MEMORIES OF A POSTGRAD CAR ENTHUSIAST 1967-1972

I've been following your Fiat 500 restoration and it has reminded me of my little Giardiniera mentioned in my letter in the March issue. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of that. Looking back now, I'm sure I could have made an effort to repair the underside as it was otherwise in good condition. I enjoyed the article on the Vauxhall Viva GT in April's Classic World too. I owned an HA SL90 and later an HB Viva SL, and I've subsequently written this piece titled Recollections of a Postgraduate Car Enthusiast 1967-72. This follows on from my Confessions of a Teenage Car Enthusiast 1960-1962 that you published in the March issue.

After graduation from Edinburgh Dental School I subsequently moved south to Woking in Surrey to join my first dental practice. At that time I was still driving my second Fiat 600D which I had owned since getting married whilst still at University. It had always been very reliable, economical and always great fun to drive. This little Fiat was very well equipped for the period with a very good heater and reclining front seats. It’s hard to imagine now that car heaters were often still an optional extra in those days when winters were generally much harder than today.

However, after a while I fancied a change of vehicle and swapped it for an HA Vauxhall Viva SL90. I really liked this early Viva; it had very taught suspension, very good front disc brakes and a good zippy performance, and I especially liked the Testa Rossa rocker box cover under the bonnet! It also had a delightful gear change and very positive rack and pinion steering.

One of my patients worked at Doves, a big car showroom near the practice, and recognising a fellow enthusiast, would let me know whenever he got any interesting cars in stock for me to sample. One day he showed me a beautiful Sunbeam Alpine in Dark Blue with wire wheels with which I instantly fell in love. I believe it was priced at £800, which seemed a lot at that time. Before purchase, I had to be able to fit a child’s safety chair and be able to get a pushchair and other paraphernalia into the boot, which was essential as a new father of one, but this was easily achievable.

So I said goodbye to the Viva and acquired the Sunbeam, which I kept for about six years and have regretted selling ever since. I thought the Alpine was and still is a beautiful car despite being labelled by some as a 'ladies car,' usually by MG owners. My car was the GT version, which came with a removable hardtop but no soft-top hood, a wooden dashboard, wood rimmed steering wheel and very comfortable Recaro seats. On a sunny day we would leave the hardtop in the garage and enjoy some open-air motoring in the delightful Surrey countryside which I have always loved. Friends of mine at the time had MGBS and one a Lotus Elan, but I thought my Alpine was somewhat superior (which now seems a bit strange seeing as how I am the proud owner of an MGB).

Although at that time my wife wasn’t driving yet, I fancied having a cheap runabout and spotted a little Fiat 500 Giardiniera for sale. This was the estate version of the Fiat 500 with the rearmounted engine lying flat under the boot floor, a very neatly packaged arrangement. I loved driving this nippy little Fiat with its fulllength sunroof so much that I even tended to prefer it to the Alpine! One day I got it up on ramps with the intention of doing some undersealing, but unfortunately everything I touched tended to fall off in a rusty heap! In those days the classic car movement was yet to emerge and nobody considered restoring such so called 'rust buckets.' Today that would have been snapped up as a worthwhile restoration project and lived to see another day. However, I reluctantly decided to sell the little Fiat which I loved and traded it in for a little Singer Chamois, a slightly upmarket Hillman Imp.

This was another nippy little car which

I fell in love with. Despite the Imp’s bad press, I thought it was much superior to the Mini and never had any problems with it at all. Unfortunately, entirely due to my exuberant driving, I had an accident going to work one snowy morning and rather rearranged the nearside profile of my little Imp, to say nothing of the rear end of the Triumph Spitfire I had run into. Nevertheless the Spitfire owner was fairly forgiving with my contrition; both cars were satisfactorily repaired and I learned to drive more carefully in snowy conditions as a result!

At that time in the late 1960s, Surrey was a paradise for car enthusiasts with numerous specialist garages run by former racing drivers such as Duncan Hamilton in Bagshot, Tony Brooks in Weybridge, Continental Cars (the old Connaught works where they built F2 and F1 racing cars) at Send, and of course the famous Thompson and Taylors at Cobham to name a few. One evening I drove across to Cobham and was admiring a lovely Alfa Romeo GT outside Thompson and Taylors when a salesman asked if I wanted a test drive. It was getting a bit late in the day, but he said we could drive down the A3 to Send and I could then drive it back. Unfortunately it soon ran out of petrol, although we were very fortunately able to coast into a hotel car park.

The poor, slightly embarrassed salesman duly ran his boss, who turned up with a can of petrol and turned out to be Roy Salvadori, the ex-grand Prix driver! He was very friendly and we had a long chat about Alfa Romeos, but I never did get to drive one.

On another occasion I spotted a beautiful Ferrari 250GT+2 for sale at Continental Cars. It was painted dark blue, my favourite car colour, with red leather seats and was for sale at £2000. I enjoyed a test drive in this beautiful car, which I found very easy to drive despite its high performance specification. I seriously pondered buying it, but the Ferrari was snapped up before I came to a decision. Hey ho.

I had by this time traded my Singer Imp in for a nearly new HB Vauxhall Viva SL, but this ultimately proved rather a disappointment compared to my earlier SL90. Although it was a very attractive looking car with beautiful styling and very comfortable seats, it lacked the SL90’S front disc brakes and lively performance, so I very quickly swapped it at Tony Brooks' garage for a new Fiat 128. This had been Car of the Year and remains one of my favourite cars. It boasted a quite advanced Aurelio Lampredi designed engine which gave it a very lively performance.

I really enjoyed driving this entertaining little car until one day, having moved to North Bedfordshire, I was seduced by a beautiful dark blue Fiat 124 Coupé, another wonderful car I wish I still owned. Usually when you sell a car you never see it again, but my Fiat 128 was bought by a chap who lived in my village and so I saw it nearly every day until he stopped driving due to old age. The classic car phenomenon started around about this time, but sadly all the cars mentioned here were probably scrapped before they could be appreciated, restored, treasured and considered collectable. Unfortunately such a scenario was just never envisaged at that time. I find it very sad to think about all the cars which have been lost before their time, and how much they would be worth today if they had survived.

Gordon Lang