In 1960, not long after I turned 18, I purchased my first car, a 1952 Ford ‘Prefect’. It was a little four cylinder matchbox, with one of those long gearsticks sticking out of the floor, a dashboard with a tray underneath which filled up with water when it rained, and the car was so small, it barely seated four people unless they were thin and weighed about 8 stone or less. It was however mechanically sound and provided I topped up the oil every week, it got me from A to B for about three years.
I had driven it to and from work for about a year and a half, when I finally thought that I’d mastered the art of driving, I reasoned that my luck had run long enough and decided to get my licence.
I gave my dad a lift home home every night, (he worked in Carlton for a few years) despite the fact that he was a very heavy pipe smoker and stank the car out with amphora fumes which used to annoy me to no end, as well as anyone else who happened to be in the car with us.
One night, on our way home from work, I had Hotlips in the passenger seat (he’d had his licence cancelled again due to his alcohol related habits) who was puffing away merrily on a cigarette and my ‘Ol’Man’ in the back seat creating a smoke screen with his trusty old meerschaum.
I’d had just about enough of it by then and, in between coughing and spluttering, politely insisted that they extinguish their respective smokebombs.
However, after them complying with my request, we noticed that the smoke in the car was still very much present if not increasing and by the smell of it was obviously not tobacco related.
We managed to make it home that night but on inspecting the motor it was discovered that one of the pistons was cracked and because of that, and also because of another half a dozen or so things wrong with the car I decided to sell it to the wreckers.
I received the princely sum of 20 pounds for it and walked away from there thoroughly convinced that I’d cheated the guy who ran that yard.
That was in 1963 and fate would have it that I didn’t buy another car until 1971, buy which time I was married and had two kids.