childhood memories

[dangerousdave]

hi all do any of you have a certain car that you still dislike today from a bad or disappointing childhood experience

 

mine is the Renault 18 because my dad used to have a beige one and in 1987 we were on our way to raf binbrook to see the last day of the lightnings but we never got there because said car overheated so I never and will never get to see one fly so for that reason (no offense to any one who has one) but I still hate them

[Partridge]

My earliest memories are of an Escort MK2 Ghia owned by my granddad...I used to go outside with a bucket of soapy water and wash the wheels on it

[Ghosty]

Fiesta Mk3 1.25 LX auto, for being horrifically shit in the engine/gearbox department, generally uncomforatble and miserable, and the amount of time it took for my mum to get rid of the damn thing. The gearbox was dying for at least the 3rd time when we got rid, not sure what happened to it, but DVLA can't find it now, which means it's dead, most likely in a scrappy somewhere in Newton-le-Willows/Golborne.

 

P288FNE, you will not be missed much.

[Junkman]

Citroen DS 21 Pallas.

My father once bought one because he thought he needed to move up after having owned a succession of R16s.

We all (My mum, my sister and I) found it hideously ugly, I remember my mother saying 'oh no, it looks like a French living room'.

My father soon started to dislike it, too, because it didn't pull the sausage off the plate uphill, something extremely annoying in a country like Austria.

But the worst thing about it was that I got seasick in it as soon as it was in motion. Most trips usually ended prematurely on the hard shoulder, where the DS pissed one of its numerous fluids on the Autobahn. I was actually looking forward to these breakdowns, because they gave me some relief from being sick.

I think we had it less than two years, when my dad traded it in for yet another R16.

[Felly Magic]

1974 Datsun Cherry 100A mk1, my mum's car as I grew up, it was awesomely tough mechanically, and it even covered when dad's Rover died a couple of days before the annual camping holiday. We seriously overloaded 'Bessie' as she was known with the 4 berth tent, sleeping bags, folding camp table, cooker, gas bottle, food, leisure battery and b&w telly, and all our clobber, and the old girl took it in her stride, loaded to the gunwhales, with a roof rack full of gear too, Even with all that gear onboard, the 988cc lump would still manage 80-85 on the A1, and just every now and again there would be a 'fart' when the mudflaps scraped the ground. Mum got her in 1980, and kept her for 6 years, by then, aged 12, rust was taking its toll on her, and she was chopped in for a brand new Lada Riva. I still miss that little japanese beast today. She only ever broke down once, and that was when the fan packed in when we were stuck in traffic leaving Church Fenton air display. When we got home, dad wired in a fan bypass switch, instantly curing the problem. An epic car, and if I had the money, I would own one in a heartbeat. According to the Doovla, she lived on another 2 years after mum got shut, must have known a sympathetic MOT tester, as the wings, sills and floor were rather patchy.

[robinmasters]

My dad had a horribly floaty Princess; my brother was travel sick in it, and the smell never really went. Should have hated it as a result, don't. 

 

The only other early childhood car memory I have is of the big plastic cover over the front of his Maxi' s engine, there to prevent OMGWETDIZZYPHAIL, or something. 

[fordperv]

The only bad shite memory I have, is when I was about 6 my nan had filled me full of pure orange juice and chocolate, then we went to pick my uncle up from work at Alton towers a good distance from their home in smallthorne almost opposite a place called the crafty cockney that was owned by Eric bristow, we went in grandads dark blue marina, ironically named bluebird after the landspeed record car, we were travelling along when I felt sick, then within seconds I threw up it was projectile it covered the front seat and splattered the dashboard, other than that all my memories of shite past are good

[Asimo]

 

mine is the Renault 18 because my dad used to have a beige one and in 1987 we were on our way to raf binbrook to see the last day of the lightnings but we never got there because said car overheated so I never and will never get to see one fly so for that reason (no offense to any one who has one) but I still hate them

Don't give up that dream quite yet. There is a Lightning being restored to fly in the USA :

 

http://www.lightning422supporters.co.uk/

 

It belongs to Andrew Brodie the Citroen SM guru.

[Caffiend]

Fondest* memory: impressive security of Volvo estates. It took the RAC man a couple of hours to break/remove the steering lock after my dad managed to lose his keys on the beach. We were all freezing by the time the car had been hotwired.

 

Dad also had a 1934 Triumph Gloria, I couldn't run to something that old and actually non-shite-y, have retained a soft spot for Triumphs and always tempted by the more modern versions (Dolomite, 1500, 2000, not the TR-series so much), have never driven one though so rain check until if I ever have time/money/potential storage to play with one.

[maxustaxus]

I stayed with my country cousins in deepest Herefordshire some summers.

 

They enjoyed cider and Led Zep...and plunging an older Saab 99 down country lanes like it was a hyper ferret on amphetamines bolting through drain pipes.

 

All of this was fine, except when I had to be in the car too...thrown like a loose fitting brick in a cement mixer.

 

I could not bring myself to look out the windows at trees racing towards us on each bend, I simply looked down and thought about the precious gift of life.

 

Anyway, in the end the unpleasant association got linked with the car...when really it was my enthusiastic would be rally champion cousins egging each other on that was the problem.

 

To this day a Saab 99 makes me nervous..but I still think they are a hansom car.

[cms206]

Bad memories? Not really. I remember my old man's Montego 1300 had a burst exhaust which meant that a trip to the beach had to be finished by train as the fumes made me sick. Dad got the car fixed and came to get me and mum but forgot a change of clothes for me, so the journey home was made bollock naked sitting on the armrest in the back so that I didn't get the seats wet.

I also remember projectile vomiting all over a Lada Riva on a roundabout in Ayr from the back window of a Mk2 Cavalier saloon (F406 FUS, IIRC) belonging to my mate's dad 'cos I got car sick and he said not to spew in the car.

Plenty memories of the scheme I grew up on; my neighbour over the road repainting his orange 244DL purple one weekend in the driveway with Dulux and a brush over the course of a weekend was particularly memorable.

[Asimo]

This arrived to pick me up from school

 

 

I was 7 years old, I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Maybe this experience is why I don't like any writing on my cars, no stickers,

no labels, no badges, nothing. Looking forward to no tax discs even!

 

 

[eddyramrod]

When I was six, my dad brought home his brand new car, a 1965 Ford Zephyr 4 mk3.  My favourite TV show was Z Cars.  I absolutely loved that thing: huge, dark blue, with fins and pale blue bench seats, what's not to love? 

Sadly, he replaced it in 1967 with a brand new mk2 Cortina 1500 Super in maroon.  Nice colour, but I never took to that car, given that it replaced my first love.  And there was worse to come...

After this he hit hard times, and the Cortina had to go in favour of a 100E Ford Popular.  Wasn't popular with me!  When that had to be replaced, in came an Austin A35 van, with seat-and-windows conversion.  I almost pined for the Ford...

Unsurprisingly, of the cars above the only one I would choose to buy now is the Zephyr.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

When I was about 10, my parents were in the midst of a noisy and sometimes violent breakup. The sound of smashing crockery and slamming doors was usually followed by the tortured revving of my dad's Viscount and the screech of cross plies as he stormed off.

Because of this I've always been wary of and never owned a PC Cresta or Viscount and my penchant for MklV Zodiacs and Granada's when I was younger was I think an anti-Luton barge thing.

[drum]

I opened the back door and fell out of an Austin A30 that was being driven by my mother when I was four years old. Not sure if I remember the event or just the re-telling of the story over the years.

 

I do remember the day we picked up our new* volvo 145s. It was being sold by a landed gentry gent and we felt a bit special buying this shiny white volvo estate with seatbelts from a big house with its own private drive. Didn't feel quite so good ten years later when it was still our main car (mum had a Renault 4) and being picked up from school in TUS 604G in the early 80s was the height of embarrassment.

[Taff]

Austin Princess/Ambassador. My dad ran a series of them through the mid 80's to mid 90's and I learnt to drive in one. Horrible, absolutely horrible. Dad worked about 5 miles from where I did so I got to drive either the dire shit-brown 1700cc pile of crap or the dire burgundy 2000cc pile of crap to and from work for six months. Better still, family trips from Bath to Leicester could be taken by using the Fosseway and therefore avoiding motorways and yes, you guessed it, I got to drive! lucky fucking me.

 

To be fair, when you can do a three point trun in a 1981 burgundy Austin Ambassador you will piss it on test in the driving schools metro, so there was method to the old mans madness. It's left me with a lasting hatred of the cheese-shaped one, though.

 

About 5 years after I joined the army, I was home on leave and he asked me to go an look at a car for him, a '79 plate Princess with i think an 1800 motor? A mate of dads was retiring, stopping driving and had owned this thing since new and lavished care on it.

You know, I went over that thing with a fine tooth comb and couldn't find a reason not to buy. bastard.

 

again, to be fair, it was the only car I have ever driven who's perfomance wasn't affected by having a trailer with my Cadillac on it behind it.

[ProgRocker]

I've said this before - bad childhood memory was when in 1986 and a £300 bill to replace the waterpump in the folks' velour-tastic 1979 Vauxhall Royale 2.8 auto, KEX 460V (and the 17 mpg I guess), it had to go.

 

Had it been replaced a Granada 2.0 or a D segment car like a mark 1 Cavalier, it would have been a good compromise. Before the Royale was a mark 1 Granada 2.0 4 speed manual which fitted the bill perfectly for a family of 5. He bought a Talbot Horizon 1.3 LS (JMD 918W) which I instantly disliked due to lack of luxuries. Fortunately In 1988, the Horizon was relegated to 2nd car when the MG Maestro 1600 was bought.

 

NB: I'm sure I didn't dream this but just before the Horizon my dad did one came home with a mark 1 VW Scirocco but upon realising the key wouldn't unlock the boot, it went back. That would have been a cool car. Must check my facts about this - my dad always insisted that the family car had at least 4 doors.

[scooters]

Mk IV Cortina 1.6 estate...the old boy traded his DS Safari for it, we had it a year and spent so much time broken down that he traded it in for a Volvo 245. Used to make us car sick as well but that might just have been post DS 

[skattrd]

Bad childhood  memory - cutting my fingers repeatedly on the broken door handles on my grandfathers almost  new Morris Marina, hateful cars.

I almost didn't buy a Range Rover because it had the same stupid door handles

[Paul Dupart]

My Dad bought a brand new Allegro 1300 Deluxe in 1974 in a 'baby shit beige' colour.  RDU 415M.

 

Traded in a H reg Triumph 2000 mk2 automatic for it.  Increasing fuel prices at the time was the excuse.  The Triumph was brill, had plenty of playground Kudos (I was 10 at the time), was cool, often a cop or get away car in TV films, sounded good and had two radio speakers, one up front and one in the back with a fader knob on the centre console. And that cracking circular warning light cluster on the wooden dash!

 

But the Allegro was shit.  Basic poverty spec, not even a clock. Already a laughing stock 'cos of the square steering wheel jokes and stories of back window popping out, etc.  And consequently, I started to get bullied in the playground after this.  My Dad even wrote to Lord Stokes telling him what a pile of shit it was.  Never got a reply.

 

So to me, the Allagro will always be shit, but never shite!

[scooters]

harsh! losing a 2000 for a 'leggro!

mind you - nappy yellow - double plus shite points for your dad, obviously ahead of his time.

 

Breakdowns - I remember, when I was 6 the Citroen DS losing its hydraulics on Sutton Bank, so no suspension or hydraulic brakes - although there was a back up brake system the car was fully loaded as we were travelling either to or from Filey, where granny lived. 3 kids, one golden retriever lab, one tabby cat. We must have been doing 80 at the bottom of the hill, it was late at night in the winter, I remember the trail of LHM fluid behind us, I also remember the cat dashing off into the bushes, the last we eva saw of her. There is/was a pub at the foot of the hill and I remember the land lady giving us tea and sandwiches in her kitchen and us kids had a hot bath. we had to wait for a AA Relay loader to come up from Leeds, we then got taken back to Edinburgh, arrived at 7.00am and got kept off school. Must have been 1977.

[Negative Creep]

Dad had mainly company cars, but I do remember us having a Sierra with a carphone (like something out of the Enterprise at the time) and an MG Montego that he once took to over 100mph. Then he bought a 1.1 Uno with horrid smelling tweed seats, which somehow got the 4 of us and luggage to Normandy and back for a family holiday. As far as I can recall he's never once broken down, but did admit that he once wrapped a Ford Corsair around a lamppost as a 15 year old.

 

My Granddad had a c-plate Corolla with really comfy seats, so much so that I bought the 5 door version last year. He then bought a Punto new, kept every single receipt in typical old giffer style, then gave up driving and passed it to me. I drove it for a few months but wasn't my thing so sold it, in hindsight for less than it was worth

[bigroverfan]

no bad memories, just good ones of being driven all over the country bmx racing in a sd1 and then an mg maestro, this was in the early 80s. the maestro did brakedown in slough once though, my dad had to walk miles to a garage. i used to love the talking computer. used to piss myself when it said instantanious fuel consumption.

[dollywobbler]

My earliest memory is crying on the brown back seat of a white Princess, after falling over onto the edge of a door and splitting my head open. I was only 2! I still want a wedgie Prinny though.

[AndyW201]

One of the earliest memories I have is of my dad's old Mini mk2, which had a one piece flip-front. Seeing it open with dad working on it, even then I thought it was unusual.

 

A HA Viva came next. I reckon it was the snazzy SL 90, because nearly 40 years on, I remember the wide stripe along the side and the blingy stainless steel wheel trims. I remember experiencing my first puncture sitting in the back of that car and wondering what the hell was going on.

 

Shortly after that car, I remember going with dad to pick up a 3-year old Hillman Avenger YWW 159L, the first really smart car we had for a while. Dad loved his luxobarges when he was younger (Crestas, Zephyrs, Zodiacs etc), but after he and mum got married and us kids came along, his cars had to get slightly shiter for a bit, the Avenger was the start of us having nicer cars again, I remember him religiously undersealing it every year with help from my cousin. When we eventually sold it at 7 years old, it was still in really good condition. It got gouged down the side by a Cleveland Transit Plaxton Panorama while dad was taking me to school one morning, he went mad! It was away for a couple of days to get repaired so Ken, one of our neighbours, borrowed a Sherpa 8 seater bus for us to use, he worked at the Kennings hire branch near us.

 

 

 

A proud moment for the family was our first brand new car, back in 1984. B829 MPY was a 1.3 Nissan Sunny in metallic blue with oh-so-80s side GRAPHIX! The curtains in our road were a-twitching when we rolled up in that bad boy!

[twosmoke300]

One memory that sticks in my mind is dad taking me to school in one of his stock vans - an ex bt commer van .

Managing to shut one of my fingers in the hinge end of the door is why it sticks in my mind.

Most summer holidays spent traveling to various van auctions in his then new cf car transporter .Often taking a sherpa or similar on the back and a comma high top on an a frame or spec frame behind. 2.3d with a 4 speed box cos dad was too tight to spec a 5spd when he bought fjc841y.

I would love a cf now.

[oman5]

I can remember the monumental disappointment in 1982 when dad traded in his Vauxhall FE Vx490-this was only 4 years old when he bought it in an unusually flush period, and had serious playground bragging rights. he had it for 4 years before getting fed up with the sub 24 mpg economy, the expensive tyres and the way the bodywork was dissolving.

He drove off in the big vaux and wouldn't tell us what the new one was going to be. then came back in an N reg mini 1000. we  were devastated.

[r.welfare]

I remember my aunt ragging her 1050 Mk2 127 until the valves bounced while I sat in the passenger seat petrified, transfixed by the gear layout sticker on the inside of the windscreen.

[fordperv]

My fondest and earliest memory of shite is my dad's avenger he modified when I was a child, I loved that car it was my 1st love, it roared like thunder and was like a rocket it had a 3.0 litre Essex and triple carbs, he painted it blue over silver I can picture it now, a stupid taxi driver fell asleep and ploughed straight into it while it was parked and inserted it into a mk4 Tina estate, I saw it in the morning and burst into tears, he was gutted as he never got to put the final piece of door trim on the drivers door, you can see a sparkle in his eyes when he talks about that car, I would absolutely love to build him one the same for his 60th birthday and let him put that final piece of trim on

[mercrocker]

Fell out of Grandad's 15/60 once - pushed too hard on the back door and tipped myself into a ditch full of stinging nettles.  I also remember playing at the wheel when parked on Portsdown Hill and the bastard started rolling.   Grandad must  have cursed the driver's door handbrake position but he made it across the seat pretty quick!    Overwhelming memory of the Wulzy was sitting beside the A43 on the way to Lincoln eating egg sandwiches  out  of an old biscuit tin whilst every 8 legged ERF and Leyland we had passed on the way up rumbled  past.  Then fighting car sickness for the next 100 miles....No wonder  I cannot bring myself to sell my Farina - it even smells the same inside.   I never seemed to have much love  for Dad's cars, especially a hateful little 1159  HB Viva with black Ambla and 2 doors.   Worst family car in the world - he could  at  least have hung out for a 4 door  1600  SL with big squashy  seats instead of that thing...