My earliest memories are from about 1973/74.
My dad’s cars
- Light metallic blue Mk3 Ford Cortina saloon
- Orange Mk3 Cortina estate
- Dark blue Mk4 Cortina estate
- Yellow Rover 2200TC “P6”
- Gold Rover 3500 “SD1” circa ’80
- Gold Ford Granada 2.8 Ghia estate
- Green Ford Granada 2.8 GL estate
- Dark blue Mk4 Cortina estate
- White Ford Sierra, something basic like a 1.6L
- Metallic green Ford Sierra Ghia
- Silver Ford Sierra GLX
- Red Fiat Uno
- White Volvo 460
In parallel from about 1981/2 my mum drove
- Blue Hillman Imp
- White Renault 5
- Bronze Chrysler Alpine
- Brown Mini Metro
- Bronze Mini 1000
- Black Fiat Uno
- Metallic blue Renault 5 1.4 automatic
- White Ford Fiesta
I asked my brother (who has a different dad) if he could remember any of these cars since he is a lot older than me. He wrote…
You know, I don’t think I could have gone into any detail about any of Roy’s cars. I remember them as estates, mostly, and that’s about it.
However I do have a distinct and very atmospheric memory of the car he had when he first met mum. It was a Ford Anglia in the classic ‘angle-box’ shape. He may have had one and then another. It (they) would have been GKN company cars. I recall it (them) being in bland colours with at least one being in some kind of two-colour scheme. They were small cars, and very ‘cosy’ inside. Roy took us over the Humber ferry to Hull every so often, to see his mum in Cottingham. I remember coming home along empty country roads, high up over the Lincs Wolds, on winter’s nights with frost and moonlight. The four of us and then, later, Chris as a babe in mum’s arms in the front seat were travelling safe in this small, warm box. Thinking back we might have been in a fair bit of trouble if anything had gone wrong though … no mobile phones, few other cars on the road and not many houses up there either.
The other thing I remember was that the law required you to show a parking light if you parked on the street in a built-up area overnight. Roy had a clip-on one just like this. It was my job to go out when it was starting to get dark, clip it onto the window and plug it into the cigarette lighter.
I also remember that once, while one of the other cars was being serviced, he got a Range Rover as a loaner from the garage – just for the day I think. He thought it was fantastic (it was). To check out the 4WD drive he backed it (only a little way, to be fair) down a ditch and then drove it out again…