MY DAD'S FIRST CAR
DIPSTICK MIKE STONEY
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, lived a bank teller, his wife and three children. They lived in a small fishing and farming town called Stonehaven, 15 miles south of Aberdeen in the northeast of Scotland. My father was this man.
Dad had been taught to drive trucks in the army, like most soldiers in the war. However, his experience of driving cars after the war was very limited. Quite how he got his license is a bit of a mystery to me, but I suspect it was once round the block with one of the local police in the passenger seat, and if he did not hit anything then he passed!
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Having obtained his license, he would then hire a car for the family holiday. One poor car that dad selected was a Hillman Husky, an estate version of the Hillman Minx. Things did not go well as the car suffered a failed (burnt out) clutch whist trying to get the car off a ferry. So here he was stuck with wife and two kids in a remote area of the Scottish Highlands…. I recall me doing a lot of fishing off the ferry pier….
His next victim was a Riley 1.5, this car proved too powerful as he spun the back wheels every time he tried to take off. He found it frightening.
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This was post war Britain, money was very scarce and food rationing was just coming to an end. I was around 10 when dad decided he was going to buy a car for the family. It had to be large enough to transport 4 adults on holiday trips etc. My sister was the eldest and had just got married, so there was no seat in the car for her. She had also moved from Stonehaven to Oxford, so the car had to be able to make this long journey on 1960’s roads which were appalling, narrow, badly maintained and choked with cars and trucks.
Dad finally decided that a second hand 1957 Ford Consul Mk2 would fit the bill as it was no rocket ship and was well built to take a bit of abuse - and so it came to pass that OSA229 arrived at our front door. It was black with lots of chrome and cut quite a dash on our council estate roads. Yes, we lived in one of the many brand-new council estates that sprang up all over the countryside in post war Britain (think state housing commission).
(Photo to compare, not Dad’s car)
For those of you unfamiliar with the Mk2 Ford Consul the engine was a 4-cylinder overhead valve of 1702cc driving through a 3 speed gearbox with no synchromesh on first gear. OSA229 was an early model Mk2, latterly known as the High line, this was superseded by the later Mk2 referred to as the Low line (surprise). Mechanically they were very similar. One of the Ford quirks of the time was vacuum wipers. The wipers were powered by vacuum off the engine inlet manifold. The result being when you accelerated, the wipers would all but stop, and when you lifted off the accelerator the wipers would then speed up and thrash about madly!
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As previously said, the Consul had no performance ambitions. Tied with a three-speed gearbox the engine struggled. Acceleration was a word not used in context, particularly when attempting to pass a truck going uphill in the rain! (Note that in the early 1960’s most trucks and buses could barely manage 35/ 40MPH flat out on the level and hills would reduce this to around 15 to 20mph) The Consul was much happier bumbling along on dual carriageways and on short sections of the new-fangled motorways. 60/65 MPH was a comfortable cruising speed for Ozzy (as it was then known). The maximum speed of the Consul was around 78mph.
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Meantime, Jaguars were flying past at double that speed (125MPH) such were the speed differentials on the roads between trucks, family cars, Jaguars and the like in those early motorway times.
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OSA229 did numerous trips and generally served us well. Mechanically it just ran and ran. However harsh Scottish winters with salt and grit on the roads was eating at the underside of the car at a prodigious rate. Dad became a dab hand at applying fiberglass and filler whilst parked in the street…we had no garage or carport, so the car sat outside in all weather, slowly dissolving.
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By 1968, we had moved twice due to Dad’s promotion in the bank and with changed family circumstances, poor old Ozzy was at last traded in on a new Ford Escort 1300 XL in metallic green. The new Escort was not well liked and that in turn led to another Escort, this time a 1300GT…. That’s a whole different story.