30 cars - 50 years

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‘Whoopee‘ was sold in 1954 to a student for £35, and was last seen some 5 years later looking rather forlorn in the forecourt of a garage at Aberford on the old Great North Road.

Today, not only has ‘Whoopee‘ disappeared, but also the garage and indeed, the old A1 road itself at that point, replaced by eight thundering lanes of the recently extended M1 motorway.

She was followed by another joint family venture in the form of KUM 480, a gunmetal grey 1947 Vauxhall 10 which set us back £330, a prodigious sum in those days virtually my annual gross income. It was only financed by splitting the purchase and running costs 3 ways with my parents on the understanding that every weekend would include a trip to coast or country, and I would provide a family taxi service with 24/7 availability. A fair deal I reckon.The car was sold 18 months later for £250, and the proceeds split three ways to help fund my move from home to digs in Newcastle, where I moved to a new job with a Tyneside advertising agency.

Minnie the Minx
As my next car had to be financed solely by myself, I had to revert to pre-war vintage, so I lashed out £85 on a 1936 Hillman Minx 10, a battleship grey, 4-seat drophead coupe with 35,000 miles on the clock and no - I didn't believe that of a 21 year old car either.

‘Minnie’ was registered in Middlesbrough as XG 4070. She boasted novel Bendix cable braking which tended to throw the car into a spin when driving forward, and to be totally ineffective in reverse. This feature I discovered when reversing down the ramp to board the Isle of Wight ferry, guided only by the warning shouts of nearby passengers and the terrified screams of my passengers.

My forthcoming marriage enforced the sale of 'Minnie', which had undergone a hand repainting job in a Jesmond back street, and where the slow-drying paint had acquired a surface coating of grit, the spinoff by-product of a mini-tornado which circled the area for an hour or so. I was quite chuffed to get £65 for it, which bought one rug, two carpets and a 3-piece suite for our home at Whickham, overlooking the Tyne valley.

It was a couple of years before we could afford to rejoin the ranks of what was then, the motorised minority. Our auction choice of a sombre black 1939 Morris 10 saloon for £35 was hurriedly reversed after we discovered on a run to the Cheviots that it had consumed 3 pints of oil on a 100 mile trip, laying a blue-black haze of Castrol across the Northumbrian countryside. Our seven day ownership had cost £5, the experience being so briefly traumatic that I never stopped to record the registration number or enquire about its ultimate destiny - the knacker's yard would be most appropriate.

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