SAILING AWAY
Your Summer Fun feature (CM, July 19) about old motoring advertisements took me back to my youth. In 1960, my family moved to a disused wartime naval air station. My father was a naval officer at the time and he decided that my brother and I – aged 13 and 14 respectively – should learn to drive and how to service cars. We bought a Standard 12, circa 1926, at a scrapyard for £5 (delivered!) and started driving around the empty airfield.
In winter, we discovered how to control skidding on the bald tyres. The Standard’s steering was less than precise, so when we found an old wooden ship’s rudder washed up on the local beach, we attached it to the boot for ‘assisted steering’. The improvement was immediate!
My brother later worked as an aero-engineer at Rolls-royce and I became a marine engineer officer aboard nuclear submarines. Something to do with an ancient motor car and gaining confidence by making lots of mistakes? Who knows! Dr H Anderson