BUILD QUALITY IS A RECIPE FOR SUCCESS
Andrew’s family experience shows why BMC folded, but Volkswagen are still going.
This year marks 50 years since my folks moved from Axminster in Devon to the ever-expanding town of Somerton in Somerset. I was three years old at the time, and I can sort of vaguely remember the Axminster house with its steeply sloping driveway. I can also just about remember dad’s Minis, firstly a Maroon 1965 Austin with the standard-fit 850 engine that was tweaked with a skim of the cylinder head to raise the compression, and secondly a 1967 998 Cooper in Island Blue with a white roof that was quite fast enough for the atrocious 7in disc brakes they had as standard.
This summer I had a trip down to see Phil White of this parish in very sunny Dorset (you can read more about that in his new column on p18) and I dropped in to Somerton on the way just to have a look around the old place. Of course it suffers from what is called progress, which is an utter misnomer. They have built houses absolutely everywhere, blocked roads to impede once easy progress and, most heinous of all, they’ve closed both of my old schools to ‘integrate.’
Somerton Infants School wasn’t much to look at having been built in a hurry around 1970, a small quick-build main block, some grass, Tarmacadam and, until the late 1970s, Portacabin classrooms, but it was a good place to start your education and I did so in September 1972. Moving on four years, my comrades and I went to what was called Monteclefe C of E juniors, a lovely old stone schoolhouse that now stands empty and abandoned – it’s amazing how fast grass and weeds take a hold. Mr Monteclefe, who funded the school, was discovered by some eager beaver to be less than politically acceptable in the early 2000s and so it was renamed after King Ina, who was undoubtedly a benevolent fellow as 700AD kings generally were.
Now they have both been replaced by a super academy, some frightening edifice worthy of Albert Speer, built on an ancient burial site and opened with passionate speeches that use the word ‘delivered.’ Yuk.
Whilst having a wander down Bancombe Road, I saw something in what used to be a farmyard that stopped me in my tracks – a 1957 Morris Oxford Series III that has stood in the same spot since 1979. I remember this thing being driven around by a farmer in the 1970s when they and Farina Oxfords were typical farmers’ cars, towing a trailer with hay bales or smaller livestock. Of course it’s scrap now, having pretty much rusted into the ground and the chances are that it will stay there forever.
Looking at my old house, I saw that it has had some changes. The front wall has come down to really open up the yard, and in my mind I can picture some of my folks’ cars enjoying the easy access. After the blue and white 998 Mini Cooper came NJT 840J, a 1275GT and one of the few times my mum got her way regarding cars. ‘It was crap,’ I remember Everett Snr saying. ‘I wanted a MkII Cooper S, but the 1275GT was the stylish new model so that’s what we had. It had good brakes from the S, but it was nowhere near as nice as the Cooper. Very tinny and noisy in comparison.’
The one-car family became a two-car executive unit with the addition of a second Mini around that time, maybe a year later. As members of the Yeovil Car Club, they befriended an
American mechanic called Bill Mather who worked at Vincents, the Yeovil Austin Morris dealer who had many of the trade-ins. This one was a plain white 1961 Morris Mini-Minor complete with a tired engine, but not too rusty. It was given a respray in bright red and white, and tarted up with the Mini accessories of the day – Cosmic wheels, a Les Leston GP steering wheel and the plastic all-enveloping Madadash dashboard. I remember it arriving in that form, just like I remember the Morris 1100 that donated a replacement engine. Apparently a 1965 model with terminal corrosion as usual, it was only seven years old.
It would have been 1974 when dad replaced the Mini GT with an almost new Ford Mexico. The 1275GT was transferred to mum and the red/white thing sold on as the rust advanced at a rate of knots. I last saw it a few miles away in Street around 1977 looking absolutely terrible.
The white 1275GT was kept for another four years, at which point it was replaced by a new VW Polo, EYA 606T. By this time the GT had already received a replacement gearbox, the usual Mini greasing, balljoint and brake adjusting rituals, but rust was getting into it. BL couldn’t supply a new Mini 1000 that year because of strike action, and I remember my first ride in the Polo. I couldn’t believe how quiet it was. It didn’t rattle or squeak and it felt nicer to ride in than dad’s two year old Capri. Good old VW, eh? I do believe they are still going...