Carstalgia

Mr, the day the lottery I win, I ain't ever gonna ride in no used car again.

With these shattering words, Bruce Springsteen... only joking.

I grew up in a family where we were rich enough to have a car, but never rich enough to have a good car. My dad's long retired now, and on his own, and I think he just bought himself his first new or near-as-dammit new car.

The first family car I remember was something like a Zodiac or a Corsair, a big, old Ford, big enough to house the 8 of us. It didn't last long, and the next one was a Morris Traveller, the estate version of the Morris Minor, complete with Elizabethan wooden beams.

My greatest memory of that car was that it made me feel very, very, sick. There were so many of us that, when the whole family went out, two of us would have to ride in the boot. Given the opportunity of riding in the back seat, I would kneel on the cushion, pull the window open, and stick my head out into the breeze.

It was always breaking down. I remember once we were on holiday (Scarborough) and out for a drive in the hilly countryside. On one steep incline, everyone had to get out and walk while my dad drive it to the top of the hill. Another family holiday, after making it to the Norfolk Broads without too much engine trouble, we found that the boat we'd hired for the week was the aquatic equivalent of the Traveller. It too was always breaking down, and we seemed to spend more time waiting for someone to come fix the engine than we did moving around on the water.

After the Traveller era, the best car my dad ever had, a Singer Vogue Estate. It was an automatic, with luxury features (like a heater), and a front bench seat (red), so 6 people could actually sit in it, making trips in the boot less common.

But that was an old car when we got it, and it was succeeded by the worst car my dad ever had, a Hillman Minx. And not in a good way. If you search for Hillman Minx piccies on the innernet, you find a lot of the original, Mk I car, which looks like a nice old classic. But you find very few of the truly horrible Mk II, which had no redeeming features.

That car spent most of the time in our garage, not working. If we had it a year, it spend 9 months sitting in the garage occupying space.

Then I think my old man got yet another Morris Traveller, but that didn't last long. And finally, he got what he always wanted, which was a fairly new Ford (Orion), because by that time there was only one kid left living at home.

My own first car was a VW Beetle, 1972 vintage, in orange. It was a rusty pile of shite, but I loved it. I eventually bought a slightly better, newer Beetle, in yellow, and the orange one sat, neglected and unloved, outside my house for 6 months. Then I had an accident in the yellow one and decided to use the orange one again while it was being repaired. Sat in it, turned the key in the ignition... started first time.

Like the 200-year-old VW in Sleeper. Of course, the history of film would have been changed forever if it had been a Hillman Minx Woody found in the cave.