It looks like an Austin 7. I had one way back about 1959. I shared it with my flatmate who I later travelled the world with. We called it “Fred Trundle”  . When we got it, it used to smoke a lot and needed new piston rings. It was in the era of short supply of all sorts of things caused by import restrictions. I worked for a photographic company and managed to swap flashbulbs for piston rings with a guy from a garage whose sister was getting married! We had no garage so we took out the engine and the two of us carried it inside and put it on the kitchen table to work on it!

Much later we went hunting, 200 miles away and “Fred” was our transport. We got two deer and put one over the bonnet and one over the roof. As we drove back from Lake Waikaremoana (thats so you can google it!) there were some steep hills. On some of these whoever was passenger had to jump out so “Fred” could stagger up the steep bits!

Below is the highly trained pit crew of the 'Fershluggener-Austin' team, who once  changed a wheel in  less than 2 hours and 41 minutes!

Ciderman said:

Below is the highly trained pit crew of the 'Fershluggener-Austin' team, who once  changed a wheel in  less than 2 hours and 41 minutes!

Love the photograph Ciderman. How does it make you feel to see that again after all these years?

Post edited 12:35 pm – 13th May 10 by Admin

It doesn’t sound at all familiar, if it did, I would not feel compelled to be nosey and ask how you came to be living on a small island in Bermuda with Johnny Weissmuller's stunt double?

Dad was inthe RN and applied for any overseas posting going. He left for Bermuda, via Halifax and New York and my mother and I followed about 3 months later on a returning lend lease aircraft carrier called HMS Ranee.

We had two years in Bermuda, dad was stationed at HMS Malabar (a 'stone frigate') and we lived at, as far as I can remember , at 3 places. The first was a regular house in Somerset called “Cartref”, then we had time on Blucks Island , where I didn't go to school , mom taught me. Consequently I got quite good at French, English,Geography and history but lousy at maths and science. Then we had a stint as kind of custodians for a hotel called the Summerside, which was for sale with no guests but prospective buyers. Mom was a very good cook and she would do the catering.

While we were at 'Cartref', I went to a naval school at Malabar. There were little kids, big kids and semi-literate matelots. The whole thing was run by a 'schooly' Commander and he lived near us and went to school on the little tiny bus that picked us up. While we waited for the bus, sometimes big black rainclouds would form and a torrential downpour would last for 30 seconds or a minute. Whenever this happened Cdr Thingamy would hold out a cigarette tin (those round ones that hold 50 duty free) collect some rainwater then top it up from a hipflask. You can guess how good our education was!!

My dad was digustingly fit! He played cricket and soccer for the RN and before the war , when he was a London Met copper he toured Europe playing for them against police teams. He was also one of the nicest blokes I've ever met. In the navy his 'troops' always loved him and we've got engraved silver pencils, carved anchor book ends etc that they always gave him when he moved to another station.

Sad really he died in 1970 at only 55 years of age.