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Where Were You 50 Years Ago Today?

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Working at the Plessey Company in Ilford Essex and had just finished doing my mechanical engineering apprenticeship.
Had just bought my second TR2. The first one was mashed in a rear end crash. It was rotten as only a British car can rot when it is left outside all the time. The second one was only a little better but could have done with a frame off rebuild.
Life was good and still is good.

David
 
I was still eleven years away from being.
 
Glad to have you youngsters around. And Paul at 87 is an inspiration to many of us who are approaching that or at least hope to. Ok, back on topic. I was waiting for the birth of our beautiful daughter after having two boys already 9 and 10 years old. I had owned the Prefect for 7 or 8 years but it was no longer a regular driver second car. Poor thing is still sitting in the shop waiting to be finished.
 
Bayless said:
Glad to have you youngsters around. And Paul at 87 is an inspiration to many of us who are approaching that or at least hope to. Ok, back on topic. I was waiting for the birth of our beautiful daughter after having two boys already 9 and 10 years old. I had owned the Prefect for 7 or 8 years but it was no longer a regular driver second car. Poor thing is still sitting in the shop waiting to be finished.
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And do we have a date for restoration? Any pics? :encouragement: PJ
 
I guess you got me on that one Paul. I was hoping to at least get closer this year but it looks like building the Sprite and painting the Model A are eating up too much of my time. I am slowly making progress though. The repair to the rear damage is almost finished and I ordered a pair of original tail lights from England yesterday. Hope to finish painting the underbody in the next few weeks. I'll post an update in the Other British Cars forum soon.
 
We need to have an Okie meet up some time.
 
I was on my way to visit my brother in So.Cal. Stopped by Clovis AFB to see a school chum but he had just rotated to NKP, Thailand. I was driving my 63 Corvair. Great car.
 
Saw a really sweet Corvair convert yesterday at the grocery yesterday.
 
Bought a new 1962 Corvair Monza from a dealer in Portchester, NY. CT dealers reported a 5 or 6 month wait. I put heavy duty rear shocks from Sears on it and drove it for 70K miles without incident, including ski trips to Vermont. By 1970, I was married and the Corvair was gone - although my wife learned to drive a shift car on it. Years later, I bought a '63 convertible from Ossining, NY and towed it home on a rope - like my TR6. That's another story.
 
My first car was a '62 Monza 4 speed. Black with red interior. Would love to have it today.
 
First car was in 1966, when I graduated from high school. A 1955 Jaguar MkVII. If a Greyhound bus hit me, it would be the bus that was damaged.
 
My first car was a '62 Monza 4 speed. Black with red interior. Would love to have it today.

That was mine also. They were a hot seller. One friend of mine had to buy his from Pittsburgh. Portchester was/is a real dump town and I figured they wouldn't be selling much there and I was right. I called them on the phone and asked if they any Monza coupes in stock. "What color do you want". My salesman was Charlie Chopski. His wife played the organ at the Playland Ice Rink.
 
Corvair. Poor man's Porsche. A co-worker pal of dad's left the steel mill's lab for a physics professorship at Case-Western in the mid-sixties, began a family and his wife declared "no more racing" his XK-150. He got a Rambler as the family transporter and bought a new '66 Monza drop top. Immediately disassembled it in his basement and tweaked it to become a multi trophy winning drag racer. He'd convinced his wife that straight-line racing and parking lot autocross were "safe"! At the Thompson drags he was only beaten by Corvettes, then only by inches.

I'd forgotten about that until this post. He'd rebuilt the engine, stiffened the suspension. I recall he'd fitted a set of Weber down-drafts to it, ala Porsche 911. At age sixteen I was impressed.
 
Doc, that sounds impressive period. It's not every day that you hear of a Corvair that could run with Vettes.
 
He did and had an entire wall full of trophies to prove it. He was one of the old man's pals who was involved with design and construction of the first ultrasonic test equipment for NDT inspection of nuclear grade stainless tubing. Built their own search heads, had their "standards" certified. Admiral Rickover was a visitor once, to see the resultant testing procedure. Bunch of Babcock & Wilcox lab guys. My childhood was "interesting," as these fellas were my tutors growing up.
 
Don Yenko raced a modified Corvair and John Fitch used the Corvair as a basis for his own sports car the Fitch Phoenix. But I have to say they did have their problems besides the terminal oversteer. My 62 blew its oil sender, sending hot oil all over Woodbine Rd. By 1963, they moved the unit to a cooler location. Early examples threw the fanbelt. The heater/defroster was terrible. In really cold weather, you got ice on the inside of the windows and the heaters sent oil fumes into the cabin. I almost got blown into a ditch in Vermont when a strong gust of wind hit me from the side. Oil leaks were numerous, and worst of all, the engines/transmissions eventually fell out onto the road, bringing you to a immediate halt. Happened to me on Route 22 in NY State and my brother-in-law right here in town on Ogden Rd. I was in his car at the time. Seems the rear of the transaxle was hanging on one bolt and when the bolt broke, the entire assembly fell down onto the road. GM engineering at its finest. The second generation cars were much better supposedly but I know very little about them.
 
Fifty years ago on August 18, 1970 I was driving between Beallsville, Ohio and York Station, Ohio. First job as the only band instructor - spent two years as assistant. Eye opening - we were in Appalachia. Having grown up in the Cleveland area, the hills and attitude were quite a change. In the first three weeks we lived in the town we had driven to Wheeling WV, a forty-five minute drive, at least twice. Many of my students having lived in the town all their young lives had never left the town. The school was twelve miles from the Ohio River and one of the seniors said on her first trip to Wheeling, "So that's the Ohio River I've heard so much about." At the time we was driving a 1960 Austin Healy 3000 or a 100/6 depending on whether you read the horn button on the steering wheel or the sign on the boot lid.
 
Trevor Triumph said:
Fifty years ago on August 18, 1970 I was driving between Beallsville, Ohio and York Station, Ohio. First job as the only band instructor - spent two years as assistant. Eye opening - we were in Appalachia. Having grown up in the Cleveland area, the hills and attitude were quite a change. In the first three weeks we lived in the town we had driven to Wheeling WV, a forty-five minute drive, at least twice. Many of my students having lived in the town all their young lives had never left the town. The school was twelve miles from the Ohio River and one of the seniors said on her first trip to Wheeling, "So that's the Ohio River I've heard so much about." At the time we was driving a 1960 Austin Healy 3000 or a 100/6 depending on whether you read the horn button on the steering wheel or the sign on the boot lid.
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In June 1960 I ordered a new Healey directly from the UK, it was a 3000. Just sayin. :encouragement: PJ
 
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