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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jag150
My first car, around the time
Takeitslowly
jag150 wrote:
Next to the growlers, no doubt the Peugeot 308 must have been... :)
jag150
Can't believe Ferrari allowed
5wheels
Viva tin
I had one for a few weeks. What scraed me was looking down the bonnet at the wafer thin wings, I was terried some jerk would bang into me even in a car park. That didnt happen, but it did a similar trick of shedding the fan blades at 85 mph on the A1 and ripped trough every possible wire and tube it could find lol
rhwilton
Morris Minor
My first car wasn't roadworthy. It was a Morris Minor that belonged to a neighbour. I just took it apart and put it back together again without making it roadworthy. It moved up and down the private drive shared by my parents and another neighbour. My first roadworthy car was also a Morris Minor. My sister gave it to me when she moved to London and didn't need a car. I love my sister! It saw me through university and made me popular, as few other students had cars but still needed transport. It also transported band equipment. The tiny boot was impractical for that, but it was a convertible so, on sunny days, you could just stack drums up on the back seat.
Marv
My first car was...
a 1984 Fiat Panda, bought by my Dad for £40. He soon traded it in for a Micra of the same year. Once I passed my test and found the insurance prohibitive it was sold and I reverted to using my parents cars (that’s a story in itself). The first car I bought myself was a 90’ 205 XS, the carb version and I loved it. The first new car I bought was a 02 MR2 roadster and again, I absolutely loved driving that little thing.
jason_recliner
First Car was a Westfield
This is why we like you!
5wheels
First cars
I am a shade grey than you Colin, my first car was shared with older brother A 17 quid purchase of a Ford Pop, my own first car was a Morris Oxford 54 side valve. Built like a tank like the Volvo Amazon which followed after I blew the engine up on the Ox
That bloke
Two days ago, an old friend
Two days ago, an old friend of mine died (far too early in life) of cancer. He and me both had Viva HBs at the same time. I had a DL, he had an SL. Here's to you, Keith. I will always remember our debates about who had the best car (you did). Bless you, mate.
Riley 1.5
First car......Riley 1.5
Actually it had been my late father's car which my mother had driven to try and pass her test, although she never did. In 1969 my course of driving lessons and the test cost £11, and one month after my 17th birthday I passed my test in the driving school's Austin A40. The Riley was traded in for a Ford Cortina which spent the next three years gradually rusting away and regularly shedding it's chrome strips. I now regret selling the Riley, but silly decisions are part of life and I'm sure we've all bought cars we feel were not wise choices. In my case, quite a few!
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