1948 Austin A40 Devon, and its 89 successors.

# 3 was a Wolseley 6/80, £10, and inspired by Bonnie & Clyde, and other US gangster films of the time. Yes I know, but I was 17 and far too impecunious to buy a 1920s / 30s  American car, even had I known where to find one.

Ironically, mine was an ex Metropolitan Police car (MXC330). its 2,215 cc sohc  engine consumed fuel at an alarming 12 mpg, and would wind up to an indicated 80 mph, if one was brave, or a foolhardy youth. After 6 months or so, the sodium filled exhaust valves started to burn (a common problem), and I schemed to fit a 3.8 Jaguar XK engine. Lacking the necessary facilities, skills, and finance, to put this into practice, I paid the local Council £2 to take it away.

A comfortably off uncle felt sorry for me, offering a couple of years worth of advance birthday and Christmas presents in cash form, which led to an Austin Healey 3000 Mk 2, identical in colour and wheels to this one:

a tad less pristine, much less so after I spun it, hitting a tree, and wiping off the bodywork aft of the rear axle.

A couple of months later, a motorcycle accident, entirely the fault of the Ford Classic driver, whose car the bike almost cut in half, provided the wherewithal to buy:

A brand new, but by then out of production, and offered at hefty discounts, Jaguar 340 manual with overdrive. A car I had yearned for since my elder brother had let me drive his 3.4 Mk1 the day I got my provisional licence at 17.

Seriously cool transport for an 18 year old engineering apprentice. No, of course I couldn't really afford to run it, but it did use less fuel than the Wolseley, or the Healey, but insurance for a year cost about five weeks wages, and it ate tyres, especially rear ones. And front. On the other hand, it was almost 50mph faster than the typical teen transport of a Mini, or Ford Anglia.

In a perverse way you are quite right; if I hadn't bought the Jag, I would doubtless have spunked the compensation money and had nothing to show for it when two and a half years later, with an expectant mother girlfriend, I got married and needed to buy a house. The sale of the Jag netted around £900, which represented 50% of the purchase price of a very run down, heating and bathroomless, 2.5 bedroomed terraced house to renovate, modernise, and live in, the balance being borrowed. Given the typical depreciation of bigger engined cars, a loss of around 30%, although a shock to me at the time, with hindsight wasn't too bad.

The bad bit was having to suffer one of these:

a very tatty £25 one.

It got worse; the Anglia failed its MOT a few months later on underbody corrosion which by then I had the skills to repair, but not personal access to the necessary equipment. Salvation, of sorts, came in the form of father in law's neighbour, who had a pristine, bought new, Prefect 100E

sitting in the garden with knocking big ends. Mine for a fiver, two hours to exchange the broken engine for the Anglia one, aided by a very muscular mate, as I had no lifting gear, a walked through MOT, and I was mobile again. The Prefect was in the very smart, sober two tone maroon / grey, so I painted it bright orange  with two black go faster stripes offset to the left. Very cool, IMO, at the time.

Completion of my apprenticeship brought a hefty pay rise, enabling the Prefect to be replaced by an Allardette

a supercharged Anglia 105E, which I kept for about a year, using it for local club sprints local sprints as well as daily transport.

An interesting new job, as a sales engineer for a specialist lubricant manufacturer came with a company Escort 1300L; HYX344K in Tawny, very similar to the one below:

Remarkably, my employer allowed us to make minor modifications, such as fitting a Peco exhaust, and wider wheels. Mine were steels, not the fancy alloys like the one in the photo. As small cars go, it was ok, but lacked grunt and the all round drum brakes were rubbish. At 18 months, and 55,000 miles the engine was well past its best, and the company replaced it.

My power and brake grumbles applied much less to another (simultaneous) Escort which a mate and I built from an 1100 base model which had fought an Austin Princess 4 litre R, and lost. We pulled the front rails straight (ish) by inserting long solid bars in the open ends, tugging and comparing measurements with my company transport, beat the living daylights out of the inner wings, fitted new outer wings, used disc brakes and struts from a 1340 Classic, afair, the engine from a wrecked Mk1 Lotus Cortina, and a roll cage, making ourselves an Escort Twin Cam, for about 25% of the cost. We competed in sprints fairly successfully, until John hit a tree stump on the way home from the pub one evening, sending it end over end.

My employer replaced the 1300L with a 1.3 Marina Coupe which I considered uncool, until I discovered that there was no need to row it along with the gear lever, as one did with Fords of similar capacity and claimed power. I fitted wider steels to this too; Dunlop 5.5Js,  more commonly found on Triumph Spitfires and GT6s.

Mine, registered RLU277L, was in virgin white, like the one in the photo:

Many more to come.

#12 was a 1964 MGB roadster, in ivory, or whatever BMC called "not quite white", with the standard steel wheels. Its doppleganger is below:

Bought for peanuts from a bod going to live in Switzerland the following day, I kept it for a couple of years alongside other cars, before selling it to a UoE student.

Thinking about a change of day job, as being smartly turned out, and fully occupied during normal "office hours" made it difficult to run my car business, I would need something to replace the company Marina when I left.

My loss on the 340 made me realise what a bargain used Jags were; for less than the price of the most mundane small saloon, one could buy a bank manager's / robber's 3.8 Mk2, so I did:

Carmen red, mine had chrome wires and a black interior.

Some potential customers were put off by the Jag, seeing it as "a bit flash" so I relegated it to private use only, and took a Wolseley 18/85 Mk2 from stock to use as a business car. Damask Red, matching fake leather interior,

extremely spacious and competent, although it did suffer a couple of Hydrolastic suspension problems. RCF846H It's strange that I remember some registration numbers from so far in the past, yet have no idea about others, even much more recent ones.

The Jag went in favour of a Capri 3000 GT:

which I quickly regretted, renaming it the Crapi. It was fun to drive, in a tail happy way, and made a glorious racket, but  more cramped, less comfortable, didn't handle as well, and despite being almost half a ton lighter, was slower and used more fuel than the Jag. Ironically, if they both still existed in the same condition, the Ford would be worth more.

A Sunbeam Tiger 4.2 in took the Capri's place (sorry, I couldn't find a bright yellow one on line)

apart from the obvious of being a convertible, in most respects similar to its predecessor; all the right noises, a great deal of promise, but short on delivery.

I think that makes sixteen so far, and it's still the early 1970s.

#29

An odd choice for a bloke in his mid 20s, it was offered to me at a very attractive price by a pub landlord being chased by creditors; the type of creditors with whom he needed to settle accounts this afternoon, as it were.

It was an early model with the 6.2 litre engine, almost the same as the Jensen, but much, much less powerful. Nicely appointed, but I can't imagine anyone being old enough to feel at home in one, not even 45 years later.

I kept it for three months, selling at an embarrassing profit.

Another Jag, Mk IX this time:

a lumbering old bus like the Bentley, but a little quicker, and more sure footed. I kept it for about six months, selling it to a Manchester dealer in the Alexandra Palace car park after attending  a classic car auction there.

Due another career diversion, necessitating a return to college, I also sold the Daimler, which I enjoyed, replacing it with ROC898G, which was a clone of this:

Triumph Herald 13/60 convertible; I think that the 60 referred to its maximum speed, in mph. It was ok in that it did the job, albeit very slowly and noisily. Not a nice sort of noise though.

Since returning to the London area, I had been combining my car business with buying a run down newsagent shop, building up trade, selling as a successful going concern, and repeating. By now on my third, the 7 day week, starting at 05.00 was wearing thin, and computer programming was the in thing, hence college, study, and having no income, the need for cheap transport.

Gaining my Diploma, I blagged myself a contract in the Middle East, where such things as 454 Corvettes like this:

and 5.3 Jags like this:

were almost valueless on the used market. The downside being that they could not be exported when one returned home. Which I did after a couple of years, having learned that engineering, motors and the property game were my home, not sweating over core dumps in an office.

Back home found me in an eight year old BMW 3.0 Csi, which had been fitted with a later 3.5 litre engine, and five speed gearbox, identical in appearance to this one:

Much sharper than one might expect from the archaic steering  box and Macpherson strut front / semi trailing arm rear suspension. A bit frilly around the edges, it felt flimsily constructed given the original price, but it was a properly quick car.

Still with money burning a hole in my pocket, I also bought a Mercedes Benz 450 SLC, in JRG: