First Cars : 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History - Week 3.

This is the third challenge in a weekly series from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy and history, suggested  by Amy Coffin,  that invite genealogists to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants  

Week 3: What was your first car? What was the make, model, colour, but also what memories do you have of the vehicle.

This was my husband's first car  (above) - a silver grey Ford Escort, bought just a few weeks before we first met in 1970. He was always proud of his cars and looked after them well.   This brings back memories of our engagement. It must have been love, that he actually suggested I sat on top of the car for this photograph - not something he has allowed since!  Note the miniskirt  and 1970's striped  coat! 

By 1972 we had graduated to a bronze Ford Cortina (right)  and this reminds me of the time when we were planning for the birth of our daughter - so a larger car was called for with room for the pram and all the baby paraphernalia etc.   This photograph was taken  near  Smailholm Tower in the Scottish Borders.

Silver metallic (very classy)  remained my husband's favourite colour and we returned to this for later cars, changing loyalty from Ford, via Toyota  to Renault.

For me a car is very much for getting from A-Z in reasonable comfort, and they do not stick strongly in my memory. 

But I cannot resist in this blog sharing my father's memory of his first car, told in his "Family Recollections " that he wrote down for me.  He was a commercial traveller  and in the 1930's got a new job with instructions to pick up a car at Derby and drive 90 miles north  to a new position in Blackpool.

""I had never driven a car before.  On Boxing Day, I went to the British School of Motoring and said I wanted some urgent lessons.  When I told the instructor I was driving to Blackpool the next day, he nearly had a fit.  I collected my car - a four door Morris saloon which I was expected to buy on hire  purchase at 18shillings per week.  It was a traumatic journey with me being  a complete novice, having had no proper tuition.  There was no heating, no radio of course to help pass the time, and the windscreen wipers kept seizing up.  I had also been told that the tyres were awful for punctures.  Still I made it, as darkness fell - just as well, as I wasn't too sure about the lights!"

This is a photograph of my mother taken I suspect before my parents married in 1938.  I have no idea of the make of the car.