I dated Rachel for a short while, we where both into the 50s scene, i still am, im sure she is, last time i saw her she was into her bikes, we used to go and see The Jive Cats as they were a local band with Flo the singer and Danny (Bloater ) on lead guitar, great days and we are still Rockin even harder today
Would love to hear this full version of "Rocketship to the moon" I think that is an immaculate version! Been loving 50's style since I was 16/17... Now, being 26, I own and drive a 1958 Plymouth... That 50's car culture has so, so much to offer, share and enjoy.
My Favourite car of all time! When I was about 4, in 1955, we had fancy neighbours up the road, who had a BLACK one. Mrs. Price asked my mother if we should go to the fancy London store , Harrods, to see their Christmas display. Myself and her daughter Cheryl went to see the store's Father Christmas, while our Mums looked round the store. AND we'd parked right outside the back of the store, because there weren't parking meters yet! Anyway, there wasn't the need for parking meters because there were hardly any cars! They'd all been melted down in the war to make bullets! The Vauxhall (E - Series) is still my favourite, and I was lucky enough to see one parked near my home a few years ago I also got to see our family friend Mrs.Price, in the local post office, again! Happy story happy bunny!
I really hope his family did take care of his parts collection after he passed... the gentleman at the end. Would be a shame had they not. Thanks for these videos, +Cardiff333UK. I'm an American, and have never seen this series on British classic motors... though I have an affinity for them.
I’d love to be a neighbour to be able to watch her attempting to start that old Vauxhalll On a winters morning, wearing a 50s blouse and skirt combination
Assuming that it is still on it's correct, original registration plate (and it looks correct to me!) the Vauxhall Wyvern SAE 329 was supplied new in Bristol by Messrs Welch & Co of Avon Street in late December 1953. I see though that it has not been taxed since 1/7/1991 so maybe now parked up in a barn or scrapped and not notified to the DVLA.. A shame as they are quite rare to survive. We had PHY 752 a 1953 Velox sold in showroom conditon for £35 in 1970..I try not to think about it!
Being the sad git that I am I checked all the cars that appeared in this programme with the DVLA website. And only the blue MK2 Zephyr is currently still on the road. Even the mint 1600E from part 1 has been off the road for 9 years. All the others have gone too. Hopefully not scrapped, just languishing awaiting recommission.
Old cars break down or rust and can no longer pass the MOT. Parts are no longer available and modern mechanics can't work on them. Hence they disappear over time.
The Vauxhall EIP series was the first standard British production car to have a convex wind screen. They did it again with the FC Victor which was the first standard British production car to have curved side windows and the only one to have a concave rear window
Always loved PA Crestas and Mk2 Zodiacs, such style. As a child of the 70's saw a lot of rusty vauxhalls, they were worthless back then. Today, restoration jobs are thousands instead of a few hundred, inflation eh!
Very true. When we played football in the street and the ball bobbled under a Viva, stours of rust would fall down. Also after it rained there were always rainbow ribbons of oil from leaky engines, diffs, and gearboxes.
i had a 1955 cresta in black it was a great car but sadly i disposed of it in 1980 no one wanted it i never had the room so it was scrapped. when i think of it i could cry it was in real good condition.
I had one as my first car, very quiet car but water collected in the chassis members, meant they rusted very quickly, a problem that existed still when the made the first Victors.
That Singer Gazelle is the prettiest car in its class. To think. I wasted so much time in 1959, chasing after the prettiest girl in the class. What was I thinking?
In terms of car design Britain never recovered to enjoy cars like the US did. For one simple reason. Until the 1960s and possibly later, engine size attracted a tax a the time of purchase of any new car, the larger the engine capacity the higher the tax! Thus engines remained small, no large and powerful V8s of course and a 2 litre engine was considered "large".
@@brianaustin8989 I'd say the cost was the main reason! That and our smaller roads, narrower residential streets, smaller commuting distances and general lack of need for such a large car...
This is quite an old video of an ever older film. I started out five years old in 1950. It's not quite as idyllic as those young people (who I guess are in their 50's now as well) think it was but, compared to shat must have been about 1990 when this was made, it was a much more optimistic time. There were tons of problems, but there was a naive faith that some combination of hard science and social science could solve them. We were going into space, people had good jobs, the average family could buy a house in the suburbs, and mom didn't have to work unless she wanted to. Even though we had the threat of an all out nuclear war hanging over our heads, we kids had a lot more freedom, and parents understood you had to let the leash out far enough so the kid could make mistakes when they were young. It was a time when we had a lot to worry about but we somehow didn't live a life consumed by worry Now, in 2020, we really have far fewer problems yet everyone worries more about everything. Back then, we understood life as we knew it could end any second. Now kids worry that global warming will kill us all by 2030. This is not a good time to be a kid.
Love the Singer. Rootes was crippled by a series of strikes in 1960 (collectively called "The honeymoon strike"). It was sold to Chrysler in 1966, by the Wilson government, in the hope that tough American management would fix the trade union problems, which the British just could not do. But Chrysler had no idea what to do with their European acquisitions. We had to wait for Margaret Thatcher to begin the task of clamping down on the evil of socialism in 1979. In the meantime, the socialist unions went on to destroy BMC, and suck Rover and Triumph into the financial sink hole. So sad. So sad.
Thruns Guinneabottle What a load of Bollocks. British management of the day could not run a piss up in a brewery. Their inefficiency and bad planning ran our car industry into the ground. Their ideas was to make the workforce pay for the uselessness. Investment was none existent, use of new machinery and plant was was non existent. U K Ford were using robots to build their cars. The rest all the old brands BMC etc were still using human labour to assemble weld and finish their products. Their 8dea was take away the tea break instead of investing in new machines. Parts delivered to the assembly line were badly made nd took extra production time to fit together to make a complete unit. We were buying cars that were badly put together, had basics such as heaters, electric wipers, radios marked as extras. The designs of these cars told the whole story, nothing innovative. BMC 1100/1300 hundreds had five different names. Riley Wolsey vanden plas Austin Morris, but except for a badge and other minor changes was the same car. The car destined to save BMC. The Metro. Was total rubbish. Badly designed and built, nothing pointing to the future just rehashed design and engineering. Same A series power unit. That had been used since the Austin A30. Even using the same plant and machine to make the body parts. Ford all this while had invested from the ground up. And as a result built well designed well built cars. That sold faster than they could be made. Check the strike record of the Ford Motor Co during this time. What a difference. Ford were not trying pinch pennies off their workforce.to make up for management inefficiency. And bad practice.
In 1964 when i was 17 i bought a Vauxhall vagabond 1955 model convertible two tone blue with spatson rear wheel arçhes gray vinyl roof white wall tyres this model i believe was only made and sold here in Australia built on a velox ute chassis for its day it looked like a scaled down Chevrolet convertible i traded it in 2 years later on a band new 998 cc mini deluxe withwind down windows at the time an Australian only model now our car manufacturing is all but dead .ian
I’d love to be a neighbour to be able to watch her attempting to start that old Vauxhalll On a winters morning, wearing a 50s blouse and skirt combination
