My first car was bought in August 1972. It was a 1952 (one year older than me) Jowett Bradford CC, 1005cc 14 cwt van, in blue with black wings and roof. It was actually an old butchers van that had been converted to a utility by the addition of side windows and a rear seat. The rear seat was not secured to the floor. It had three gears, a two cylinder engine and a top speed of not much more than 50mph.
Even the price of £65 looks a bit steep looking at the state it was in when I bought it. My neighbour thought it looked like a hearse and it never lost it butchers van heritage. It passed one MOT before I decided to investigate it's heavy oil consumption (20 miles to the pint) and found that it only had one and a half pistons rather than the required two. Working on the engine was easier with the wing off and this revealed a lot of rot. The ensuing restoration is still ongoing......
Even
when running, the Bradford was not the most practical form of transport so I
decided to buy a mini. This was a 1961 850 deluxe. Again, at £150, I feel I
didn't get a very
good deal. It was bought in October 1974. All the synchromesh had gone and It
had a nasty habit of loosing all it's coolant which I found was because the head
wasn't tightened down. But it's top speed was 75mph, a full 20mph faster than
the Bradford. Again it scraped through one MOT before it just fell apart. A loud
knocking noise was found to be the rear shocker banging on the bottom of the
fuel tank having rusted through the wheel arch. The only remedy for this was to
remove the shocker. It had no inner sills left and, I was told by the person I
sold it to (for £25), that the outer ones were held on by a couple of self
tapping screws. Of course I thought it was great at the time. I fitted a
cassette player to it, a small steering wheel and seat extenders. I think I
covered about 9000 miles in it, in the 18 months I owned it and after the initial
cooling problems it was actually quite reliable.
In view of it's number plate my then girlfriend nicknamed it Not Worth Loving. She was right of course but at the time I was very attached to it.
This car is now in the great scrap heap in the sky.