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Dollywobbler's Invacar - Ongoing


dollywobbler

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I'd love to have met the civil servants in charge of this program by 2000. If I've understood the history correctly they'd have still been allocating budgets for repairs and maintenance and managing other people responsible for the upkeep of these things. Must have been one of the more bizarre parts of Whitehall or Leeds (where the Dept of Health is also based) to work in.

Heywood stores near Manchester was the nerve centre for the Invalid vehicle scheme,was meant to be costing around £3 million in the mid 1990s.

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Love the plastic pig video which brought back more memories. Grandfarther had an Invacar but the first car my farther had was a mk6 Reliant Regal (square rear lights rather than the two separate ones on the mk5 if I remember correctly after 55 years or so).

He bought this because he had a bike licence and as it didn't have a reverse gear he could drive it. When he passed his car test he was then legally allowed to remove the blanking plate on the gearbox tunnel that stopped you selecting reverse gear.

 

Also remember going to Tamworth with it when he complained about fuel comsumption (under normal use, not 4 adults, 2 children and a dog on a trip to Blackpool). Reliant man disconected fuel pipe, connected up a bottle with a pint of petrol in it and went for a litterally non stop drive. It stopped at the normal point, so fuel consumpsion was OK. My farther was white with experiance, and would oftern remind me of that experiance.

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In about 1980-81 I used to work with a chap on the funfair, who had one of these.  He could walk using two crutches, and faster than I could on two legs, and drove his Invacar like he stole it, but then he was about my age, early 20s, so maybe that isn't such a surprise.

 

Early 1982 I ran into the back of one in my Toledo.  Triumph wasn't damaged but the blue thing.... I can imagine it took some repairing, from a 5mph impact!

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I've just remembered a lad who I went to school with, his grandad had an Invacar! I think he only had one arm or something and used this to get about in. By the time I saw it, it had been unused for a few years and was nothing more than a garden ornament at that point. I'm so happy that many escaped the cull of the early '00's.

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I thought these were all on 10" wheels, but it turns out they're on 12s. Has anyone down south got any Mini wheels kicking about? The tyres are all wrecked, but there's no sense fitting new when I don't know how long it's going to take to get these road legal. I just want to make it easier to move them about. Oh, and one of them is missing a wheel, which doesn't help!

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Glassfibre is meant to be good in a crash, as it shatters and absorbs the impact. These do seem to be made out of particularly flimsy stuff though...

I saw one of these that had been flattened by a hgv near Oswestry way back then (pre bypass days,Gledrid crossroads if you knew it)

There was very little left,certainly more swept up then towed away

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