YOUR FIRST CAR

[saff]

1961 Ford Consul 375. Bench seats, 3 speed column gears and no synchro on first!

 

[Vintage Racer]

Ford 105E Anglia................bought in 1969 and within 6mths had installed 1500GT engine, Ford Classic struts (with disc brakes) on the front and van springs on the rear.

Went on to replace the 1500GT engine with a V6 and chopped 4" out of the roof!

..........good old days!

 

[Yugguy]

Morris Marina 1.8. TC no less. Said it many times but I'd like to see today's cocky little 17 year old try and drive one.

 

[Druk]

1954 Austin A40 Somerset. Bought it in North Berwick for £20 and drove it home to Edinburgh when still one year away from being old enough for a license. (1965ish). Someone had filled the gap in the sunroof with goop so dug that out never thinking that maybe it was there for a purpose...doh!

Swapped out front seats for a nice pair of leather ones from a Mk7 Jag.

Passed my test in a BSM HA Viva then proceeded to teach my mate to drive in the A40. 50yrs later he’s still my best pal.

Sold the thing three years later at the local auctions for £17.


.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

31 brake horses of throbbing power. Three forward gears. Several valves that worked. 0-60 in 32 seconds.

One owner car, bought for £95 in 1975, and sold 2 years and 20,000 miles later for £100. (Some things never change)

Unbelievably I used it to travel from Southampton to Liverpool to London to Nottingham to Reading, without a second thought - back in the days of empty motorways, no mobile phones and barely any phone boxes. (The confidence of youth)

Air conditioning was excellent. Air entered through the holes in the bulkhead and escaped through the rusty rear wings.

Heating was conceptual rather than actual (rear engined car).

Only complaint: the 665kgs couldn't be reversed up an incline, which led to embarrassment at a well known Richmond pub.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Morris Marina 1.8. TC no less. Said it many times but I'd like to see today's cocky little 17 year old try and drive one.

Loved 'em. The Company Car of choice amongst Metal Box Ltd Sales and Commercial staff in the 1970's. Favourite quote was the reply of the Transport Manager at MB Speke when told that the steering wheel of the Pool car started vibrating at 95mph. His exact words were.............

You can't begin to explain just how good Marinas and Princesses were... back in the day .... relative to everything that people were actually driving. Even though they were built by Leyland guys who were on strike somewhere in the plant literally every day of the year.

 

[Ted]

Pah! Cars!!

 

[John]

5 months after passing my test at 17, in March 1994 at 18 I bought a 1987 Opel Manta GTE Exclusive 2.0i.

110BHP, Sebring exhaust (fitted before my ownership) and Recaro interior!

Put a few noses out of joint at school with some peers.

 

[AMV]

Vauxhall Astra 1.8 Design, boring as hell. Had no real idea of what i wanted...

 

[SpoonJar]

Mine was a Ford Fiesta 950L in red. WWU448S. Windscreen used to ice up inside as well as out. Headlights were loose. Stupid rubber bung thing to operate the screen washers. The best thing about it was the engine. Started first time, every time no matter what the weather.

 

[AMGeed]

Ford 105E Anglia................bought in 1969 and within 6mths had installed 1500GT engine, Ford Classic struts (with disc brakes) on the front and van springs on the rear.

Went on to replace the 1500GT engine with a V6 and chopped 4" out of the roof!

..........good old days!

You could have been describing my car.
A 1959 Ford Anglia 105E that I had resprayed dog$hite brown with a yellow stripe. The fact my girlfriend at the time had a paintsprayer Dad came in handy. Unfortunately, the paint colour was all he could steal from Bluebirds the caravan manufacturer. This would have been in 1969 also.
Went and bought myself an Ian Piper race cam and Ford 1500GT exhaust manifold, and twin Weber carbs.
The car really did shift (at the time) but dropped all the oil and seized the engine on the A30 Hogs Back nr Guilford one rainy Sunday. Poxy Anglia I thought, and promptly bought a 998 Mini Cooper.

 

[renault12ts]

Renault 12 TS. I see that one of the members has this as a user name. As soon as I get 30 posts/replys, I shall PM them! Bought it off a mate for £100 in 1990. It was metallic prune in colour.

Snap. By 1990 mine had been in the scrap yard for about 7 years.

 

[artyman]

Austin A40 Cambridge with 1200cc engine 0-60 in , hang on I'll check the calender! Had very poor front shock absorbers

 

[KennyN]

A Vauxhall Chevette van which was called a Chevanne , funnily enough.

It was the Rolls Royce security van and went everywhere around the factory in second gear , which explains why i lying under it replacing the gearbox soon after buying it.

Kenny

 

[daves624]

!984. 1973 Triumph GT6 Mk III. Bright yellow with a webasto sunroof and overdrive on 3rd and 4th. We still miss it.

 

[ringway]

Passed my test at the first attempt aged 17 in 1981 and my first steed was the works, blue 1978 Marina van. JJO 823S like the one pictured below.
I was quite proud when I learned that it had the same aerodynamic door handles used on the Scimitar's.






Note the dodgy rear door handle on the van below.



Our rear door handle broke, so we did away with the handle altogether and used an 18" screwdriver to open and close.
It was probably as secure as having the handle on. No screwdriver - no access.

In a few recent posts I have mentioned my mate Mike Lord (crashed Hillman Imp into girlfriends caravan and his Mum went through the floor of their 11/1300).

Well, Mike didn't have much luck.
He was the rear passenger - no seat, just the tin can interior and therefore the custodian of the magic screwdriver.
We were staying at Mike's place and went for a Chinese takeaway around 2-3 miles away.
When we go back to his house, he wasn't with us!
We headed back to the takeaway and on the other side of the dual carriageway, we saw a very hacked off Mike, walking with takeaway bags in one hand and the magic screwdriver in the other. He thought we had done it deliberately and was not at all pleased.

I'm not sure if it was the same day/evening, but I also managed to somehow accidentally run into him with the Marina and pin him to his front garden wall. Happy days...

 

[nickgar]

1962 Ford Consul Capri. Panama yellow with ermine white roof, bought in late 1969 for £125 just before I'd past my test.
20 years later bought another, but this time a very rare GT model in Goodwood green
Happy days!

 

[ringway]

View attachment 73032 Pah! Cars!!

Hiding on the Mercedes forums these days are we, Godber?

 

[ringway]

It was metallic prune in colour.

That surely wasn't the name of the paint colour?

 

[Wolfie1]

Where are you getting pics of your first cars! I am no way as old as some folk posting and i dont have any pics of them! My first car i didnt have long, (2 weeks) had a head on collision with an artic lorry that was on my side of the road in my mk1 1.3 golf with gti whells and body kit, car was unsurprisingly a complete right off but at least nobody was seriously injured, so i dont really count that as my first car, i count my mk1 fiesta rs supersport with red stripes as my first