Family cars I can remember

My earliest memories are from about 1973/74.

My dad’s cars

  1. Light metallic blue Mk3 Ford Cortina saloon
  2. Orange Mk3 Cortina estate
  3. Dark blue Mk4 Cortina estate
  4. Yellow Rover 2200TC “P6”
  5. Gold Rover 3500 “SD1” circa ’80
  6. Gold Ford Granada 2.8 Ghia estate
  7. Green Ford Granada 2.8 GL estate
  8. Dark blue Mk4 Cortina estate
  9. White Ford Sierra, something basic like a 1.6L
  10. Metallic green Ford Sierra Ghia
  11. Silver Ford Sierra GLX
  12. Red Fiat Uno
  13. White Volvo 460

In parallel from about 1981/2 my mum drove

  1. Blue Hillman Imp
  2. White Renault 5
  3. Bronze Chrysler Alpine
  4. Brown Mini Metro
  5. Bronze Mini 1000
  6. Black Fiat Uno
  7. Metallic blue Renault 5 1.4 automatic
  8. 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…

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