THE WAY THEY REALLY WERE

I’ve spent all my life in the motor trade, indeed I am still a part-time MoT tester, and I’ve just really enjoyed reading Classic Tails in the July issue – indeed they don’t 'make ’em like they used to.'

My grandfather was a school headmaster with a love of cars, and for many years he had a new Vauxhall each year. He started with Vivas. I remember going to his house around 1978 to see his new 1300GLS – all very smart with twin headlamps and the Magnum style dashboard, very fetching in dark blue metallic. However, it was sitting slightly strangely after being delivered to his house by Batchelor Bowles, Leicester’s Vauxhall main dealer, who had failed to notice that both rear springs were snapped!

When he later moved on to the

Chevette, he had one delivered with a knocking in the engine you could hear two streets away. It took a severe fallout with the dealer to get it investigated, and this was resolved when the snapped camshaft was replaced. Later in his motoring career, I still have the photographic evidence we took of the corrosion on the inner wing of his six-month old Rover SD1 2600S.

Simon Edwards

Thanks for that feedback Simon – when I saw the subject, I feared it was from an angry reader insisting that all cars were perfect back then and how dare we say otherwise, so it was a pleasant surprise to see that you agreed with Andrew. People often forget how things really were.

It wasn't too long ago that cars were wrecked by eight years old and anything approaching 100,000 miles was only ever one breakdown away from the scrapyard – Ed