful for carting bits around in, but it would probably be a Domino with a 1300 engine. The 850 was too gutless. I once had a broken throttle cable and got home by using what was left of it to wire the throttle open and driving on the ignition switch. Not much difference from normal!

Reply to
Richard Porter

Peter

You've forgotten the cable brakes that for me faded to nothing less than half way down the hill into Lyme Regis and I'd forgotten the wipers that would stop 100 yards up the hill out again (assuming I could negotiate the entry into Lyme without any brakes).

I'd also forgotten about the lights. Under a full moon, turning them off would could improve visibility.

The 3 speed was ok, so long as you could double-declutch to get into 1st on the move.

Richard See

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Reply to
Richard Cole

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Peter Adams saying something like:

Should have hung on to it; a genuine 1944 one went on ebay Germany for some silly figure recently - about 13,000euros iirc. It was in regular use too; had a roof made out of a blue tarpaulin.

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

You win.

Reply to
Dean Dark

*now following your logic ;-) *
Reply to
Chris Bolus

I still have my first car - my Beetle - and have no intentions to part with it.

Now the first car I drove properly was when I was 13 or 14... that was a very rusty 1978 Mini. The car was too rusty to go on the road again, but it still exists as a pile of parts, seats, engine and subframes. I haven't checked on them for 5 years so I hope they are still there. One day I'll rebuild it with a Heritage body...

Reply to
Howard Rose

If it is still arround yes. When I bought my Skoda 120L 4speed, they were still at the tail end of banger status. I bought it to learn in in my early 30's, passed first time, and drove it for another year.

Now, there are less than 50 Estelle and Rapids, each, left taxed. Damn, I probably know most the owners personally and will be seeing them tomorrow.

Reply to
NeedforSwede2

Good car to learn to drive in, if you can drive a rear engined, rwd machine then you can drive anything. I feel that driving school cars should be of a decent size and engine so as respect of the power and weight is learnt from day one, which doesn't say much for me as I learnt in a fester!

Reply to
Ken

My first was a '70 Fiat 124 B-series coupe. I had a C-series and an A series after that, but none of them were as nice looking cars, nor did they have the Very Silly Engine I'd put into it.

Reply to
Andy Dingley

My instructors car was a Punto Diesel. I had to stop driving the 120L for 3 weeks before the test, because I drove abysmally badly in the punto if I didn't.

The first job I did on 120L was to swap the clutch slave cylinder the day after I got it home. The missus drove it back for me, and discovered that the starter motor was shagged, and the slave cylinder was totally on it's last legs and wouldn't come back up after pressing the pedal. Tried bleeding it, that didn't help, then noticed that it was leaking in the boot. The was the first mechanical job I had ever done on a car by myself.

Reply to
NeedforSwede2

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