What was your first car, and what was its Reg. plate ?

[Keith Hewitt]

Mine was an Austin 7 1932 - cost me £3.00 to buy and £3.00 to get it roadworthy - needed a thingy ( D shaped bit of steel that stopped the back wheel spinning on the axle )

Aged 18 - we once got 9 in it and drove to New Brighton from Birkenhead. The front wheels were almost off the ground

Sold it after 2 years for £21.00

Reg P0 9338 - still struggle to remember Reg of my present car.

[mikeysaling]

Morris/austin mini - Reg ? bought in 1963 £? sold £? - Its the age y'know then had healey sprite 1965 mpu 969C paid £631 new plus £10 for heater (couldn't afford the radio)

[Roboframer]

1978 Austin Allegro 1100 DL in 'sandglow' - reg PX 306 B which was a British Forces Germany plate.

[Jonny2morsos]

1965 Ford Cortina Mk 1 1500 Super 4 dr saloon, blue with white stripe between the chrome strips along the side. Bought in 1975 for £175 and cost me £65 to insure. Typically as a new young driver it did not last me long! I seem to remember the reg was FHJ 172 C.

I would have really liked the 1500 GT model with twin choke Weber carb. and the extra dials or better still the Lotus Cortina in white with the green flash along the side and Lotus badge on the rear wing. Like this:

Mk1%20Lotus%20Cortina[1].jpg

[Vince442]

Renault 12TL - Silver - BDK737L Cost £150...it was a money pit. Soon learnt about how to fix practically everything on a car. Well you could in those days of pre-electrics!

Really comfy car though with wide seats and arm rests

[strokebloke]

1940 something Standard 8. Two door ~ fold down rear seats to get into the boot. 850cc engine I think, though it was an OHV engine, not a side valve. Can't remember the number entirely but it was PLM 39 & two other numbers. Cost me £10; and I think the vendor saw me coming. I learned a lot of mechanicing skills on that car. I spent more time under it than inside it
It was stolen after about 2 years ~ I think the thief must have been stoned out of his head at the time. I never did get it back, but made more from the insurance than I paid for it: but only just.

[retropic]

The first car I owned was a 1965 Triumph Herald 1200 saloon, which I bought to restore. But I restored it and sold it before I was 16 and didn't get drive it on the road (honest officer), so I've never counted this as my first car.

My "official" first car was originally my dad's. It was a 1969 VW Beetle 1500 which he'd had from new. By the time he gave it to me (probably about 1979/1980), it had been off the road and I suspect he was either a) saving it for me; or b) about to scrap it (the latter would have been the preferable option). I did some rather rudimentary work on it, passed my driving test and the car scraped through an MoT (God knows how). The registration was BWW 461 H.

What a horrible thing it was. Noisy, smelly, sluggish and rotten through and through. The wings were so rotten that the headlamps were held in by Isopon P45 body filler. At night they illuminated the treetops beautifully, but did little to illuminate the route. The interior was heated by air which was passed over the exhaust through a heat exchanger and then pumped into the cabin under the back seat. Unfortunately the heat exchangers had become rusty and the metal perforated with pinholes which meant that rather more exhaust fumes entered the car than was entirely desirable. And this was in the days when we had leaded petrol!

During the rebuild I had to get a new number plate made, which I proudly put it on the front bumper bar. Later on a friend pointed out that I'd managed to transpose two of the numbers to BWW 641 H (but I'm consistent because I did it again just now when I was drafting this. I only got it right by checking the attached photo).

I never liked that car and it was written off in an accident one New Year's Eve (I think the year would have been 1983). The accident wasn't my fault and I was delighted that it had been put out of my misery. It was replaced by a brand new beige Renault 5.

[Jonny2morsos]

In actual fact the car I mentioned wasn't my first as I had a part share in a couple of cars before I was old enough to go on the road. One of my mates parents was friendly with a local farmer and he let us keep a car in a barn which we drove around the farm on a sunday afternoon.

First was a Triumph Herald bought for a fiver that had failed its MOT due to being a rust bucket. Can't remember what happened to kill it off but it was replaced by a 105E Ford Anglia, also a MOT failure. The fuel tank rusted away on this one as well as part of the floor so we rigged up some rubber tubing to the fuel line which was passed through one of the holes in the floor to an oil can of petrol.

We considered it best not to light up a Players No.6 while inside the car!

Some fun times were had around the farm tracks especially if it rained which usually culminated it a spin into a field of wheat and us having to go back to the farmyard to borrow a tractor and tow rope.

[Not your average framer]

My first car was an Austin A40, with green gunge growing in places on the window rubbers and rust holes in the boot. The air vents leaked when it was raining, the car radio had valves, not transistors, the gear stick used to jigger around while the engine was running and the heater was barely adequate in cold weather.

It didn't last long as it developed an oil leak, which could not be fixed without taking the engine out and this would have cost more than I paid for the car. At the time, I thought I was the bees knees as none of my friends had there own car, but all it did for me was cost me money fixing all the problems it kept developing.

[Tudor Rose]

Mine was EPP 314T: a two tone (brown on the bottom half and beige on the top half) 1979 Ford Fiesta 1.1L - not the prettiest of cars but it was great and I loved it. Bought it for £650 in 1988 and it cost £375 to insure for the first year- my Dad paid half the money for me as I needed it to get to work and I paid him back at £20 per week.

It had a worn gear linkage so no matter what gear you were in the gear stick was hard up against the drivers seat, you kind of had to stir the gears around until you found one, but once you got the hang of it then it was fine. The brown bottom half hid the rust nicely as well. The windscreen washers operated from a foot pump on the floor which was fine until the rubber perished and then some of the screen wash would pour back into the drivers footwell each time you pumped it and would freeze in the winter. And it was the only car I have managed to drive the mileage back to zero.

I bought a newer and better equipped Fiesta (G229 WAN) a few years later and my brother and I drove both cars back along the M40 - him driving my old car and me in my nice new one - the old car beat the new one when they were flat out

[Jonny2morsos]

Mine was EPP 314T: a two tone (brown on the bottom half and beige on the top half) 1979 Ford Fiesta 1.1L - not the prettiest of cars but it was great and I loved it.

I think that might have been a special edition because of the two tone paint. In 1979 they produced a Fiesta Millionth Ltd Ed to celebrate the millionth Fiesta only 3 yrs after starting production in Valencia, Spain.

[Vix]

Mine was a 1974 series 3 landrover with an early syncromesh gear box which was pants.

It was nearly as old as I was, so had plenty of miles and owners by the time I got my hands on it. My dad thought it would be a good starter car for me - his thinking being that it wouldn't be a rust bucket as they had aluminium bodies and if I hit anything i'd do more damage with it than the other car/wall/obstacle would do to me

The reg was PYG 757M so in honour of the pig connection my friends bought me a lovely sticker of a comic pig to put on the back door. Bought it for about £1000 and when I sold it about 2 years later I made a £300 profit - result!!

Sometimes I still wish I had it as we had a lot of fun in it - my friends nicknamed it the passion waggon - although I don't quite understand why , but I don't miss the petrol bills - only did about 17 miles to the gallon!

[prospero]

I had a 75 Mk3 Cortina 2.0 Ghia. It was very nice. It was silver when I got it, but I sort of got bitten by the custom car bug and it ended up with all the badges taken off and the holes filled in - big scoop on the bonnet - spoilers front and back - headlights sunk in behind the grille - alloy wheels and huge tires with white letters...... I put air shocks on the back so I could pump the back up.
Sprayed it black.

Ashamed to say I can't remember the reg.

[misterdiy]

The first car I wholly owned was an A35 van which I bought off a mate. Reg TUK 71 which I tried in later years to get back off the DVLA as it was scrapped after me. It was very advanced for its time with 4 wheel independent steering. A right bugger on the motorways, but the extra steering was because the rear leaf springs came through the to the rear floor having rotted completely from the body. My Dad made me take it to the scrapyard.

next one was an A35. Glutton for punishment, but the went on to Mini's which I rallied.

[Roboframer]

My wife's was a 1956 Hillman Minx, XUE 245 - cost £47/10s (£47.50) in 1968, she taught her mother to drive in it.

Previous to my Allegro I joint-owned a Morris 1000 traveller, it had woodworm.