MUM’S CAR REUNITED!

Charlotte Vowden’s mum, Jan, goes back in time with her fave car – an Austin 1300 GT

2023-03-15 -

‘Southend with the girls is my fave GT memory’

‘I didn’t need the boyfriend anymore, I had a car,’ says mum, as she opens the Austin 1300 GT'S driver's side door. Bright red with black go-faster stripes and trim, it’s a duplicate of the first car that she ever bought and we’re wearing retro dresses to match. 'I bought 'Ladybird' in the summer of ’77, against my dad’s wishes, from a back street in Camden. I was going out with a guy who lived there and he had a mate who said he’d do me a good deal.’

Predictably, the car wasn’t as ready to rock’n’roll as mum had been led to believe (and the boyfriend swiftly got the boot) but it was

‘the object of my adoration from the outset,’ she coos, without a hint of regret. Eighteen, impulsive and working the ‘most boring job' she’s ever had (counting and sorting travellers cheques for a bank in London) what mum saw in her performance model Austin was a way to live it up at the weekend, but what was found once it was up on the ramp, was rust.

‘On top of the hundreds I’d paid, it was an unforeseen cost and the insurance wasn’t cheap either, but the most important thing on my mind was to get a radio/ cassette player fitted – no journey would be complete without cruising music.’ Which, she confesses, would be bootlegged. ‘I don’t remember wearing a seat belt (not a requirement by law until 1983), but I do recall I had driving shoes, well an old pair of sandals, which lived, very dangerously, in the footwell.’ Today, she’s chosen a sensible pair of flats, but as soon as we’re on the move, the rebellious woman I’ve come to know as I’ve grown up comes out to play. Mumsy, my mum is not.

‘I never used to drive Ladybird into the city,’ she says, finding third gear. ‘I'd take my girlfriends to Brent Cross and Watford to go shopping but Southend-onsea was our favourite trip; we’d go bowling on the pier followed by chips, which we’d eat in the car if it was raining and steam up the windows.’ This memory, not her driving, makes me sit back in my seat. Unknowingly, road tripping to the Essex coast with my best friend is a tradition I've kept alive.

As I watch her control and manoeuvre the Austin, I'm impressed by her ability behind the wheel; it’s intuitive. In contrast, I need tuition. When it's my turn to have a go, I underestimate the 1300’s turning circle and come uncomfortably close to a concrete wall. ‘I never had a crash or any near misses,' mum reveals, but not to dishearten. 'The demise of Ladybird came when the repairs required to keep her roadworthy grew too expensive. She was traded in for a Ford Escort, but a first car always holds a special place in your heart. Being reacquainted with the Austin has made me feel young again.'

MRS VOWDEN’S CLASSIC CAR CV

Austin 1300 GT (1977-1 979). Ford Escort (1979-1986).

Ford Sierra (1986-late Nineties). Ford Escort Estate (Late Nineties-2004).

Range Rover (2004-2010). Vauxhall Astra (2010, and still going strong under Charlie’s ownership).

MATT GEORGE MUM'S CAR: FORD FIESTA

In the mid-nineties, the George family plumped for a second car for the very first time. The vehicle in question was a 1984 Ford Fiesta MKII 1.0 in red, bought from 'a friend of a friend' and therefore cheap at just £800. I can still remember the registration number, too – B723 TCW. The Fiesta's arrival made us a two-ford family, sitting alongside my dad’s company car – a 1993 Mondeo 1.8 TD in silver. With dad using the Mondeo to get himself to work and back every day, and myself and my two sisters getting older and beginning to get social calendars of our own, the time had come to expand the fleet with a car for my mum, Julie.

Through the mists of time, I can recall the Fiesta being fairly basic inside, with a much simpler dash arrangement than the Ghia model seen here. I also remember being ferried around in it during school holidays, often to the supermarket, the central library in Bradford city centre or even just to the

local park. Another memory that has stuck in my mind is the half circle ashtray in the rear trim panel and how it came spinning round on itself and and out as you pushed it on one end. I must have spun it in and out hundreds of times as a bored rear seat passenger!

Sadly, the Fiesta came to a sticky end one fateful day in October 1996. My dad, Keith, was on his way back from a doctor’s appointment when a newly passed driver coming the other way swerved across in front of him, panicked and stopped side on, leaving him nowhere to go. He suffered a dose of whiplash… but was more annoyed that what he felt was a really good car had been written off in such a needless manner. Although mum and dad did get £1300 back from the insurance company – what the car was probably really worth – so it wasn’t all bad!

MATT TOMKINS MUM'S CAR: HILLMAN IMP

My mum isn’t a petrolhead, but that doesn’t mean that cars haven’t played a significant part in her life. HEX 96N, a Hillman Imp like the one here at the GBCJ, was her first car and, as well as allowing her that first taste of motoring freedom, off the pillion seat of her brothers’ motorcycles, it taught her a great deal about both car control and maintenance. As a seventeenyear-old, she could never afford to fill the frontmounted petrol tank to the top, so in winter the luggage space played host to a couple of paving slabs to prevent the car pirouetting on the unsalted cul-de-sac, but not before she’d learned how to ‘go with it' and keep herself and the car from coming to harm – knowledge she passed on

to my brother and me when we learned to drive. The same economic necessity that drove me to start tinkering with my Minor drove mum to equip herself with the skills to keep the Imp going, from reattaching radiator hoses, to learning the art of being towed and knowing exactly where to deploy the trusty can of WD40 on a cold, damp morning.

From the Imp, mum moved on to an Opel Manta B, which was sadly written off by a drunk driver after just a year of ownership. A replacement Manta was followed by a K10 Micra then, when she was pregnant with me, came a Rover 100 followed by a Volvo 740, the ultimate buggy-wagon, then a Sierra estate for family holidays before a Ford Galaxy ruined the illusion of ‘cool’. Since then, it’s been a series of 4x4s for trailer towing duties, which taught me just how tight a gap through which a trailer can be threaded when someone says ‘you won’t get that in there, luv’! ■