A HEREFORD THEN AND NOW
After reading your editorial in the March 2024 issue about old car photos, I thought I would put hand to keyboard.
My family once owned this Austin Hereford, MOC 705, for 20 years. The B&W picture shows me on the left in front of the car at a caravan site at Shaldon in Devon in 1957. The Austin didn't pull the caravan behind, that was towed to the site by an old Vauxhall with bald tyres, hardly any brakes and broken welding on the back axle. (Health and safety? Pah!) The second picture (right) shows me with same car 60 years later in 2017 at the current owner's house in Suffolk. The car had travelled over 234,000 miles at that point, and though I haven't seen it since then, the owner assured me last August that the car is running better than ever after having electronic ignition fitted.
It was first registered to a company director on 25th March 1952 for about £950. My grandfather bought it on 30th July 1954 for £650 – as I had arrived into the world, he wanted a large car for transporting the whole family, even though he didn't drive himself as he was maltreated in a prisoner of war camp and lost quite a lot of sight. My father drove us around for picnics and holidays in the summer months only. When my brother reached 17 it was passed to him for daily duties, but after a couple of years he decided to let it go as repairs were becoming a problem – ie. a common fault with the steering box. He also wanted a cheaper car to run, and went from a large Hereford to a Hillman Imp!
The third owner was a Coventry car dealer, who kept it for three years. Then his mechanic owned it without using it very much, but on a Friday night after a week of work he would sit with a glass of wine and admire the car for a couple of hours.
The fifth owner kept it for 26 years until his death in 2005. He carried out a two-year restoration because he wanted it perfect, though it didn't need it. After his death the Austin passed to one of his sons, who kept it from 2006 until 2015. It has been with the current owner ever since.
The photo below is one of many of the car that I have, but is quite poignant as the actress Barbara Windsor was handing out trophies on that occasion.
The car's colour is called Texas or Texan brown. In sunshine it looks like milk chocolate and in dull conditions like dark chocolate. It was a South African export colour. I only saw one other when I was about 13 years of age. I did hear of one in Perry Barr on the outskirts of Birmingham, but whether that was the second one I saw or another different one, who knows? But going by the photo below, this pick-up in Uruguay has the same colour bonnet, so maybe they made it to those shores as well.
Alan Flowers