Triumph Herald

~ ~ When I was a teenager back in 1963, the first car my father ever bought was an old Ford Anglia in which I learned my basic driving skills. Three years later it was traded in, and a brand spanking new car arrived on the doorstep. A Triumph Herald 12/50, in lovely gleaming white, matching white colour-coded rubber bumpers, with a canvas slide-back sunroof, and to top it all, a RADIO. This was nirvana for a 15-year-old boy heavily into the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and all the popular music of the time, and a vast improvement on the old Dansette transistor radio that had sat on the ... more

I guess we all remember our first cars with a degree of affection, especially when the rose-coloured glasses of a thirty-three-year passage of time enhance that memory. SOB STORY I didn’t have anyone to treat me to driving lessons on my 17th birthday – I’d come from a non car-owning family, and so it all had to wait until I could afford it myself, driving lessons, vehicle purchase and insurance. In the end, I passed my test and bought a car sometime around my 21st birthday. NO PLEASE, DON’T THROW MONEY – I’LL GET MY OWN I was determined that I wasn’t going to go down the route of ‘decrepit old ... more