I’m certain that every week, somewhere in the world of classic car owners, someone has a hifalutin idea regarding vehicle logistics. In January 2010, I had one such logistical plan. It involved collecting my Jensen 5451R chassis from its fabulous […]

For much of the 1980s, I worked for the local, rather large bus company, the west Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. This came with a huge benefit, that being free travel on the company’s buses, those of the National Bus Company […]

It all started when I was a small boy. I cannot pinpoint the exact moment, but it had certainly taken root by the time I was six years of age. The ‘it’ in question was a fascination with windscreen wipers, […]

The imminent second Manor Park Classics auction got me thinking about my admittedly scant past action on various sales floors in the past. The late 2000s saw me with something of a career change, as Technical Editor of Practical Classics […]

For me, a huge part of the joy of old vehicles are the sounds that they make. This is something that appears to be true for many fans of all types of motor vehicles, what with the burgeoning exhaust note […]

I well remember while at college in the very early 1980s doodling on the inside covers of my lever arch work folders. The doodles were often deliciously cruel caricatures of my fellow classmates (I too was on the receiving end […]

As a boy, close to home I didn’t have any family members in the motor trade, well save for my birth mother and foster father, both of whom worked at Fort Dunlop, but I didn’t then see the beauty inherent […]

Often, at SOS Workshop, when questions are asked the reply is a curt ‘RTFM’ or ‘Read the (flippin’) manual.’ I think that I may have been a strange boy. One Saturday afternoon in 1974/5, aged 10 years, I rode my […]

I’m not fond of running out of fuel. On the face of things there should be no reason for me to fear such an event ever happening again, as after all I am a grownup, or at least my date […]

In the first few years of the 1980s, when I was an apprentice with the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive, a conglomeration of once proud municipal and company bus operators, I spent much of my time at its Sutton Coldfield […]

Naturally, you might already be thinking that you’re about to learn the secrets of sartorial style from yours truly. I’m sorry to have to let you down, but I’m not yet prepared to divulge the key to dressing for success, […]

The month of May is upon us and with it should arrive the great British summertime… eventually. As I sit here in lovely Leicestershire, rain from the north is chilling the air. It’s still woollies weather. But that doesn’t mean […]

‘My eyes adored you, but I never laid a hand on you…’ went the words of the Frankie Valli easy-listening trans-Atlantic monster hit of early 1975 and that was how I felt on seeing some of the amazing cars that […]

A little bird has informed me that the supply of oil to blenders of the stuff is currently compromised, possibly due to heavy demand in other parts of the world, but largely down to the global pandemic. The reason for […]

In my musings, it is only right and proper that I include a few of the cars which I have owned that haven’t exactly been the most glorious moments of my driving career. There is a neat grouping of these, […]

Learning to drive can happen on many levels. My first insights into the art perhaps came when my folks started buying me those fabulous ‘Matchbox’ cardboard, ‘glue and play’ roadways, with realistic details printed onto them, such as dotted lines […]

As oft mentioned in these tales, I was a foster kid for five days out of seven. Within my birth family I was an only child. Actually, that’s not entirely true, as the main candidate for being my father had […]

Every person who takes up a profession takes their first steps into it, often unconsciously, acquiring the first nugget of information that will likely last a lifetime… “Two sugars in mine and one in his. Now watch that carpet disnae […]

You may or may not know that I, in similar fashion to many children, had two homes throughout my childhood and adolescence.  The reason for my dwelling duo being that, weekdays, I was a privately fostered child and at the […]

Often, I hear tales from folks of cars they admired, even coveted from a distance as they were growing up. Not cars owned by their own parents, but those belonging to other people, perhaps in which, sometimes, an occasional lift […]

I was a foster child. I saw my birth mum, June, at weekends but spent my weekdays with a foster family. Before the age of nine months, I stayed with a family named ‘Jones’, but their neighbours had ‘began talking’ […]

Uncle Derek and Auntie Jean. During my childhood, mum had one surviving brother, Derek. He was older than her by nearly twelve years and had served as a captain in WWII, escaping from Dunkirk amongst other events, although he said […]

I wouldn’t be who I am now without that Vauxhall Chevette. In December 1975 my life changed completely.  The cause? A brand-new Vauxhall Chevette. You see, my mum who was born with achondroplasia, once upon a time more commonly known […]

Vehicles I have owned: 6 - 1955 Land Rover Series I, SWB 86”. My original, 80” Land Rover Series One had been troublesome for some time, and such is the way of these things, a classified advertisement had caught my […]

Vehicles I have owned: 5 – 1968 Daimler Fleetline CRG6LX / Northern Counties, registration number XDH518G. As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved buses. According to my foster sister and brother, my first two words were ‘bus’ and […]

4: 1950 Land Rover, Series I, 80”, Registration number- LTJ 714 And so it came to pass that I became a Land Rover owner, for the very first time. It was also my first non-Ford car, breaking a family tradition […]

Vehicles I have owned.3: 1979, Ford Fiesta 1.1L , registration number YOK80T. This particular vehicle’s appearance here  as ‘owned’ by me, is perhaps something of a falsehood, as I never paid a penny for it. The car was in fact […]

Vehicles I have owned: 2 – 1960 Ford Anglia 105E, registration number 803 BOL. Following on from my Honda C50 and its engine donation to a go-kart, my mind firmly favoured four wheels over two, and though I was still […]

Vehicles I Have Owned 1: 1966 Honda C50, registration number GON 86D. Many thirteen years olds want nothing more than to be able to control a motor vehicle, especially one powered by an internal combustion engine, with gears, mechanical noises […]

Nowadays new year occurs twice a year. Not so very long ago, okay 1998, it happened only once, in September. Before that, until 1997, it occurred once a year, in August, but it hasn’t occurred on 1st January since 1967. […]