I was perusing a Van magazine in Smiths and came across an article on a 60`s Mini Van.
Now, memory would have the Mini Van as being quite a reasonable vehicle, at the time - and the 60`s DID seem like `modern times` didn`t they? At the time that is.
But looking at a photo of the van now internally and there are thin little seats, everything pared to a functual basic.
Memory distortion and motoring then? How do you perceive things?........
Remember watching the Brighton run (Genevieve) with one of the lead actors being Kenneth More? Now the shock is to see the film again and realise that both the vintage cars in the film AND the 50`cars in the background are merging towards each other and are starting to look equally ancient.
You travel to an area not visited for 30 years and it`s `gone` - you might think memory is going, but, as you know, it`s all those changes - tree growth, infrastructure, road changes.
Maybe there`s a certain road, perhaps over a bleak moorland that`s almost the same. But the landscape around has changed and there`s that dissonance with long term memory.
But looking out to sea, carefully, only including that unchanging headland in the visual field.. Or seeing the white cliffs emerging from the mist on a returning channel ferry.. The perfect match of memory is there.
You could almost expect the 67, red and cream Triumph twin to be behind you - poised with a tank of Super - only a fast 90mph blast down those country lanes - to the flaxen haired girl, parents and the Alsation who`s sharp little puppy teeth left small white marks - still evident on these ageing hands and - as realised dimly, even then - companions until eternity.
Speaking of which, It was crazed as an adult and used to think that cars were alive. Even when The Old Man arrived home in his own car, the dog used to let out a howl like a wolf and go for the only soft part, the tires - with as much ferocity as can be imagined.
There was then the apologetic whining when the Old Man got out.... as though it didn`t know he was in there.
Anyway, are you an argumentative Web Bot, waiting for another argument? Or a Human Being? ;-)
Tell us about yourself - in the interest of uplifting the Human condition
All the best!
oilrag
Edited by oilrag on 08/05/2009 at 16:30
|
I have good memories going up the old north road,anywhere between alconbury hill and berwick upon tweed,different cars,all heaps but they always got me to my destination
i was up by leeming bar services the other week and looked at the plans for the new motorway they are building so this will be another section of just another motorway :-(
I also love unclassified roads to this day,i drive ,the wife navigates ,we found an old water mill on monday by doing this,time to stop and explore.
Brilliant
|
I spent my childhood in ( 60s and 70s ) Edinburgh. We had relatives in Sheffield and Northampton. A couple of times a year we would do the rele-round. Down across Carter Bar, through Newcastle and on to the A1. I remember watching a forest grow year by year near Otterburn. They chopped it down recently. We would make the journey in my dad's Zephyr 6 and later his Wolseley 6/110. It was replaced by a Volvo 144 and a series of 240s. I learned to drive on the last of those Volvos.
In the early years lunchtime would find us at a Hotel in Boroughbridge. We always had chops so the dogs would get the bones when we got back to the car. Our clean plates often raised an eyebrow from the waiter. Later we took to stopping at Leeming Bar. Seemed a very modern thing to do. Chicken sandwiches on brown bread and a milkshake rather than the stuffy restaurant we used to frequent.
It was a long journey in those days and twilight would see us nearing the Tinsley steelworks cooling towers as we completed the journey to Sheffield. It's the Meadowhall shopping centre now of course.
A day or two there and then on to Northampton. Friends of my parents had a caravan at Billing. Sometimes we'd go there. It seemed a hot place to a kid from Scotland.
Mini-break over we'd head back to Scotland. Dad would do it in one day. We'd stop for a break again at Leeming. Burgers in a bun maybe and another milk shake. Then the long haul back, sun setting somewhere about Jedburgh, fall asleep some time after that, wake as as the engine note changed as we entered the city.
Home again. School tomorrow.
|
|
|
|
Some things I can picture as if they were a clip from a favourite film.
"Helping" my dad rebuild the top end of his Honda CB77 when I was 8, he didn't realise he'd nipped an 'o'-ring seal around a cylinder stud until he fired the bike up and oil started weeing out from the head gasket area. So we did it again. Got it right this time, so he took me on the pillion while he went for a quick blast to make sure it was OK. No silencers, header pipes only, and no helmets. What a noise :¬)
Or his later NSU TT saloon, with the perforated heat exchanger which warmed the cabin with fumes that you could ignite if you struck a match.
Or taking me & the wife's first car -- a 1.3 4-speed Mark 3 Escort -- to France and caning it mercilessly at 90mph for hour after hour on the marvellously empty French roads. Those poor Valencia pushrods :-| But it withstood it all, and more.
Oddly, I set my all-time record from our house to the in-law's house in Hull in that same 1.3 Escort (1' 42" door to door, 116 miles). Despite owning cars since that have had 3x the Escort's horsepower, I've never been able to get under 1' 45" since. Admittedly, the journeys have been a lot quieter since :)
|
Watched Genevieve and the 1904 Darracq and the Spyker began to merge with the Ford Zephyrs, Vauxhall Crestas, etc, etc? You must be getting old oilrag!
|
Leeming Bar, Alconbury (Weston?), Scotch Corner, Alnwick, right through the middle of Newcastle, and further south Grantham later to become famous for some association I forget... In my late youth I was living in London and the south for one reason and another and my parents lived near Dunfermline, so I got to know all the old A1 as a hitchhiker from the North Circular Road to South Queensferry...
The hypnotic drone of a lorry diesel after 24 hours without sleep or much food... long lifts and short, good drivers and awful ones, the Jowett Bradford owner freeing a stuck valve by the roadside, the Ford Anglia van tailsliding all the corners in dense fog just north of Hatfield, the deaf old geezer in an Austin A95 Westminster cruising at 90 or 100 in overdrive with a beatific smile on the narrow, straight stretch of single carriageway that used to run along the top of the moors north of Alnwick... It was sometimes boring and arduous but I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
Edited by Lud on 08/05/2009 at 18:26
|
Riding Pillion with my Grandfather on his Lambretta from Hillingdon to the river at Windsor. Use to stop and park up just below the Castle and then take a pleasure boat ride down stream to somewhere and back again. He knew some of the crew and I used to get to hold the wheel. Got a photo or two somewhere, but usually a ruddy Pigeon sat on my head!!
Happy happy days, no crash hats and just an anorak I guess.
Great thread.................MD
|
|
I used to walk to school when I was a kid (about a mile and a half!) and always remember what I thought was a big hill on the side of the road (I was at primary school!) - anyhow we went back a few years ago and I walked the same stretch... that hill was just a mound to adult eyes!!
|
|
As I mentioned above, I learned to drive on my Dad's Volvo 240. Passed my test in '76. While learning, I overcooked a bend on a suburban back road at low speed but enough to gently collide with a steel lamp post. My father was fairly irritated but the Volvo was fine. It had those great big bumpers on it which looked and pretty much were undamageable. The lamp post however, well that collected a fair sized dent. We made a sharp exit. I, out of curiosity, returned to the scene only a couple of years ago. The lamp post and it's battle scar are still there.
|
An old friend has just put a photo of his old C-plate Montego Turbo from the early 90's on Facebook, and I have never seen so many comments appear so quickly. This car was legendary, and everyone who knows him has posted with comments of "that thing was nuts" and "I will never forget that car", together with recollections of insanely inappropriate speeds in the most unlikely of areas.
Standard looking, he took advantage of a dropped valve to have the engine rebuilt by Motobuild and tweaked to 230 bhp. Of course, money ran out at that point, and the rest of it was left standard. Monumental torque steer, wheelspin in the first four gears in the bone dry, and enough pace to leave most things of the time standing in a haze of shredded Dunlop. It was brilliant. To add to the excitement, you'd also suffer the odd broken driveshaft which it would chuck at you at random. CLACK, CRACK, CLUNK, ...poppoppopopopopopopp off the limiter. Otherwise, mechanical reliability was actually incredibly good.
A truly awful car in many ways, but proper fun partly as a result of the sense of imminent self destruction and danger it oozed. Modern cars don't do this. The first genuinely quick car I ever went in, and one that I, and much of our social group remember very fondly, mostly because it nearly killed us all at some point.
Edited by DP on 08/05/2009 at 20:20
|
Flying to Germany to visit the wife's sister back in the '70s.
Her other sister was going to borrow my Cortina GT while we were there.
Stopped off to pick up other sister, I reversed round the corner, failing to notice the mud on the road from a recent turf delivery. Clipped lampost and cracked rear lense. Lampost went horizontal!
Local BIB were very helpful, but we still misssed flight.
It turned out the road hadn't been adopted and the developer went bust. I never heard another word about it and other sister said it was never replaced while she lived there!
|
A few I had a joiner mate (typical bloke always liked to show off, always knew he was right) he had bought a 1989 Fiesta MK3 1.0 which amazingly had some sort of crude ABS, apparantly it was a fleet car when new and the company insisted all their drivers have cars with ABS hence this was probably the only ever base spec Fiesta made in the 80's to have ABS.
This was back in 2001 btw.
Anyway on one icy evening he wanted to proof to me that you can skid a car with ABS, he took me to the a car park (empty) and slamed on the brakes, the car moved sideways at 40mph I screamed "you nearly killed us"
On the same car it had a warn reverse/1st and on the four speed reverse is next to 1st, he kept going in reverse instead of 1st. I very crudely soldered a wire onto a reverse lights, but a 330ohm (or something similar) resistor onto a 10mm LED onto the dashboard so if he engaged reverse the dash lit up! Worked perfectly for about 200 miles....
Another mate had just passed his test and had bought a rare Fiesta 3 pot 1.1 (one cylinder kept fouling its plugs) and we went for a little drive, I was navigation and miss reasd the a-z what I thought was a road was a horse track, we got stuck and no way of reversing. In the end we had to ask the golf club next to us to open the gates so he could turn round, he never lets me forget that.
|
|
|
|
|
I try and forget cars I've owned in the past. All I know is that cars get better and better all the time, and I'm just pleased that they don't make them like they used to.
|
|
|
