Check out these buy car images:
Wonderful buy car:
Family cars from my childhood…
Image by Eleventh Earl of Mar
Here are the cars I remember we had when we were growing up -
1. Ford Zephyr: this was the one that my younger brother nearly fell out of when we were going around the roundabout by Mark Hall school in Essex, UK.
(cream and red and rust coloured)
2. Ford Consul Classic: dad bought this one off of Karina Wilson’s dad, I think. We went to Spain in this one. And back again.
(black)
3. Sunbeam Rapier: oddly closing rear windows.
(blue I think)
4.Mini: stolen because it was green ,apparently. Dad parked it in London, came back to it, and there it wasn’t. "I’ll never buy a bloody green car again!", which, along with "tell them to piss off Brenda", "I think I’ll just go turn the potatoes over" and "man wasn’t born to work" is one of dad’s greatest lines.
(green…)
5. Vauxhall Victor (not an estate as in this pic, but a saloon): I think dad got this from Jerry, the bloke from the end of the street. But I don’t think we had it long.
(grey)
6: Wolseley 1800: dreadful thing. Dad was going to sue the seller under the trades descriptions act. Basically broken. 84 bhp!
(blue, like the car pictured here)
7. Austin 1100 (actually the Wolseley version in this pic, but it’s the same car really) : the same as an Austin/Morris/Wolseley/BL 1800, but smaller. Basil Fawlty beat up a red version of this car in the Gourmet Night episode of Fawlty Towers.
(black)
8. Vauxhall Carlton: Dad’s best ever car, with a mighty two litre motor, and plush velour upholstery. Sadly dad lost his job not long after buying the car, so it went back to the shop.
(metallic brown)
9. Austin 1800: (84 bhp) exactly the same as the Wolseley, without the retired major moustache grille. Known as the ‘land crab’ because of it’s squat crustacean-like looks. This was less troublesome than the Wolseley. My dad used to talk wistfully of the Austin 2200 which was a slightly elongated version of the 1800, and of course with the full 110 bhp, according to www.carfolio.com
(mustard yellow)
10. Fiat 131 Mirafiori: wow, this was a company car, so no maintenace worries for dad, but it must have been a pain in the bum for the company dad worked for at the time – FIats were CRAP back then. They were actually built of old rust from scrapped cars.
(champagne yellow)
11. Fiat 125 Special: I was present when dad bought this car. On the lot, for the same money, was a Jaguar E-Type 2+2, but he wouldn’t buy it. I was most disappointed. This car ended up sad, unloved and covered in spider webs in the garage at Poplar Avenue as dad had the company Fiat 131 by then.
(red)
But come on – Fiat 125 vs. Jaguar E-Type? For the SAME MONEY?
We could have all squeezed in the back…
Trivia note of the day – FIAT sold the design of the FIAT 125 to the Polish, who built the Lada from it, out of pig-iron and bogies.
Refinement :
Our new passat bio diesel car
Image by rabble
Yesterday we bought this car from a nice lesbian couple in santa rosa. They are having a child and upgraded to one with of those keyless remote control door thingies.
great post lord mar,
the green mini story is well funny, bet it wasn’t so funny at the time!
we had a fiat mirafiori in the early eighties,
was always breaking down too.
cheers – I already had this written on my family website so it was quick and easy to edit a bit and throw on to flickr.com
I think there are a few missing from this list. I don’t think he ever had a car for very long.
My dad was the same, lots of cars for only a few weeks/months at a time. They were always at least 3 or 4 previous owners, that’s what people did then. You dont really see ‘bangers’ now, everyone buys new or one previous owner.
"tell them to piss off Brenda" … genius!
I know – this was advice to my mum on how best to deal with her employers. This from my dad, who wouldn’t have dreamed of saying the same thing to his bosses…sigh.
good stuff!
I just remembered another of my dad’s classic lines –
Dad, cockily/smugly, refering to my decision to emigate to California: "You wouldn’t catch me living in a country with no bloody seasons"
Me:"er…didn’t you work in Saudi Arabia for ten years..?"
I remember my grandfather had a Wolseley 1800 and then replaced it with a Lada 1500 (which was actually built on the presses that made the Fiat 125 (Fiat sold the tools to Lada)) which was equally rubbish.
And I once knew someone who had a Victor with a 3.9 V8 in it. It was… interesting.
The Fiat production line went to Togliatti (A new town specially built to house it) in the USSR to build VAZ 4102 – which in the UK was called Lada. The Polish firm FSO also built these cars, but the tooling from Italy which ended up at Togliatti was copied for the FSO factory – so your post that
Trivia note of the day – FIAT sold the design of the FIAT 125 to the Polish, who built the Lada from it, out of pig-iron and bogies.
is not correct – VAZ built the Lada, and FSO built the FSO. The Polish are not the Russians, nor are the POlish the USSR.
Hope you don’t mind my post to help keep the record straight ?
: )
Well you know how it goes. So which cars came out of Poland?
At least all the others are correct. And pig iron and bogies were the chief materials used in LADAs.
Polish cars – well there’s CWST1 (Central Warsaw factory1) which became Polski-Fiat, aka FSO, Syrena, Warszawa, Smyk, the Meduza produced at Wytwornia Sprzetu Komunikacyjnego, the GAD 500 – lots more tin-pot tiddlers which were made in penny-ante numbers.
The FSO 125P was assembled in Poland from 1967, with an ever-increasing Polish-sourced content – by 1969 80% was Polish, with the remainder sourced from Zastava in Yugoslavia.
A four wheel drive akin to the Land-Rover was also made in Poland from the early 1970s. I won;t name it becasue it will be a future CMG group image for me.
After the fall of communism, Fiat Cinquecento and Seicento were manufactured in Poland.
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Only Classic Car, and we’d love to have your photo added to the group.
Note to self: I must do a collage like this – of my Dad’s cars.