Mine was the Rover 90 (P4) and all I can remember of it was it was black and shiny, I was probably only around 6 or 7 years of age. The only reason I thought of this thread is I saw one yesterday when I was out.
It was either a Talbot Solara of my father's; my only memory of it is when we were going down a cobbled street, at the really steep transition back onto tarmac the front rear subframe/axle mounts tore out, so the car could only be driven backwards otherwise the handbrake jammed on... It was gold with a vinyl roof, although it didn't have a square steering wheel like the one he had previously. Or a Mini Traveller, in lovely green. What a wonderful car that was, my dad replaced the fuel tank and put the sender connections on backwards, so it had a reverse fuel gauge! Tooled about in that with my Mum when I was a nipper. Sold and swapped for a shed of a blue standard Mini which was nothing but trouble for a couple of years.
Is that a Cortina or Granada? I kind of remember my dad having a white Cortina estate (I'm gonna guess at MK4 as I remember the back being more square than the MK3 is) which got stolen when I was maybe 5, it was replaced with a gold Cortina saloon MK4.
As a passenger, the first car I can recall ever being in was a Toyota Corolla Sedan (E70). Similar looking to this: As a driver, the first car I drove was a Plymouth Laser. Which was a relatives car that I had a few goes in ahead learning to drive, it seemed good at the time but compared to cars nowadays it wasn't the most comfortable thing.
I'm a young'un so the earliest car I would have been in would be quite recent. The earliest cars I remeber my parents owning would be my mum's Mitsubishi Space Wagon (And then we had a more recent model a few years back) or my dad's MR2 but I don't remember either of them too well other than the MR2 being the red one I had to fight with my sister to go in and fighting over who got to sat next to my younger brother in the Space Wagon. Another likely candidate would be my dad's Westfield, which he still has.
Cortina Mk5, ours was full of rust as we lived down in Plymouth back then. The salt air just ripped though the ford steel which is renowned for it's anti-rust protection... lol! It was a bit of beast for a family car, huge payload area which they used for building supplies as they renovated the house. Went camping a few times, once because my father varnished the stairs and didn't think about (A) the fumes, and (B) the lack of the ability to traverse the stairs for 48 hours, with the only toilet being upstairs. Fun times!
Many, many moons ago, before PCs were born, My mother took toddler me to visit family in Ireland for a week or two. When we returned, my father met us in his new (to him) Austin 1100 that was the result of medium-sized wins on both the horses & football pools the same weekend. (Stock photo)
My Dad used to pick me up weekends in all manner of cars (git) he was a car salesman, there was a lot of others but I remember these two.. this would have 80's. The Lotus would have been cause the James bond films and the Trans-am smokey and the bandit.
An Austin Maxi! Sh*t brown with some god awful garish interior. I remember that I used to swing between the back and the front between the seats and on one instance when I was about 5 or 6 the handbrake failed in our yard (it's on a slope) with just me, my sister and the brother in the car and I quickly swung from the back into the drivers seat and applied the brakes, saving the day. I think I also applied the clutch just in case. We had a green Maxi afterwards, and I remember at the age of 8 or 9 after the car had been scrapped (read half buried behind the sheds on the farm) I took the socket set I'd gotten for christmas from my nan and started taking the engine to pieces. Dad helped removing some of the bolts my socket set couldn't handle, and to protect me from valve springs, but I got down to the pistons with only minimal help. Edit. At the same time as the maxi's my dad owned a couple of Ford pick-up's for doing the milk-round with. They were the car sized ones, with a bench seat and the pull in and out handbrake mounted in the dash. FORD stamped in the tailgates. After a little digging, I'm pretty sure the would have been Ford P100's. One dark blue, and one white. Both engines blew around the 70,000 mark is I remember (spending most their lives idling really hurts an engine), and by that time there was daylight through the floor under the accelerator pedal through wear, the drivers door top hinge had ripped from the bodywork and dropped every time the door was opened (the welds never held for long), due to over-use, and the seats were full of rips. Both things took a battering, as did the Vauxhall pick-up we had afterwards. However if a tractor counts, then I remember sat on the side of an old Massey Ferguson open cab tractor, sitting on my dad's lap helping steering at the age of 4 or 5.
My parents had one of these at first when I was around: But Dad decided to buy something a little more exciting: He also chipped it so it would make 400bhp. My Mum felt left out so she got one of these:
Buick Skylark 1987, same color as this one. Back in the days when GM kept models for a decade without changing anything. I'm looking at this picture and damn... American cars from the 80's most have been designed by folks who had a box fetish :-/
Think it was a VW Passat (B4) estate in a horrible sickly lime green colour. We soon got a black BMW 318i (E36) though which was much, much better!
My Dad's Mk2 Golf that we affectionately referred to as the rustbucket. It met it's end when the clutch gave in and was sold for scrap some time ago.
Bought new by dad before I was born, I remember it but cant remember being in it. The only car my dad regretted selling! (not the actual car but you get the idea)
