RE: Let's Drive Down Memory Lane: First Cars - Discussion

There are some very young people in steemit.
My first car was a 1928 [yes they had been invented then] Chev, the last of the 4 cylinder models. A large box with a smaller box in front for the engine.
The first year of service in the RNZAF we were paid $4.00 a fortnight, the remainder of your pay was banked for you. The purchase price of the car was $200 which I could just afford. It was definitely a female car, it made its mind up whether it wanted to go where ever I wanted to go if it didn't want to go that was that, there was no way the car was going to start.
Most of the time it was very co-operative.
Something the youngies will never have happen, driving along at about 40 mph, towards top speed, and suddenly there is a sudden knock, knock outside the car. a quick stop, followed by a good look at everything, to find that nothing appeared to be wrong to the vastly experienced 18 year old eye. Restart and continue down the road, there is that knock again, another examination to find everything looked like it should. After 10 to 15 stops I finally found the cause to be the tread on the retreaded tyre had come unstuck for half to three-quarters of its circumference. As soon as I got any speed up it was smacking the inside of the mudguard, when I stopped it resumed it's proper position and looked ok. Out with the spare, a quick change and we were away.
Then, a retread was just glued to the outside of the beads and base of the tyre, vulcanizing hadn't come into common practice yet, and it cost more.
The car was big enough to fit a rugby team into to take them about ten miles to play the next base, there were guys on knees, somebody alongside me was doing the gear changes, but we got there and beat them.
I was posted to Fiji in December and sold the car before I left.
We would also fill it up and go to the hot springs 20 minutes away for an evening swim quite often as well.
At the time it wasn't the newest car on the road, but it wasn't the oldest either, NZ had a thing for keeping old cars going because we couldn't afford to buy new ones [or the Government put so many taxes on the import of them]