Childhood Autoshite Anecdotes

[JeeExEll]

Jumpers for goalposts, etc.

 

Autoshite, hey ho,

[doubleyeller]

My father ran a Renault 20 in the mid 90s (May have been the last in every day use in the UK?). The gear lever bore a remarkable resemblance to his Phillips electric razor, and I remember him being rather displeased when my sister pointed this out to him ("This car costs me and your mother an arm and a leg to run") etc!

 

It also had a good old fashioned analogue clock which we wound on by half an hour one morning, cue him making a mad dash to a business meeting, only to arrive an hour early!

 

Oh and he took us on holiday round Norfolk in it, he went to get me a packet of crisps out of the boot, we heard a blood curdling scream, turns out the hydraulic props gave way simultaneously, nearly decapitating him!

[AMC Rebel]

My Dad’s first car was an Austin A30. When I was a kid we were rushing off to our usual Sunday jaunt (him playing cricket and my Ma and I going to my Grandmas). We were late as always. He jumped in and pulled the choke out - except it kept coming and was about a foot long. As a young lad I found this comical. My Dad didn’t.

[fordperv]

As a child I remember a family trip to rhyl in my dad's V6 cortina and on the way back whilst on the motorway something flew off the back of a vehicle in front and broke the windscreen, father fp pulled to the hard shoulder very peed off and kicked the remains of the windscreen out and carried on along at decent motorway speeds I was freezing in my shorts and t shirt, so ended up with coats over me as a blanket, a day or so later when the windscreen was replaced at our house when the fitter left he reversed into the lamp post outside

[bramz7]

I remember my dad hitting a hidden post in a hedge in his G reg Subaru Legacy, and being very silently angry for the rest of the evening.

 

It took an absolute age for it to get repaired too, I think Subaru was still largely in the 'WTF is that' category back then. 

 

I also remember their old Ford Sierra getting stuck going up the farm road to my grans, so much so that every one seemingly came to help. It incensed my parents so much they bought a new car on the same holiday, the aforementioned Legacy. 

[egg]

My dad got us stuck on a building site in an Ital estate. I cried. Seems a rational response.

[Niffleman]

My dad had a cortina mark 2 estate and it was always getting nicked, at least four times as I remember.  The locks on those Fords were pretty poor.  He wasn't too bothered about the car getting stolen but he did mind that people might pick door lock when it was parked and take the radio, so his great solution was to install the radio under the driver's seat.  It made for some slightly dodgy driving as he reached under the seat to retune the radio on the move.  My mum, on the other hand, had a series of Fiats; a 127, a Panda and a few Unos.  The rear pop out window glass on the 127 popped out as expected one afternoon when my little brother pulled the catch, then the hinge failed and the whole bit of glass fell out and onto the floor.  Great days.  The sun always used to shine, as I remember, and we laughed more.......The cars were pretty poor but I think my mum and dad were so grateful to have a car each that they didn't mind.  Also, there wasn't really that much car finance then, so unless you were rich or had a company car you just drove a car until the wheels fell off.

[eddyramrod]

Not really childhood, as I was about 16 at the time, but I remember going with my dad to buy a bonnet for our £11 Triumph Herald (the car that later wore my L plates).  We stood the bonnet on its back edge in our home-made camping trailer to get it home.  The bonnet was white-over-red, and the car was Valencia Blue.  My dad and I fitted that bonnet almost immediately but never painted it.

[Split_Pin]

My Autoshite memories of the 1980s lie firmly with my Uncle Rolland who passed away last year.

 

He had this old FE Victor estate, white with rust patches, GES 772N. It had light blue vinyl seats with no rear belts.

 

We made up a game called 'round corners' which was simply my Uncle slapping the car into any low speed corner he could find such as a roundabout and my cousin and I sliding unctrollably around the plastic-upholstered rear bench. I couldnt restrain myself as I was laughing too much.

 

My friend across the road said his dad was going to the local tip and did I want to come and sit in the wooden trailer on the way back. Great memory sitting in the empty trailer behind his dads Ford Capri, being tailed by a Glasgow city council SD Revopak bin lorry. His dad was a polis though so when we reached the main road it was back in the car.

[Pillock]

My mum had a krooklock - one of the ones that went around the clutch and steering wheel.

 

I was playing at "driving" one day and realised you could lift the clutch up and unhook it. This was probably a MK2 Polo, might have been an Escort or Sunbeam though. I handed my mum the still locked device and proudly stated I could steal her car.

[taxi paul]

I remember about 45 yrs ago being taken to school in a ford anglia. My dad a week later pulled out on someone and it got wrote off and so did my dad's leg . He didn't have a licence or insurance so he never had another car. He just limped everywhere.

[sierraman]

Remember my dad backing into the side of a SEC Merc in Blackpool, the petit bourgeois owners weren’t around so we fucked off. Fuck ‘em.

 

 

Always remember trips to the coast paused with half hour ‘to let the engine cool down’

[beko1987]

My dad had a D reg burgundy granada when I were a lad. He doesn't remember much about it now bar it died due to rust!

 

Step mum had an E red 2cv dolly at some point. Not for long though, I remember her shouting at me and my stepbrother for bouncing in the back and making the whole thing wobble.

 

Step grandad had a rover fastback something (sure lord sterling has one or two, don't remember much about it bar it being fugging ace!

 

Stepgran had an ax which my step mum had at some point in bright green. It had a squeaky wiper.

 

Granny and grandad had novas. Favourite apparently was the green 3 door one Granny had when I was born until the early 90s. I remember sitting in it and playing with the ashtray, and hearing the fuel slosh about the tank. A year or so ago they got misty eyed and said they thought of getting another... I said I doubt even their good pensions would afford one now...

[wuvvum]

In late 1981 when my dad found out my middle brother was on the way, he did the modern equivalent of rushing out to buy a people carrier and bought a (then relatively new) beige Marina estate.  My only actual memory of that car (rather than photos) is wondering how the reversing light was supposed to work (it didn't) as I couldn't find a switch for it anywhere.  Anyway, Easter of 1983 we were driving down to spend a week at my grandparents' bungalow in Devon, and the Marina broke down in the outside lane of the M5. 

 

We got towed the rest of the way by the AA, the Marina got fixed locally and it made the drive home OK, but my dad had lost confidence in it and decided that he was going to replace it with something smaller, as two kids didn't justify a large estate after all (this was in the days before pushchairs were the size (and price) of S-class Mercs).  So that summer he took me with him to the local Renault dealer.  I wanted him to buy a blue ex-demo R11 they had in (I thought the wrap-around rear window looked cool) but he decided it was too expensive and bought a 4-year-old Renault 6 instead.  We kept that 6 for five years - my parents absolutely loved it - and it took us all over, including annual trips down to the Auvergne.  It never let us down, although it did develop a rust hole in the offside C-pillar, which my dad never did anything about.  There was no rot anywhere else though.

 

It got replaced in early 1988 with a late Mk1 Astra estate, and it was sold to a neighbour whose 1973 Dolomite had just thrown a rod.  He wobbed up the hole in the C-pillar then brush-painted the wob in completely the wrong shade of blue - I remember thinking it had looked better with the hole.

 

After that my dad had relatively modern cars (although he did buy my mum a V-reg 957cc Fiesta in about 1990) until 1994, when he lost his job and therewith his company car, and went out and bought a ten-year-old Volvo 240 estate, which I learned to drive in.

 

My uncle always used to run around in old rammle - he had a Herald 12/50 for years (which he'd fitted a 13/60 engine to) which he used to drive everywhere in.  The body was rotten as a pear and above 70 the entire thing started to flap around, but the chassis was solid so it kept passing its MOTs.  He also had a 1959 Mini which he killed the original engine on by using it to tow a 30' static caravan, so he fitted a tuned 997cc Cooper engine but kept the original 850 gearing - so it would get to 60 in about 10 seconds but ran out of revs at 78.  Brilliant round town though.

[D Spares & Tyres]

Driving parents nearly new Proton onto the common land at the back of the house.

 

Caught the rear wing on the gatepost and damaged the side stripe and a light scratch on the wing. Repaired the stripe with insulation tape and t cutted the scratch out. It looked so good I t cutter the rest of the car for them but used it as you would use a polish. It was a bastard to get off.

 

Repairing the wing of my first car when I was 16, I found some fibreglass filler in the shed. Nobody told me about hardener.

[privatewire]

Any expenditure on cars was enough to bring on a face like a burst couch and a migraine in my mum, so consequently my Dad always had to run about in old shitters. Round about 1980 he had a Hillman Imp which experienced HGF while they were going on holiday, so naturally this wasn't going to a garage for repair......A neighbour gave him an old imp engine which had been lying in his back garden for a few years, so obviously this was going to be the most cost effective repair and him and I changed the engines out on the road outside the house. I had not long passed my test, and my Dad decided I could have the honour of doing the first test drive after the refit. Anyway, gawd knows what this engine had come out of, as it absolutely flew! The acceleration was unbelievable, and it just kept wanting to go.....well it did for a while, because on the first test drive, I decided to overtake a line of 5 cars, giving it the absolute welly as I did, well just as I pulled back in, the head gasket on this one spat its dummy in spectacular fashion and I had to limp home crestfallen. My dad gave up after that and spent £175 on a recon engine.

[SiC]

My dad had a company car Cavalier hatch but decided that we needed a bigger car. So he swapped it with a colleagues Montego Estate. My ever lasting memories of that car was being sat in the back and driven crazy by the squeaky suspension.

 

I also remember my mum's not very old Volvo 340 that the back side trim would come off. Despite being back to the dealer under warranty many times, it'd be a matter of weeks before it came off again. We used to get blamed for pulling it off, but history now suggests that That They All Did It. Oh an I also lost 50p that I got given as pocket money down between the trim and the body.

 

One other memory that sticks in my mind is being in a Honda dealer in the 90s and being awestruck by the CRX Del Sol convertible roof mechanism. There was also a Integra Type R in the dealer that my mum almost went for. Unfortunately it was deemed impractical - didn't even come with a Radio standard for lightness. Unfortunately my mum took the safe option and went for a Civic. Second Civic after she almost went for a Jordan 1.6VTEC. However my dad, who doesn't care about cars but cares about money, vetoed that option. Both missed opportunities of growing up in great Japanese cars of the 90s.

[fordperv]

My dad got banned from driving when I was a lad in said v6 cortina, he had one too many sherberts in the pub, he ended up in a police chase (At kicking out time) and lost them easily the trouble is the car was quite distinctive so the police car did the rounds of the estate looking for it, the worst thing the arresting officers name was PC Drinkwater he got stick for a long time for that one

[tooSavvy]

..Also, there wasn't really that much car finance then, so unless you were rich or had a company car you just drove a [40+ yr old] car until the wheels fell off..

 

Our futures, foretold

 

TS

[mercrocker]

I think my parents were scared of cars.   They bought a grey Minx off my Mum's brother when I was 10.  Before that it was just Dad's Raleigh Runabout and the local Bristol Lodekka.    

 

My Grandad's motors played a much bigger part in my youth because I was always out in them.   He used to let me sit behind the wheel if we parked up somewhere, although that didn't happen after the Portsdown Hill incident where I managed to rock his Farina off its handbrake somehow.   It didn't half bloody pick up some speed too. The handbrake was on the driver's door side - I never saw him move so quickly......I also managed to fall out of it once into a ditch full of stinging nettles.  

 

When it went for a service the garage bloke used to pick it up and leave an Austin Chummy in grandad's shed which I was allowed to play in, I can still remember the smell of that.  

 

What I really remember, though, are the old motors that people used to drive around the village, terminally decrepit things that back-fired (one such, an Armstrong Siddeley, actual made me proper shit when I was about three years old) or smoked like a kipper-house.   I remember a huge bang one night, much louder than any backfire and a Phase VIII Minx had overturned into the gas main at the end of our road.   It was just left there, wheels skyward, for about three days - no tape, no barriers, fuck all.   

 

There was a Standard Eight that some young beatnik had painted white with red spots on one side and red with white spots on the other.   Must have taken ages.  Anyhow, inevitably, it ended up down the scrappy and for months and months you could see black or beige Standards running round with a spotty door or bonnet. 

 

The scrapyard was worth a book in itself - one of the blokes down there had an ice blue Mk Ten Jag with a Perkins in it.  It was way too tall for the bonnet so he simply made a box-shaped scoop.   People would quite literally drive on the bridge with immaculate-looking Zephyrs and just hand in the key.   Some of these would just be parked in the road outside with "£75" white-washed onto the screen.  

 

I had a great-Uncle who lived in Brazil and made regular returns to the UK whereupon he would buy something out of the Exchange and Mart in Middlesex and drive down in it.   I never really got to know him that well but he had awesome taste (or luck) in automobiles - I can remember him rocking up in a Willys station wagon, a Fiat 2300 saloon and the most incredibly pimped 100E I'd ever seen.    

 

We always walked to school back then (aye, fifteen miles one way, 18 t'other.  In t'rain etc) unless it was raining biblically or had just dumped eight feet of snow (it doesn't snow like that any more down south).   A kindly neighbour would usually proffer a lift - either Mr Williams in his Thames van or Mr Drew next door in a spectacularly decrepit A70 Hereford.   As the snow thawed on the roof of it most of the water ended up coming through the sunroof into icy rivulets down the headlining.  It also seemed to be a proper handful - it had what must have been rock hard Town & Countries on the back.   He used to tow a caravan with the bloody thing too! 

 

Out of 30 houses in our street I think only eight or nine had cars - they never parked these in the road but you would see them on driveways on the way to school - with tin foil radiator grille covers or bits of sacking hanging out of the bonnet in a vain hope that they would start in the cold mornings.    Talking of school, one of my primary teachers had a turquoise NSU Prinz 4 - brand new on a B plate.   It looked like a flamingo on the village duck pond amongst all the A30s and Prefects.....

[ProgRocker]

In 1989 or thereabouts I went with my dad in his 1983 MG Maestro 1600 to the Unipart place to get some spare part for it. I went to get into the passenger side and broke the door handle clean off! So it was back to the Unipart counter to buy a replacement door handle!

 

In August 1989 returned to a very rainy Luton airport from a family holiday in Majorca with my parents, uncle and aunt. This was in the dark and early hours of the morning as well. My dad and uncle got absolutely soaked loading up the roof rack on the Maestro! My dad was cursing a blue streak, my uncle was more restrained I think as I was not quite 12 years old at the time.

Had he bought a Cavalier or Carlton in 1988 instead of the Maestro, then there may not have been any need for a roof rack with 5 up + suitcases!

[ProgRocker]

 the worst thing the arresting officers name was called PC Drinkwater he got stick for a long time for that one

 

[egg]

I remember the excitement when one of my wealthier uncles brought down his new 1986 gold cavalier CD from that there London. Headlamp wipers and rear headrests, cor!

[bigstraight6]

My father had a succession of company cars during my formative years, I well recall during 1981 his MK1 Cavalier coming up for replacement and going through sales brochures to help him make an informed choice, i made it clear that the Morris Ital was not going to happen and suggested the Talbot Solara which he went for. The car that turned up was dark green with a beige interior.

It was 12 months later in the summer of 1982 when we were approaching Bideford when a Mercedes W123 in front of us threw up some chippings from a newly relaid road and the windscreen went. Luckily there was a Peugeot Talbot dealer in the town but they didn't have a replacement screen, the dealer some distance away in Launceston did.

A temporary plastic sheet screen was duly fitted but blew off into a field very soon after leaving Bideford, it was an unpleasant experience on a hot August day the rest of that journey which filled the car with all manner of insects including many wasps.....

[Pillock]

My uncle used to work for Trusthouse Forte as a project manager architect type of person. Lots of miles, company car.

I remember riding down the M1 in the boot of his Carlton Estate - Mk1? I dunno, the shape that you'd get on a B plate. It occurs to me now they never did a 7 seater so we were just plonked in the boot waving at truckers.

Also remember pressing ALL OF THE BUTTONS on the dashboard of his Alfa 164.

 

My granddad used to go through the old fella routine of "checking" the engine on his Cortina. They had a proper old house, with a garage that smelled of garage (mildly damp chipboard, oil and spanners) and he used to amble through there, pop the bonnet on his Cortina '80 and make sure the oil was in it, things were attached etc. I'd "help" by asking what things did. At age 6 or 7 I remember being able to describe the purpose of a distributor, plug leads and air filter.

 

I also remember they used to collect newspapers to take to his brothers, who was a church warden. A recycling truck came every couple of months and they'd get a few quid for the paper to put in the roof fund - this was the 80s, before Recycling was a thing. These were stored in the garage so I used to pretend I was going to go and sit in the car making vroom vroom noises when in fact I'd be sneaking a look at boobies in all the copies of The Sun lying around.

[xtriple]

My Grand Dad had a MK111 Zephyr 4 for decades. It only got used on a Monday night to take the shopping to my Auntie, a journey of about 10 miles each way, the rest of its time was spent in a damp garage. It lost all the shopping out of the boot one night when the floor gave way and then, a few months later the bonnet blew up and the front wings popped away from the front of the car. It looked immaculate but was absolutely rotten under the outer panels.

 

It did the bonnet/wings things right outside the Ford main dealers it had originally come from so was abandoned and we got a taxi home. The next day a Silver Fox Cortina was delivered from the dealers (TC Harrison) and that lasted him out.

 

The Zephyr was a wonderful thing, the Cortina, not so much...

[egg]

Talking of boobies, my dad used to get dirty calendars from the big parts suppliers in the 80s. He used to hide them well, cos I could never find them! He used to give my grandad one of them at Christmas 'for the lads on the farm'.

[Tamworthbay]

My love of Capris came from a black 2.0S owned by my brother in law who used to rag the shit out of it. Well I say A Capri, it turned out to be two that had been welded together in a classic cut and shut job, the front end and half the floor was one car, the roof and back end was another.

[Pillock]

My gran had a light blue Moggie Minor. It got nicked from the golf club in Nottingham she was captain at, and later found on a scrote estate (I know, I was surprised they had those in the 80s too) around the corner. It got fitted with a hidden switch under the dashboard after that.

It was also the car she used to take my mum shopping in - two adults, two kids and a week's worth of Fine Fare threatening to pop the bootlid open.

 

Their cars were always worked on by a local mechanic - Johnny Marshall in Cinderhill. A proper garage with an inspection pit, naughty calendars, gas cylinders and torches and a range of BFO hammers. He used to patiently explain what he was doing, so whilst other kids could tell you who Kevin Keegan played for I could explain why copper grease was used when reassembling brakes. I don't doubt he's long gone now but I can still remember him as a round-faced bloke in filthy overalls.

 

Johnny Marshall helped fix my mum's sunbeam when a drunk driver clouted the door and wing, and although he was a good mechanic his colour match was bloody awful. This rang true when he also heated and bent back into shape the front forks of my bike when I'd used a wall to stop too many times, and they went from a nice light metallic blue to something I now suspect was robbed from British Gas.

 

He did himself out a job really, when the Mk3 Cav came out they took me along to the showroom and I was pestering them to get the nice run-out fully loaded Mk2 GLSi in black. Johnny convinced them a Mk3 L would have better resale value, and then realised things were starting to get a bit complex for him to fix with his hammers.

[puddlethumper]

My old man had an Armstrong Siddeley Hurricane, phwoar, in the late fifties. The only thing I can remember is, it was maroon and the handbrake failed one night, and it ran into the side of the house bending the wing and bumper.

Next was a Rover 14 that I thought was brilliant. Red leather interior. Back seat like a settee, and shit loads of leg room.

We used to drive from Aberdeen to Halifax, in the summer to see family, in one go in the early sixties. Ferry at the Forth then the A 1 which was single carriageway. Behind trucks grinding up hills at 20 mph belching black clouds of clag. Waving at the truckers and looking up their reg in the AA book to see how far from home they were.

The Rover was only good for a steady 55, 60 at a push. I don't remember how long it took to get to Halifax. We used to leave at 6 and get there after dark so must have been 14 hours or so. Froze ya balls off in the winter, no heater.

The Rover got scrapped or traded in in 64 for a brand new Ford Cortina 1500 Super no less, which was very vinyl and plasticky. I mourned the loss of the Rover with leather.

In 67 it was chucked in for a Mk2 1600E which I thought was kinda ok. I did point him in the direction of the Lotus but to no avail.