The Way We Were

AUTUMN 1966 OKEHAMPTON, DEVON The centre of Okehampton in Devon seems to be remarkably quiet – and there’s a fascinating selection of cars in view

Okehampton, 1966

Many residents, holidaymakers and motorists with long memories will be shocked at the sight of this relatively traffic-free scene in Okehampton, Devon, in 1966.

Although almost in the centre of the county on the edge of Dartmoor, rather than anywhere the coast, the town was, at this time, right on the A38 trunk road, with additional A386 traffic adding to one enormous bottleneck. Thousands of 1960s motorists would have felt like abandoning their overheating, sweaty, vinyl-seated cars and running screaming into Marie’s café for a pot of tea and a clotted cream scone. In fact, many probably did.

Despite the lack of passing traffic, this scene is awash with automotive joy. Starting on the left of the picture is the Austin 1800 ‘Landcrab’ MkI, which, with its superb suspension and vast interior, would have been one of the best cars for the long trek down from West Yorkshire (or the West Riding as it would have been then) to Devon.

The car was introduced in Austin form in 1965, to be replaced in 1968 by a MkII version, featuring different rear wings and vertical lights, plus a revised front grille and fascia. Interestingly, Morris and Wolseley variants didn’t join the range until 1966 and 1967 respectively.

Blowing up the original image to about 400 per cent plus lots of squinting reveals that the sticker in the rear window is advertising the Halifax Speedway, a once highly popular attraction that opened in 1949 and only finally shut its doors in 1986. Just to emphasise that the Yorkshire-registered car contained occupants from – ahem – a superior part of the country, there is another sticker above the offside tail light proclaiming: ‘ Yorkshire. West Riding.’

Badges featuring the name of various counties were popular at the time, as of course were window stickers, often in the shape of flags, by which you could boast to the world that you really had visited Filey.

The dog in the corner of the windscreen looks like a toy Yorkshire terrier and, interestingly – though we wouldn’t want to lapse too much into regional clichés, of course – the gentleman in the flat cap crossing the road could resemble someone from a certain area of northern England. Perhaps the Austin’s occupants had come to rescue Uncle Ezra, whose bus trip to play bowls in Cleckheaton had gone horribly wrong.

We’ll cross the road, now, to find a Ford Anglia 105E – an early model, as evidenced by the clear front indicator lenses – followed by a Rover P4, which would have been 1952-registered at the earliest, because it doesn’t have the earlier model’s ‘Cyclops’ front grille and third light, but does have their sloping rear wings, replaced a couple of years later the by the famous ‘Auntie’ rear bustle. Note the missing section of trim.

Next up is arguably the vehicular highlight of this scene – an Opel Rekord P2 of a type built from 1960-1963 in saloon, coupé, estate (mysteriously known as Caravan!) and convertible form. This car would have had a 1488cc engine. Interestingly, the Opel is right-hand drive, so maybe it was a special order from Vauxhall’s German cousin, or the car was new in somewhere like Malta, or assembled in Cork.

Moving down the line, we have a Morris Minor pick-up, Triumph Herald 1200, a deluxe Standard 10 and another Anglia, a Mini van, and in the right-hand corner of the photo a face-off between a BMC 1100 and a J2 van.

Forming a backdrop to this is St James Chapel, which, like most of the buildings in this photo, survives virtually unaltered today. The Plume of Feathers Hotel on the righthand side of the picture closed recently, however. Boots has moved further along the road, presumably doing battle with the chemist shop featured here (which is now a Lloyds Pharmacy), while Marie’s café is now Okehampton Fried Chicken, presumably run by a bushy-bearded Captain Birdseyealike equivalent of Colonel Sanders.

Sadly, despite the by-pass, this scene is often traffic-clogged today.

‘Maybe the righthand drive Opel Rekord P2 was new in South Africa or Malta’ RARE OVERSEAS INTERLOPER