When they say a mans best friend is his dog they still under rate a good dog. Love the pics. Im working through what pics I can find. Quite a few have been lost over the years. Dad used to drive victors up to the one before the 101. Salesman said he needed a VX90. Dad said if you can beat me in my DL in a race I'll buy it. BAD MOVE, the man tried and failed. Dad bought a DS19. More badge than bite there it seems.
Around the same time I also owned a 1959 Vauxhall Victor FA with around 50k miles, from memory I paid £27 for, all black and chrome and a lovely car, sold it to my sister and her boyfriend saying it's quite old but driven gently it should last for years, the next time they came back from college they were full of praise for it , saying they got 90mph on the Motorway, it was the era of platform shoes and her boyfriends clutch operation was either on or off, so shortly after they did the back axle in. It turned out later they left it outside their lodgings for months and then a neighbour bought it from them as it was, for more than I had sold it to them for
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The Victor 101 was the FC version. I recall a few years earlier another mechanic was revving his dads VX4/90 Victor 101 (twin Solex carbs?)with his head under the bonnet doing some repairs, as he stood back the metal fan blades sheared narrowly missing him but taking out the radiator and damaging the bonnet!
I was less keen on your dads version, the FB after working around the engine mounting to do the fuel pump due to access.
Earlier I had a Vauxhall HA SL90 the disc brake version, another sub £20 car that I resprayed with around 13 aerosols at 50pence each, I later sold it to a friend, a month or so after when I arrived at work one day the manager of the holiday camp over the road came up to me saying "you had a bad crash last night" I didn't know what he was going on about, apparently he used to listen to the Police radio and go out and rubberneck crashes (sad git!) it turned out it was my mate, earlier he had called round my house seeing if I was going out and I had said no, which was very unusual as we often did, so someone up there was looking after me
. A taxi had broken down with no lights on a fast stretch, my mate had caught it and rolled the Viva, the passenger side roof was flat to the bonnet where I would have been and another mate who was sitting there nearly died, not helped by catching pneumonia due to complications.
In the early 70s that stretch of 70mph limit road was guaranteed to have a bad crash nearly every week, one time I returned from day release at college to find a Morris 1300 had left the road and landed on the low roof of a house opposite the garage.
I can't say much, I wrote off my second car an 1955 MG Magnette ZA (£40) right outside the garage exactly a week after buying it, complete inexperience on my behalf just not used to a big heavy old car on crossply tyres etc.
