It’s midday, 8 March 1982 and a code orange status has just been triggered in the offices of RoSPA (the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents). Colin Goodwin has just been issued with a driving licence. Two o’clock the same day: RoSPA raises the alert status to red. Goodwin has purchased his first car.
That damned piece of paper had taken nearly two years to obtain. The people at the DVLA, or whoever was responsible back then for organising driving tests, had been on strike and there was a massive backlog for dates. I’d applied for a cancellation and got a date a week later, having had no lessons. I took it in a mate’s Fiat 127 Sport that fouled its plugs. I failed. More disasters followed. Anyway, I was beyond desperate to go solo (er, legally) hence the lack of dawdling to buy a car.
The machine was a Vauxhall Viva HB in SL90 spec. Brush painted, F-reg, already rusty. Forty quid. A 1.2-litre engine producing not much horsepower. That didn’t matter much because most of my friends owned American muscle cars and the Vauxhall could have had 200bhp because it was the deficit in cylinders that inspired their derision.
I don’t remember much about the Viva – not even how long I kept it. Not as long as a year, for sure. I had a Norton Commando 850 (I passed my bike test very soon after my 17th birthday) for high-speed sorties so the car was more for transporting the muscle car owners when they’d run out of petrol money and for taking girls out. On one date, the fan flew off the end of the water pump and into the radiator. I thought she’d be mightily impressed by my fixing it with a raw egg but no. She probably married a stockbroker and now drives a BMW X5.
Thirty-six years later, Autocar’s Dan Prosser and I are sitting in the Vauxhall heritage collection’s Viva HB. It is in perfect condition. D-reg, but otherwise identical to mine, even down to the colour. I’ve owned more than 40 cars, the bulk of them during my 20s. This is the first time I’ve revisited one of the old ones. It’s more usual these days for me to drive something that’s old and tired now but was new when I first drove it, such as the Porsche 968 Club Sport that featured in our 'best of 1994' feature last year. Today, the car is in far better shape than the one I drove first time around.
It wasn’t all mine: I went halves with a school friend on a 1961 ex-Belgian post office 2CV van. Neither of us could drive. My mate saw it in a scrapyard. Amused by his interest, they sold it to him for £5, including delivery to his aunt’s empty garage. This was 1975. We sold it for £25 to a Swede, who towed it home. Richard Bremner
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Singer Chamois
Upmarket Hillman Imp which had been rolled and the driver's door never shut properly. Regularly blew head gaskets despite skimming. Throttle cable snapped so drove it home using the choke lever swopped over on the carb. Replaced it with my Dad's rusty Wolseley Hornet whose rear subframe collapsed coming into a roundabout losing all brake hydraulics in the process. Chopped it up and took the body bits to the scrapyard tied to the roof of its replacement a Commer Imp van whose previous owner had hand painted it Dulux lilac in the rain.
@ Richard Bremner
Ha! I remember that 2CV van - it was my brother that co-owned it with you, and it resided in my grandmother's garage until it moved on. I particularly remember the egg-timer for the indicators! (normal for 2CVs of this age).
Happy Days
Lots of memories and comparisons to this article. I passed my test in 1980 and on the same day purchased a 1967 Viva HB SL. One family ownership from new a low mileage. White with a Red Vinyl interior, being the SL model it had the twin bucket rear seats in place of the standard bench rear seat. I paid the princely sum of £175 and £117 for a year’s insurance. I owned it for 2 years without any mechanical issues, but the bodywork required regular attention to keep corrosion at bay. I parted with it after it was stolen by students who thrashed it around for a week or so and abandoned it after running out of petrol and blowing the engine. Being a Grey haired 56 years like Colin, I have subsequently owned and driven far better vehicles since then, but the freedom and independence that my Viva brought me, means it will always be my “best” car.