The first car I really remember was a 1925 "bullnose" Morris Cowley, that was the family car up until the late 1950's. This is a photo of the car. The people in the photo are my father and his mother, and the little bloke is me! The classic car movement wasn't as strong back then, and despite being into "collectable" age, no-one wanted it, so it retired to lie in the yard beside our house; where I had fun playing in it! But I also remember being driven in it.
I learnt to drive in my parent's 1951 Ford Prefect. It was powered by a small 4-cylinder side-valve motor, and had a 3-speed gearbox.
I got my driving licence in their 1962 Morris Major Elite. After my father died (when I was 19), the Elite was passed on to me, and travelled everywhere from Armidale to Adelaide.
The first car I owned was a 1961 Goggomobil. It had a 2-cylinder 2-stroke engine, and was a rather rare convertable model. It is the only car I have ever crashed! That was in 1967.
That was followed by a 1954 Morris Minor, which, at least at the time, I considered my first "real car". I owned that car until I inherited the Morris Major Elite. It was in the Morris Minor that I learnt the now mostly forgotten art of double-declutching.
Since then I have owned a variety of cars; from rear-engined, rear-drive cars like Renault; to front-engined, front-wheel-drive cars like Honda Civic; to front-engined, rear-drive cars like the Morrises, Triumphs, Fiat, even a Holden. Our family car is now a late-model Toyota Camry.
I have driven a lot of cars over the years, from the diminutive little 2-cylinder Goggomobil to V8 Fords and Holdens. I have driven a good selection of cars from the 1950's, through to the 1990's.
I said that I don't have any qualifications in the motoring trade, but I do have a reasonable mechanical knowledge, and do all my own maintenance, and general repairs etc.
I suppose I was always interested in motorbikes too, but my interest grew when I bought my first motorbike, a 100cc Suzuki roadbike, in the mid 1970's. That was followed by a series of road/trail bikes, some purchased new, some 2nd-hand, before going back to roadbikes again in the early 1990's, with a Yamaha 250 roadbike (pictured at the left), which came in for some mild (and some may say inappropriate!) customising. As mentioned earlier, my present bike is a 1984 Yamaha XJ600.
During that time I have ridden a wide variety of bikes, from a Lambretta motor-scooter to a wide variety of road/trail bikes, to high-performance 4-cylinder roadbikes. |