Memory Lane

[paulie b]

Just a bit of fun which I thought may stimulate interest amongst the members.

I wonder what memories you have of the car(s) you owned or drove during your youth? For me at least - being in my mid fifties - there has been many changes.

My first car was a 1973 Vauxhall Victor 1.8 saloon. It was owned by my father who passed it on to me. As a 17 year old it was some motor to get behind the wheel of. In terms of equipment/specs it had only four gears. Cars didn't have radios as standard in those days so I fitted one myself. It was a push button jobbie with two big buttons. One for ON/OFF the second for tuning. The buttons were so you could jump between pre-set stations. The windows were mandrolic, you wound them up and down by hand. If I remember correctly, the window washers were operated by a big button which you pressed to get water on the screen. This system was not electric, it was a manual pump set up. No rear window demister either. People used to buy them as after-market add ons. 

Before joining the emergency services I worked in the motor trade as a panel beater. As such I had lots of opportunities to drive various cars of the day. It was a BL main dealer so I was mostly restricted to that make. One car I sometimes worked on was the Austin Allegro Vanden Plas. It was an ordinary Allegro with a Rolls Royce type grill and interior refinements which included trays which folded out from the front seats to provide rear seat passengers with a place to put their champagne and cucumber sandwiches! Seeing as it was faux posh it may have even had five gears! 

 

 

 

[paulie b]

Just to add to the above. When I got the Vauxhall, I took it upon myself to re-spray the thing in my dads garage. The vehicle itself was white with a black vinyl roof (so seventies!). I used to do evening/weekend jobs for people from there too and was always quite busy - anyone who remembers will know that cars used to rust prematurely in those days, so I had a queue of people asking me to carry out repairs and touch up. 

I got some white paint from work and set about prepping/removing rust patches/filling etc then gave the car a good few coats of paint. Afterwards I applied VX decals/metal badges to it to make it look like the sporty VX version. When it emerged from the garage all shiny and fresh, I had little hesitation in showing it off by cruising down the towns main street on each weekend evening!  

[Puglet]

My first car was a Vauxhall Chevette 2 door saloon, nice car that, top speed 88mph iirc, remember I'd saved £1k for my first car, but back in mid-80s they all rust buckets for that money, so Mum lent me bit more, for 'decent' car. It was good, reliable car for me, but was bit noisy at motorway speeds. 

Funny you mention Vauxhall Victor, my Dad had an estate version in seventies, I remember the black plastic seats used to burn my legs when I was a nipper in summer and remember he rigged up a Roberts radio with car adapter so we could have some tunes. Just checked internet and his was FD series. 

[paulie b]

I remember the Chevette. I never owned one, but have driven a few. It says a lot about anti corrosion methods in those days that I had to make repairs to rusting arches etc on what was then a seven year old car. I could have gotten away with just spraying specific areas, but I did the whole thing because I had got the paint (BL colour) for cost from work.

Also, yes. The vinyl seats! getting into the car sitting on those in summer whilst shirtless was an experience to be missed!

[Wiz201]

I'm only 33 so have been driving about 11 years now. First car was my dad's Honda Jazz which was written off in a non fault accident in 2012. It had done 80k mileage due to dad using it for work then I nabbed it for dog agility shows.

[Bitch1001]

My first car was a 02 Toyota Yaris ...dark blue .... cassette player in it 

i loved it ...it was fun to drive , cheap to run .... traded it in 2014 .... sad day that was...

then got a  brand new Citroen ...hated that ...kept it 6 months ....got rid in 2015 and bought my xcite aygo  in orange which I still love ... very similar to my old Yaris in size and running costs ...