Writer has a special place in his heart for British beauties
BALO STREET Moree was awash with British cars when I was a young man and I don’t doubt Toowoomba was the same.
Abundant chrome, shiny grills, spoked wheels, timber finishes, trafficators with their little arms – sex appeal aplenty.
The makes included Hillman, Morris, Austin, Ford (Cortina, Escort, Capri), Vauxhall, Rover, Sunbeam, Triumph, Mini and the to die for MG.
And from time to time a beautiful Jaguar would appear.
It was not uncommon for youngsters like me to have two or three jobs way back then given that a $10 gross weekly wage, with a subsequent $5 rental payment to mum and dad, was not the recipe for financial success.
Thus at 6am each day I would open Mr Tzannes’ service station in Frome Street and serve customers until 8am, then head off for a quick shower before starting work in the National Bank of Australasia.
One winter’s morning a vehicle, resembling something from outer space, glided through an almost opaque mist and disappeared over the Mehi River Bridge towards Goondiwindi.
Martians I thought, but it turned out to be a friend named Ray whose father had decided to go up-market from a basic Morris Oxford to a stunning Lotus Esprit.
In my immediate family I recall a Hillman Minx, Morris Oxford, Morris Minor and my beloved grandmother’s Austin Utility with its canvass tonneau cover.
Children, in those days, were driving on back roads at age ten and with manual transmission, I might add, which was often free of synchromesh making for a very “crunchy” gear change.
Sure there were Australianmade cars about including Holden and Ford, a few Volkswagen Beetles and a splattering of continental numbers, but Britain ruled the waves and for a large portion of the 20th century it ruled the roads as well.
And one day all those beautiful cars disappeared.
British manufacturers evaporated, victims of ageing infrastructure and labour disputes.
The British government intervened and brought the remainder of the nation’s large manufacturers under one unit named British Leyland.
Nationalisation followed, then collapse.
Manufacturers from Germany, China, Japan and India picked at the bones of the idle carcass until it was no more.
There’s a handful of British owned manufacturers left, selling marques priced from $300,000 to $3,000,000.
Australian roads now host an ever-growing range of little boxlike cars which are manufactured on every continent.
Even the MG with its gorgeous TD, TF, A and B models has morphed into a Chinesemanufactured little box.
I am going to keep the dream alive, nostalgia is powerful, and I want an MG TF no matter what, no matter how old I become.
I wonder if any of The Chronicle readers might have a spare one handy?