Period first motors

[zaceverett]

Here's mine,

It was my first car 20 years ago and i still have it. Fully restored it from bare metal and used it as my wedding car.

 

[tobydog]

Very nice. All it's missing is the number 53 :wink:

 

[tobydog]

I wonder how much of this sort of thing is really a legal MOT requirement? It seems a bit harsh to fail something like the Electronic Stability System not working when it's not a legal requirement in the first place and can also be legitimately switched off by the driver if they so choose.

FF - rather them than me. I think that for cars that are fitted with ESP it's an integral part of the overall stability of the car. It's built into the design. Unless you're Jeremy Clarkson, I see no real sense in turning off the ESP on a public road. I'm an enthusiastic driver but if someone regularly feels that ESP is interferring with their fun, they should get on a track. In this regard I agree that the MOT needs to be very clear. Whilst I may know what I'm doing without ESP, Mrs. T or a new owner might not have a clue whether it was working or not if the light is permanently on, and whether they are being 'looked after'.

 

[88v8]

As we love pics, period first motor pics are (still) in period cardboard boxes in one of two 1,000ft storage units, so here are the period current motors.

At least, that's what the TR6 looked like before two years outside under a cover...

Ivor

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Here is my first car:

 

[FamilyWiggs]

Ooops, my mistake. That is my dream car.

Here was my first car - a Landy Series 3, Long Wheelbase with safari roof and in blue. This is not the actual one though, just a pic from t'internet.

3 gallons to the mile, 0-60 in a fortnight, (longer to slow down again), and space for 13 partygoers in the back.

Quite safe for a 17 year old - I was indestructible, couldn't speed, and everything else got out of its way.

Happy Days!

 

[Penners]

I was indestructible

Did you mean "I" or "it", FW? I'd believe the latter, but I suspect the former may have been teenage bravado.

 

[Flyfisher]

I wonder how much of this sort of thing is really a legal MOT requirement? It seems a bit harsh to fail something like the Electronic Stability System not working when it's not a legal requirement in the first place and can also be legitimately switched off by the driver if they so choose.

FF - rather them than me. I think that for cars that are fitted with ESP it's an integral part of the overall stability of the car. It's built into the design. Unless you're Jeremy Clarkson, I see no real sense in turning off the ESP on a public road. I'm an enthusiastic driver but if someone regularly feels that ESP is interferring with their fun, they should get on a track. In this regard I agree that the MOT needs to be very clear. Whilst I may know what I'm doing without ESP, Mrs. T or a new owner might not have a clue whether it was working or not if the light is permanently on, and whether they are being 'looked after'.

You may have misunderstood me, I wasn't advocating turning off ESP and I entirely agree with your sentiment that the public roads are no place to push modern cars to their performance limits. Indeed, I'd suggest that anyone who WAS driving a modern car to its limits on a public would very quickly be arrested for dangerous driving - and rightly so. Most modern cars have a quite ridiculous level of performance for the basic job in hand.

My point was that the MOT was, or should be, limited to the essential components required for the safe operation of a motor vehicle on a public road. ESP may well be a useful safety aid but it is by no means essential and is not even a legal requirement, so it seems harsh (to me) for a non functioning ESP system to result in MOT test failure while the same vehicle not fitted with that option would pass.

Someone getting 'caught out' when expecting things like ESP to 'look after' them would be a classic example of risk compensation behaviour - sadly all too common.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_compensation

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Interesting reply Philipjuk---My family were Austin owners too--I remember sitting in the Austin 7 being driven to school on cold winter days, wrapped in an old fur coat of my Mother's and sucking extra strong peppermints to, as My Father put it ,'clear the frost off the windscreen'!!

 

[philpjuk100]

My dad used to pull the choke out and put a clothes peg behind the knob while he cranked it up,a cold day was known as a "two peg morning"!.

 

[philpjuk100]

No heaters in those days,on our "santa" trips to the rest of the family in wales we used car rugs and carried two hot water bottles for my mum who felt the cold,one was filled from the radiator drain tap the rad was then topped up with the water from the cooling bottle.No antifreeze,used to drain it down a grid at night and fill it from the kettle before we used it!.

 

[88v8]

And for a demister, one rubbed the inside of the screen with a cut potato.
In freezing fog, the outside of the screen iced over, so one had to either open the windscreen and sit in the freezing cold, or stick one's head out of the window.
I'd been driving ten years before I owned a car with a heater/demister.

Ivor

 

[Moo]

We take things for granted these days, don't we?

Remember the excitement when flashing indicators came in?
And the wonder of refinements like self-parking windscreen wipers, not to speak of ones with variable speeds!

But for me the greatest luxury was a proper radio. When I had the bubble car, I had a little tranny that sat beside me on the front seat; it was very sensitive to direction, so I was constantly having to adjust it when I went round corners.

 

[philpjuk100]

My uncle who drove a seven had an electric demister,it was brown bakelite,held on the screen with two suckers and had a little switch on it.To use it you had to have the dynamo switch on winter and could not use it with the lights on.The wiper was vacuum powered and only worked when your foot was off the pedal!.My morris has the accelerator pedal between the clutch and brake but it does not matter too much as stamping on any of the pedals does not do very much!.Heater? my mate had a commer van he used to carry our bikes to race meetings and as it was not fitted with a heater he used to have a paraffin "tortoise" stove hanging from a butchers hook in the back!.

 

[malcolm]

My first car was a Triumph Spitfire bought to do up when I was 16. I sold it before I went to college. I quickly got bored with academic engineering and bought a 1959 MGA rolling shell from a Texan scrapyard. I still have it but don't have a garage at the moment so it lives in a barn about half an hour away.

My partner just bought a Mini convertible. It makes a mockery of the MG in every way.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

I had a little tranny that sat beside me on the front seat

Was it a little orange and cream coloured plastic tranny---- mine was--it too sat beside me on the seat, that is why my Father-in-Law put a radio into my Beatle,'cos I kept re tuning it as I cornered!!!!!!

 

[Flyfisher]

John, Paul, George or Ringo? :wink:

 

[Penners]

The wiper was vacuum powered and only worked when your foot was off the pedal

My second car - an elderly Ford Zodiac - had the same type of wipers, powered from the manifold vacuum. Under hard acceleration they virtually stopped!

Mind you, the Zodiac had that best-of-all design feature for young chaps: a leather bench seat and column gear change. I always wax-polished the seat and used to take left-hand bends at full throttle, so that the young lady sitting beside me was slid over to my side :twisted: . No seat belts in those days!

 

[Penners]

John, Paul, George or Ringo? :wink:

That popular beat combo had a disastrous effect on the spelling of one particular English word.

 

[philpjuk100]

When my two lads were young my transport was a 1932 Morris Minor pictured previously,it has a bench seat and one lad sat on my wifes knee and the other between us (don`t think we would get away with that now,four in a two seat car with no belts or air bags!),Son Simon who was teething and was a bit of a fidget had turned upside down with his head below the dash,after a few miles the car started to missfire and the wipers slid down the screen,he had chewed through the vacuum pipe! Stopped at a pub,had lunch and fixed the pipe with a drinking straw.