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by Andy Sharp, IAM Newbury Group
The article by David Skinner in the last edition of One Way got me thinking about my own favourite car. Over the years I’ve driven a variety of makes and models from a rickety old Austin A35 to my current Octavia RS (no comparison intended, and I’ll buy a drink for anyone who can tell me a Skoda joke I haven’t already heard!). But my favourite car is still the first I owned – a 1953 Ford Popular 103E.
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I acquired it from my Grandfather in 1968 when I was 18. He had looked after it beautifully, and it was in excellent working order with virtually no rust. My first drive in it was from Clacton to Worcester, and it was then that I started to discover some of the Populars peculiarities. All my driving until then had been in my mothers Austin Mini (the original one with the starter button on the floor and the long, bent gear stick) and my fathers VW 1600. |
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Both of these were fairly normal 4 speed manual gear change cars. The Ford was waiting for me backed up near a wooden fence, so I jumped in, switched on, engaged what should have been first gear and promptly reversed into the fence. Nobody had told me that the Popular was equipped with a three speed gear box!
The power was provided by an 1172cc side valve engine. Given a following wind and a reasonably steep downhill slope, the car could get up to speeds as high as 60 mph. It is probably a good job that there were not many opportunities to drive it that fast, as the ‘sit up and beg’ styling and primitive suspension made it unstable at anything above 50.
For such an old car, the build quality was excellent. I had stopped at a zebra crossing one day when a new fangled Ford Cortina Mk II drove straight into the back of me. Luckily nobody was hurt, but the Cortina had a severely crumpled radiator grill. My old car had a small dent in the rear bumper.
The Popular was a great car for fine weather, but driving in the rain was something else. The small windscreen wiper – singular - was mounted on the drivers side at the top of the windscreen and was driven by vacuum supplied from the engine. It worked well enough when the car was travelling on a flat road, but put any strain on the engine by going up a hill and the wiper would get slower and slower until it almost stopped.
I kept the car for just over a year, and the freedom it gave me to get around without having to borrow a car from my parents was a real turning point in my teenage social life. However, all good things have to come to an end. I had just got my first job in London and needed something with a bit more power to get me there. So the Popular was sold to the Bishop of Worcesters chauffer (goodness knows what he wanted it for) and I acquired the rickety old A35 that was to give me my first experience of frequent mechanical breakdowns. But that’s another story.
