Your thoughts and classic reactions.
Firstly, may I congratulate you on an excellent publication, one of my two salvation magazines during the last 12 months of lockdowns, and both of which I have been able to purchase on our weekly supermarket shop at our local Tesco's. (I know, I should take out a subscription!)
I too share your views on personal registration numbers, and the costs involved. What we could do with £200K
– so many desirable cars that could be bought. One of the most famous plates was registered in Birmingham in 1965. In that year Gravelly Hill Garage registered a new black Austin 1800 with the number COM 1C. It was registered through the then local Birmingham Tax Office. That number plate has since passed through many famous comedians' hands, (with escalating prices each time it changed hands,) including I believe the late Tommy Trinder and Paul Daniels, and Jimmy Tarbuck. I am not sure who currently owns it, but it is now attached to a Hyundai Niro. It really is sacrilege to put that registration number on a thing like that, when you consider the type of vehicles it has graced in the past. Still talking numbers, some years ago when returning from a holiday in the southwest we stopped at the services just off junction 27 of the M5. In the carpark was a white Vauxhall Carlton with the registration POT 240. When we went in for refreshments, who should be sat there but Ray Reardon, the snooker player.
The other point I would like to comment on are your observations on the latest sale price for the 1938 Vauxhall 10/4. Having become fascinated by Bangers and Cash over the last 12 months, I have heard Derek, the boss of Mathewson's, make mention on more than one occasion when valuing a pre-war car that 'there is not the call for these that there was 10 years ago, as sadly the generation who were the enthusiasts have either passed over, or are now too old to drive cars of this era.'
And lastly, a few years ago having sold my last MGF, I purchased a 1992 Mazda MX5 Mk1 in Mariner Blue, in my humble opinion the purest of all the MX5s. When I worked at Longbridge as part of the MGF launch team solving teething problems such as water leaks and preparing cars for high profile customers, we had a number of competitor vehicles for comparisons on hood sealing. Among them we had a VW Golf Mk1 convertible, Fiat Barchetta and a very well-used early G-plate MX5 Mk1 in Mariner Blue. Members of the team could not understand why, when we had to take them and a couple of MGFs for test work, I very often picked up the keys to the MX5. I suppose it can best be summed up as the MX5 most closely resembling the Sprites and Midgets I owned in the 1960s and 1970s, but with infinitely better weather sealing and reliability. I still have those feelings of being transported back whenever I get in the MX5 today. Ah – nostalgia, what a wonderful thing.
David Allman