Dad's Cars

‘To 1 Standard 8 Saloon 1955, complete as inspected: £400’ So reads the earliest item of paperwork I have relating to my dad’s cars. Our dad was never what you’d call a petrol head, although in his younger days, during his national service, he’d ridden a motorcycle, a fact I always found hard to equate with his mild-mannered persona. Cars or occasionally vans were a necessity – as a semi-pro musician, he needed transport to get himself and his drum kit to gigs all over the Midlands and occasionally further afield. As a young musician, he’d had to take his drums on the bus to engagements, fitting them under the stairs, so it’s easy to see why, in an era when car ownership was much less commonplace than it is today, he chose to get himself mobile at an early age.

The Standard 8, registration RNA 883, wasn’t dad’s first car, although he would often reminisce about it in later years. As the garage receipt shows, he traded in a van, of which no details survive. He owned the Standard until June 1961, when it was traded in against an Austin A35, XOJ 62. This was, I believe, another van, the same as the one later made famous by Wallace and Gromit (dad would have appreciated the connection). I have no recollection of this vehicle, which was with him for just over a year. In its place came 799 HDH, a Triumph Herald in two-tone cream and brown. I got to know this car very well over the coming years. Dad later claimed that he would let me sit on his lap and hold the steering wheel as he drove down our quiet suburban street, unlikely as this sounds. Either way, I soon became fixated on Triumph Heralds and even got to own one myself – a pedal car version made by Tri-Ang. There weren’t may production saloons available as pedal cars, so I was unusually lucky in being able to own a miniature version of ‘daddy’s car’.

Some time in the summer of 1964, aged three, I was dismayed to see, from my bedroom window, a canary yellow Vauxhall Victor pulling onto the drive with dad at the wheel. What had happened to the beloved Triumph Herald? I would never see it (or, indeed, the Victor) again. The Vauxhall was a temporary car supplied by the garage from which dad got his next vehicle, a white Hillman Minx, registration KRF 467B. It arrived in time for the family summer holiday that year, when it was captured briefly on film, showing its grey/white paintwork and red upholstery.

On 7 May, 1965, the Minx was involved in an accident. I was completely unaware of this at the time, and only discovered it when going through a folder of very old paperwork, which yielded up the documents seen here. The paperwork, from insurers Beddall Bradford and Co, shows that dad’s policy was bought through his membership of the RAC. Of even greater interest is a copy of a letter that dad sent to the insurance company detailing aspects of the claim and how the repair was handled. The Minx was temporarily replaced by a Ford Anglia, mentioned on a cheque book stub from June ‘65.

By this time, dad was travelling around not merely in his part-time role as a drummer, but in his full-time job working for the G.E.C., and in the summer of 1966 he was given the use of a company car. This time, it was a Vauxhall Victor, DDD 567C, in pale grey. One of its first long hauls was to take the family down to Weston Super Mare for the annual summer holiday, a trip that was made in awful conditions of heavy rain, at a time when the M5 was still incomplete. For a while, we were a two-car family, although the Minx was kept in the garage, with its insurance cover suspended while the Victor was in daily use. This situation continued until April 1966, when dad paid off the finance outstanding on the Minx.

In September 1967, the company car was returned and dad bought himself a brand new Singer Gazelle, HRF 821F, in deep maroon. Like the Minx, this model also came from the Rootes Group, a Midlands-based manufacturer that was taken over by Chrysler in 1970. The Gazelle featured modern styling, with a very rectangular appearance and a body shell shared by other models from the group including the Hillman Hunter. It was a first for us in having a radio, which none of the earlier cars had included. I remember dad seemed particularly proud of this vehicle at the time, and there were several visits to dealerships before the deal was done. It wasn’t the first car he’d owned from new, but somehow this one seemed special, for all that it was really no more than a modest mid-range family saloon.

The Gazelle saw us through holidays to Llandudno in 1968 and 69, Ireland in 1970, and a summer season in 1971 when dad’s musical activities become his full-time job with a residency at Pontins’ holiday camp, Brixham. A garage receipt survives detailing a routine service that was carried out at a dealer in Paignton: you’ll notice that the receipt is now headed Chrysler, following the Rootes Group takeover. An undated note, probably from around this time, totted up dad’s annual mileage – his band work accounted for 7,400 miles, whilst travel for his 9-5 job amounted to 12,000: a total of nearly 20,000 miles. It’s no wonder he changed his cars with such regularity – the average saloon car of the 1960s had a far shorter life expectancy than today’s models, with many developing mechanical faults within a matter of months, and most models being prone to rust.

In the autumn of 1971, the Singer Gazelle was involved in an accident, this time more serious than the minor bump with the Hillman Minx. Dad set out for his Saturday night gig only to return within the hour – the car had been broadsided at a junction less than a mile from home. He was shaken but unhurt, though I believe the car to have been declared a write-off. Unfortunately, no paperwork survives from this incident, or indeed any later than 1971, and from here I have to rely on diaries.

‘Daddy gets new car, Austin 1800’ was my entry for Tuesday 20 June 1972. Between the Gazelle accident and now, he’d had the use of a red Vauxhall Victor, which I believe to have been a company car during a brief period of employment with Cressall, a manufacturer of electrical resistors. The new car, VOV 900J, finished in plain white, took us on holidays to Llandudno (for a third time) in 1972, and Blackpool the following year. On Good Friday 1973, arriving home from work early, dad scraped it against the wall at the end of the drive – not a major incident, but he wasn’t best pleased.

Perhaps the most unusual journey I remember making in this car was on the evening of Sunday 24 June 1973. There was a thunderstorm at the time, and I think the power had gone off. We couldn’t watch television or play records, and it was too gloomy to sit and read. On an impulse, dad decided that we were all going out in the car. Where to? It didn’t matter. Just as long as it got us out of the house. In the event, he drove us as far as West Bromwich, a journey of some twelve miles and a round trip of about an hour. 

The Austin 1800 was the contemporary version of a saloon that had been in production since 1964, with a body style that has become known as the ‘land crab.’ I remember it as being a reasonably comfortable car, with the usual vinyl upholstery typical of the era (on a hot day it gave off a distinctive smell), and curious door handles that comprised a plastic flap locked into place by a clip. As a back seat passenger, I appreciated the folding armrest that was incorporated into the bench seat. Of course, we didn’t have seatbelts in the back during this era, and even for front seat passengers they weren’t yet mandatory. I’m sure our dad used them, and remember some of the early examples as having quite fiddly locking and release mechanisms. The 1800 wasn’t quite a prestige vehicle, and always struck me as having a kind of dowdy appearance. Of dad’s earlier cars, I preferred the Herald, Minx and Victor, and was bought die-cast versions of them all. Dinky made a model of the 1800, liveried as a taxi, which I owned and later repainted in Humbol enamel to resemble dad’s example.

Sales brochure for the Morris 2200 (identical to the Austin) showing it in the, 'ahem', desirable shade of Harvest Gold

Dad no sooner took possession of the car than he began to covet an upgraded version of the model, with a more powerful six-cylinder engine. The Austin 2200 had been launched at around the same time that he acquired the 1800, and quickly became a car which he aspired to (for comparison, our uncle, who owned an estate agency, drove a Jensen Interceptor). The most desirable colour, as far as dad was concerned, was ‘Harvest Gold’, a kind of mustardy shade, ‘complemented’ by an orangey-brown interior, that told you in no uncertain terms that you were living in the 1970s. Dad finally got to own this ‘dream car’ on Wednesday 3 July 1974, as noted in my Letts Schoolboys’ Diary. It saw us through family holidays to Llandudno (again!), Weston Super Mare, and a Welsh farm cottage before being replaced, in January 1978, by a white Austin Maxi, SOV 781S. This was our first ‘hatchback’, a feature which must have been very helpful to dad in moving his drums around, as he was still playing four or five nights a week. I didn’t care for the Maxi… if the 1800 had been dowdy, this was positively plain, a really drab and unimaginative car from an era when British motor manufacturing was in steep decline.

It was replaced, in 1980 and in considerable style, by a Ford Granada, EOX 983V, finished in a kind of metallic greenish gold. This was the most prestigious car our dad ever owned, as well as being the largest. It wasn’t the famous ‘Sweeney’ style (theirs was actually a Consul), but the MkII, introduced in 1977, and looking very much like the example below, illustrated on Wikipedia. It was around for a long time, and by this time I wasn’t given to noting such things in my diary. Alongside it came a bright orange VW Beetle, followed by an Opel. Dad didn’t drive these himself: they were provided (courtesy of a local haulage company) as cars for my brother and myself to use should we wish to do so. I hadn’t yet learned to drive, so never availed myself of the opportunity. The Opel’s most memorable moment came when it caught fire, while parked directly in front of our house. Remarkably, the house sustained no damage, although the car was written off.

Dad’s last car, which he still owned at the time of his passing in August 2001, was a Vauxhall Cavalier MkII hatchback, in silver. It says something for the reliability of cars during this era that he was able to keep it on the road for so long – it dated from the mid 1980s and was still perfectly driveable over a decade later.

These, then, were dad's cars – spanning over forty years of motoring and goodness knows how many thousands of miles. None of them, with the possible exception of the Granada, was anything more than an average family saloon. Some, like the Maxi, aren't well regarded today, whilst others like the A35 and Triumph Herald are considered classics. They all served him well – it was rare for any of them to be off the road for more than the occasional service – and in that respect they did exactly what they were built to do, providing reliable family motoring to an unassuming and unpretentious man who put family above all other considerations.