Graham Robson
THE FAMILY CONSUL
The Ford Consul that started a young Graham Robson’s motoring career.
It’s only today that my mind slipped back to events in March 1953. Although that was exactly 67 years ago, I still have copies of The Autocar which remind me that this was the month in which the definitive Triumph TR2 first appeared, when Rootes first showed the Sunbeam Alpine, and when Ian Appleyard won the RAC rally for the second time using that legendary Jaguar XK120 which carried the NUB 120 plates. Not that the Robson family was really interested in those events at the time, for it was also the month in which my father proudly took delivery of his first new car – a straight-from-Dagenham Ford Consul. You’ll immediately be able to work out how old I am when I recall that I was just old enough to get a provisional licence, and would shortly take my driving test in that very Consul, which was registered LYG 131.
Back then, of course, the family lavished praise and attention on the car. So what if it only had a three-speed column change transmission, a sensible cruising speed of 50--60mph, and cheap-and-cheerful Firestone tyres which had all the road holding of a tram ticket when the roads were wet, at that time cars were so scarce in the Yorkshire village where I was raised that there were probably only two or three other new cars in the entire parish!
Not that father had originally ordered a Consul, for those were the post-war days when waiting lists for anything were colossal (would you believe we had to wait nine months to get a telephone, and even then it had to be a party line shared with another village resident?) so often one took whatever one could get. In his retirement years, father never tired of telling me that he had originally ordered a sidevalve 1172cc Prefect in 1948, that he'd had to wait five years (five years – and that’s no misprint!) and that when the telephone call came from his Ford dealership in Skipton, it was made clear to him that the 1508cc Consul was only available on a ‘take-it-orleave-it’ basis, that nothing less than hard cash would cement the deal, and that the dealership was not at all interested in talking about a part exchange deal with father’s 1930s Morris Twelve Series III.
As to the price, when that Prefect had been ordered in 1948 it would have cost £352, and when the Consul finally arrived five years later it cost £717. At the time, too, a new owner had to sign up for a government-administered covenant in which they agreed not to sell the car within two years, this being imposed to make sure that the price of used cars did not reach ridiculously high levels. Even so, at that price one only got a slippery-surfaced front bench seat, no safety belts (they were at least a decade away), and a requirement to have a service and an oil change every 1000 miles. As to performance, let’s just remind everyone that the top speed was all of 75mph, though it took 31.1 seconds to reach 60mph from rest.
This, though, was not a luxurious car. I will not get started on the Monty Python discussion about 'Luxury,' but let’s just say that a simple heater/demister fitting was an on-cost option and father’s take-it-or-leave-it car didn’t have one, which meant that for much of the year we would all don coats, hats and gloves to go anywhere. Mother, in any case, reasoned that it was cheaper to keep warm by wearing extra layers and ‘if anyone sees us driving round in summer clothes they will think we are show-offs...' She, incidentally, never learned to drive, but as a youngster I loved to scrounge the loan of the car whenever possible, and on a few blissful occasions in my final year at school, I managed to drive the car to grammar school in Skipton on Saturday mornings, parking it close to the building next to the bicycles which were all that the teaching staff owned in those days. Did it help my social standing? A little, maybe, but there was more jealousy than admiration which flowed at me during those episodes.
As a piece of cost-effective engineering from Ford, the Consul (and its bigger sister the six-cylinder Zephyr) was a great success, but since it only had a 47bhp engine and that awful steering-column gear change, it could never be described as a performance car. Even so, father was encouraged to enter one or two local rallies (which involved driving tests and navigation rather than fast driving). The picture shows me with the car at just such a rally in about 1954. Although we were always outmanoeuvred by the MG TFs of the day, these events introduced me to the art of map reading, and I’ve always been grateful for that.