Christmas In The Good Old Days
ChatterBank22 mins ago
Morris Eight !
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I saw a smashing Morris Eight yesterday (not the one above)
The chap had only bought it the previous week, so he was still getting used
to taking it to Asda and coming back out, to find people gathered around it !
The car had been exported to New Zealand as soon as it was made, in 1939, and lived there until 10 years ago, when it was brought back to the UK again.
It had been completely restored and was in the same condition that it would have left the factory all those years ago ! The chap said it was only 8 hp.
Maroon and black.....it was stunning....look at that wonderful grill !
The chap is local, so I am sure I will be seeing him again....hopefully !
I will take a photo next time.
I saw a smashing Morris Eight yesterday (not the one above)
The chap had only bought it the previous week, so he was still getting used
to taking it to Asda and coming back out, to find people gathered around it !
The car had been exported to New Zealand as soon as it was made, in 1939, and lived there until 10 years ago, when it was brought back to the UK again.
It had been completely restored and was in the same condition that it would have left the factory all those years ago ! The chap said it was only 8 hp.
Maroon and black.....it was stunning....look at that wonderful grill !
The chap is local, so I am sure I will be seeing him again....hopefully !
I will take a photo next time.
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TWR...it had an electric windscreen wiper on the drivers side but in a bad rainstorm, you have to rely on your passenger to use the other one manually !
The windscreen could be tilted out, at the base, for fresh air, and the chap said this was the best aircon that he had ever used.
It was actually remarkably roomy inside...plenty of room in the front and you could get two adults/three kids in the back.
He said that it was on a classic car insurance, which cost all of £150 a year, and that included road-side recovery. It cost him £7000 but when you consider that no work is needed, I thought that was a fair price to pay for such a smashing car.
Whats not to like !
The windscreen could be tilted out, at the base, for fresh air, and the chap said this was the best aircon that he had ever used.
It was actually remarkably roomy inside...plenty of room in the front and you could get two adults/three kids in the back.
He said that it was on a classic car insurance, which cost all of £150 a year, and that included road-side recovery. It cost him £7000 but when you consider that no work is needed, I thought that was a fair price to pay for such a smashing car.
Whats not to like !
My parents first car was an Austin 8. Apparently passengers had to walk up steep hills, but they could travel down hill. Dad used to call it a "Rollscanardly".
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I love seeing these old cars, I have a section for cars on my phone I take pictures all the time of interesting stuff. Great to see them on the road. Yeah as bhg says in those days HP was an equation rather than a measure of actual HP. the Modern term is Break Horse Power, determined from a dynamometer. 8 BHP would barely move that so I'd say it's more like about 20BHP just as a rough guide.
TWR....our first car, back in the 1950's, was an Standard Ten, in Phantom Grey, reg no. WYP 910.
When my Dad passed away 17 years ago, my brothers and I found the original invoice, from South London Motors Ltd, of Streatham, and I am looking at it now.
The car cost £636 : 2 : 4, including purchase tax of £184. This must have been a fortune for my Dad to pay in 1959,as his weekly take-home pay was no more than £30-£40 a week.
We used it for a few years and went up and down to deepest Devon many times. He then part-exed for a huge grey Ford Consul, in about 1963.
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I seem to recall that we had an Austin A30 before the Standard, although there is now no one left alive that can confirm that. It was grey as well....
3 grey cars in a row !....I wonder if grey was a kind of "standard" colour back, that no extra charge was made for ?
When my Dad passed away 17 years ago, my brothers and I found the original invoice, from South London Motors Ltd, of Streatham, and I am looking at it now.
The car cost £636 : 2 : 4, including purchase tax of £184. This must have been a fortune for my Dad to pay in 1959,as his weekly take-home pay was no more than £30-£40 a week.
We used it for a few years and went up and down to deepest Devon many times. He then part-exed for a huge grey Ford Consul, in about 1963.
https:/
I seem to recall that we had an Austin A30 before the Standard, although there is now no one left alive that can confirm that. It was grey as well....
3 grey cars in a row !....I wonder if grey was a kind of "standard" colour back, that no extra charge was made for ?
TWR....my maternal grandfather was a London cab driver, before and after the war, and a Fireman during it. I have a photo taken just after the war, with him in his cab. It was one of those cabs with the empty space where the front passenger seat would have been, for luggage.
My Mum told me that he had done the "knowledge" before the war, by riding around London on a bicycle, with a small clipboard on the handlebars !
The cab looks like this one ::::
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My Mum told me that he had done the "knowledge" before the war, by riding around London on a bicycle, with a small clipboard on the handlebars !
The cab looks like this one ::::
https:/
Mikey //Whats not to like !//
Well, the crash gearbox, the sloppy steering, the total lack of acceleration, the poor brakes, the noise, the poor fuel consumption, the poor suspension, rubbish road-holding, poor reliability (oil change, tappets & points every few thousand miles) etc. If you drove one now you'd hate it. They are nice to look at though and I'd like everybody but me to be compelled to have one and use it.
Incidentally, my first car was a 1953 Rover 75. At 90,000 miles it burnt a pint of oil every 50-60 miles (a gallon of oil would get me a 500-mile round trip to see my girlfriend) and had rust nearly everywhere at 10 years old. (Aluminium doors, bonnet and boot lid, so they were OK). My current 8-year old Volvo, with 150,000 miles on the clock has no rust and doesn't burn any oil, with services (and no breakdowns) every 20,000 miles.
Well, the crash gearbox, the sloppy steering, the total lack of acceleration, the poor brakes, the noise, the poor fuel consumption, the poor suspension, rubbish road-holding, poor reliability (oil change, tappets & points every few thousand miles) etc. If you drove one now you'd hate it. They are nice to look at though and I'd like everybody but me to be compelled to have one and use it.
Incidentally, my first car was a 1953 Rover 75. At 90,000 miles it burnt a pint of oil every 50-60 miles (a gallon of oil would get me a 500-mile round trip to see my girlfriend) and had rust nearly everywhere at 10 years old. (Aluminium doors, bonnet and boot lid, so they were OK). My current 8-year old Volvo, with 150,000 miles on the clock has no rust and doesn't burn any oil, with services (and no breakdowns) every 20,000 miles.
Absolutely Mikey. I was just pointing out that we tend to look at the past with rose-tinted spectacles; if we were to go back to those cars we'd be very disappointed. A few years ago I had a chance to drive a car similar to my first one; I turned it down. I'd rather have the good memories than shatter my dreams. As I said in my earlier post, I just love looking at them (I've been to museums all over Europe) and everybody else ought to be made to drive one so that I can look at them.
Yes, you are right bhg, but surely peoples expectations were very different back then, from what they are today.
In the 1950's, when I was born, cars were a relatively rare sighting. We lived in a small cul-de-sac of about 30 houses in North London, and only about a third of those houses seemed to possess a car. To have access to a car was a luxury indeed.
My father's first vehicle was a big ex-Army lorry, that he used to deliver fish to and from Billingsgate. His employer, my Uncle, allowed him to take this home in the evenings, so we had transport of a sort.
I can recall my Dad having to put a small greenhouse paraffin heater under the engine block, where he parked it our drive, in very cold weather, to stop the diesel from freezing in the winter. During that dreadful winter of 1962-1963, he wouldn't have got to work every morning, without the paraffin heater.
So, we had some transport that we could use, to go out into the countryside at weekends. The downside was that my brother and I were known as the kids that smelt of fish ! The lorry was so high off the ground, that he had to lift us up into the cab, but the view through the windscreen was bloody marvelous.
Happy days !
In the 1950's, when I was born, cars were a relatively rare sighting. We lived in a small cul-de-sac of about 30 houses in North London, and only about a third of those houses seemed to possess a car. To have access to a car was a luxury indeed.
My father's first vehicle was a big ex-Army lorry, that he used to deliver fish to and from Billingsgate. His employer, my Uncle, allowed him to take this home in the evenings, so we had transport of a sort.
I can recall my Dad having to put a small greenhouse paraffin heater under the engine block, where he parked it our drive, in very cold weather, to stop the diesel from freezing in the winter. During that dreadful winter of 1962-1963, he wouldn't have got to work every morning, without the paraffin heater.
So, we had some transport that we could use, to go out into the countryside at weekends. The downside was that my brother and I were known as the kids that smelt of fish ! The lorry was so high off the ground, that he had to lift us up into the cab, but the view through the windscreen was bloody marvelous.
Happy days !
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