What was your first car?

[palacebear]

Apparently, in the dead of night, you could get a mini down the pedestrian underpasses at Tibbet's Corner but when the Minor tried to follow the 'Police' illuminated box on the roof would prang the ceiling .....

Safe maybe to assume that the youths of Danebury Avenue and Alton Road were partial to running Minis through the subways...?

[GraemeT]

Safe maybe to assume that the youths of Danebury Avenue and Alton Road were partial to running Minis through the subways...?

I think you'll find all the cars involved were driven by bored Night Duty coppers - things we used to do to pass the time before London was a truly 24/7 city? (Sundays used to be truly Lazy Days with no shops open, pubs were open 12 - 2pm and 6pm - 10pm if at all).

Goodness, I'll be growing mutton chop whiskers and in the audience of the 'Good Old Days' next..........

[palacebear]

Careful - you're giving away your age !

[burnham28]

When they were building the Toby Jug flyover on the Kingston by Pass a tunnel was built for the workmen to walk through. I managed one night to drive my Morris minor panda through this tunnel with about an inch to spare each side. Luckily it was tall enough to accommodate the roof box. The Panda was the first vehicle to use the fly under but I never mentioned it.

[viewsonic1]

Back to the plot. My first set of wheels as a seventeen year old was a Renault ten 1100, the one with the engine in the back. I had to keep a bag of sand in the boot (front) as it was so light making handling "interesting".
It died the night I drove ten miles or so on a fast dual carriageway, foot flat to the floor trying to impress a girlfriend. The engine sounded a right bag of nails and the Renault garage said after stripping it down, "it's not worth putting back together". I gave it to a mechanic friend of my father's to do what he liked with it. I saw it two months later in a scrapyard.

[Chipper]

My first was a 1973 Fiat 126, donated by my grandmother. It had the teeny 594cc air-cooled engine and was pretty gutless, though I did see an indicated 80 mph once or twice when foot to the floor on long motorway declines.

It had atrocious demisting in winter - your breath would freeze on the inside of the windscreen, until the heater finally started to work after over half an hour, by which time I'd usually reached my destination.

Fortunately, I only had to endure it for a few months, before being given the 1970 Minor Traveller I still have, which as we all know, is an infinitely superior conveyance.

[firedrake1942]

Met traffic ran a competition in the early 80's to see who could get the furthest and back on a night duty. The front runners got to scotland. lands end john o ' groats anglesey etc. Then an enterprising crew thought 'I know, lets do Paris!' They got down to Dover, across the channel. blatted down to Paris, took the obligatory photo / postcard under the Eiffel town and blatted back to Calais. There, the competition came to an abrupt and painful end as the French Fishermen were blockading the Port and I would love to have been a fly on the wall when the absence for about a week of a TAC car and its crew were explained......

Then there's the Thames River water analysis, Skylab watching duties and truncheon throwing contests in Hyde Park on ND. happy days!

[morris van]

I bet most people can remember the registration on their first car mine was UME678M but have a job remembering it on the car/cars you got now.

[SteveClem]

AJR 577K....traded in for STD 560M.

[palacebear]

First was MLA589. Next three were (I think) 1592CD, 9551BY and NPC366D. Marinas were KYL970K, NBY785K, RRT608M, JRX64P, NDL186R BHG982V and RKJ45W (Ital). Maxis were RUK55L and OLN822W. Hunter was JGT8N. Daf was XPD782N. There were many more since.... !

[jagnut66]

A Morris Marina, Brunswick Green, MBY 601P. Passed to me by my father, on passing my test, when he bought the one and only new car he ever owned.
Long gone now I suspect, though they are becoming more popular now, shame there are so few left.
Best wishes,
Mike.

[toulky]

Cannot remember the plate of my first car but my second vehicle 1200cc Ford Cortina Mk1 was 17 RUO !

[GraemeT]

I bet most people can remember the registration on their first car mine was UME678M but have a job remembering it on the car/cars you got now.

Indeed!
SYR194F was my first then
BWT772S then I miss a couple until
J472SAN then I miss most of the remainder

Car I first drove was my fathers Triumph Herald 1200 NAG465G - he bought it when he was in his thirties, learned to drive in it then my twin brother and I both passed our tests using it in 1980 - it didn't survive that by long.

[dalebrignall]

jrx823l mini uvb111m allegro ,e406egs vw caddy pick up , f111pgs r5 gt turbo , then i had a l reg pug 306 , carnt remember the number , then a r reg 106 xs , again carnt remember the number , then t755 aro rover 200 , then the current car ive had for 15 years r61lgf saab 900xs 140000 still going says it all really

[Blaketon]

My first car was a 1974 Mini 1000, GCJ 131N. It was a reliable car and I owned it from 1982 - 84. It has some rusty bits but soon after I passed my test, a Cortina driver (In a one way system) decided to park on the opposite side of the road, from where he has stopped, just as I was passing. I sounded the horn and swerved, stopping less than a foot from a tree but that wasn't enough to prevent him hitting my left front wing and valance. The police attended the scene and booked him, so his insurers were forced to pay for new panels and a bumper. I paid a bit extra for the right wing to be done, so had a new front end (I also had a new rear valance), which got rid of the rusty bits.

When I came to sell the car (c 69000 miles), the previous owner of my MG Midget was getting married and needed to sell the Midget, to raise some money. He decided to take my Mini + £1800, as he still needed a car. I still have the Midget and it seems my Mini was on the road for a further four years. As it turned out, I bought another Mini 1000 (1980 model with 25000 miles) in 1985, as the MG factory had closed and I wanted to preserve the Midget (The Winter of 84 - 85 was quite snowy, with lots of salt on the roads). I had wanted a Mini Clubman estate but they seemed quite scarce and the Mini I bought seemed a good buy (£1550) and it served me well (That one went on to 1997). I have often thought that I should have looked out for a Minor Traveller but to tell the truth, it never occurred to me. I didn't realise what good cars they are and I tended to assume that they were only as durable as other BL cars (Though GCJ 131N was on the road after my father's 1976 VW Golf, to within a few months of his 1979 Renault and it outlasted my mother's 1972 Beetle). To my shame, when I first went to a classic car show, in 1985 and saw lots of Minors there, I was puzzled as to what people saw in them .

[Biggles1957]

Riley Elf WNX 227H. Persian Blue with a white roof. Wipers were seized because it had never been out in the rain! Still rusty though...

Great little car - it got squashed by an artic at a roundabout when my dad was driving it....

[GreenGiant57]

Mine was a green 57 Morris Traveller..GEB 216.. Got it in Salisbury then ran out of petrol on Salisbury plain on the way home!!...Not many petrol stations on salisbury plain!

[palacebear]

Slightly better these days thanks to the Solstice Service Area... although the on-site Costa Coffee franchise was lagging behind in the cleanliness league last time I stopped there

[GBond]

My pick-up! (My father bought it as a present for me when I was 14, only ended up restoring it many, MANY years later)

First car I actually drove around in was a '98 Corsa saloon (Called Monza here) which I still own.

[palacebear]

General Motors certainly know how to confuse. Just googled '98 Chevy Monza ... definitely Corsa-related but with a boot/trunk. Also found an earlier Chevy Monza (built Canada and Brazil apparently), which looks like a close relative of the Opel Ascona/Vauxhall Cavalier AND of the Opel/Vauxhall Vectra! The only Monza I really remember is the 3-litre V6 Opel version (1978-86) and its British counterpart the Vauxhall Royale Coupe.