60 Years of Speed

Britain’s first motorway – well, and-a-bit-mile an eightyears section – opened ago this month. 60 looks at seven Nick Larkin great cars that would’ve been among the first join these new to high-speed highways

Larkin’s seven best motorway classics

Today, while you’re stuck in a queue behind someone’s Kia Picanto for three hours, it’s difficult to imagine Britain’s motorways as a source of wonderment, and even less likely, genuine entertainment. But a nation watched on in joyful anticipation when, 60 years ago, on 5 December 1958, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan opened the then just-over-eightmile £2,960,481 Preston Bypass – now Junctions 29-32 of the M6. In 1958, there was great hope that the forthcoming network would relieve clogged town and A-roads and benefit the economy. Bless the new bypass; merely a dual carriageway and without a central crash barrier or speed limit, and where the big ends of Austin Sevens and other cars totally unsuited to highspeed cruising rattled like a swarm of locusts as their owners tried to ease them above 43mph on a just for fun sampling of the new road. But let’s pay tribute to some of the cars which were genuinely up to the task.