A THIRSTY BEAST

In one of your Press Pictures A-Z features, I remember seeing the Willys-Overland Jeep Wagon (which was a steel-bodied station wagon) and my mind went into overdrive. I worked in 1957 as junior salesman for Nash Motors Ltd, Victoria Street in Wolverhampton, headed by a Canadian Ray Gibbon and his other director, a local garage owner called Stan Annis. They were area dealers for Borgward cars – we had a new Isabella Coupé 2+2 and an Isabella TS fourseater saloon in stock (both had 1500cc engines), with various other used motors in the showroom.

One day, Ray came back from Trentham Estate in Stoke-on-Trent, one of the homes of His Grace, The Duke of Sutherland and his family years ago. My boss had been up there to the Trentham Gardens dance hall – his friend was the manager of the dance hall and Ray had sold him a new Borgward.

He had arranged for me to deliver the Isabella

Coupé on a Friday, and took in part exchange a Jeep Wagon with a woodie body, seven seats, a six-cylinder engine of 3000cc, a three-speed automatic with overdrive and four-wheel drive.

The tank was full of petrol, so I set off for Wolverhampton via the seaside village of Borth, just to the North of Aberystwyth, where my pal Paul Whitehead was staying in his parents' caravan. We had a marvellous time. I was quite used to Borth from 1946 to 1950 when my parents took me on holiday there, and I knew the dunes well, especially the route that an exarmy DUKW 6WD used to get through the dunes to the beach. We managed to find the passage, and then along the miles of the beach. By the time that I got back to Wolverhampton, I had spent all my money on petrol – I would say the Woodie did about 12mpg. Peter Morrey