Mike Jenks's splendid pictures of his dad's cars, shown in other recent threads in this subforum, prompted me to remember my own family's motoring experiences in the immediate post-war years.
It will be hard for younger forum members to visualise just how difficult it was to obtain new consumer goods in the years immediately after the war and how great was the unsatisfied demand. Everything seemed destined for export so that we would not starve and, with a bit of luck, not become any more bankrupt than we already were. This was particularly the case with new cars. Even if you could afford one - and it was a big "if" -- they were impossible to obtain. And anything newish that did appear on the secondhand market was sold at a huge premium over its original new selling price. There was a considerable racket: new cars seemed to get into the hands of those with a legitimate need such as doctors, the miraculously lucky and, particularly, those "in the know". Any individual purchaser had the opportunity, if he wished to take advantage of it, to cash in at any time and sell the vehicle at perhaps 50% more than he had paid for it. It was some time before new car buyers were forced to sign an undertaking whereby they would retain their car for a specified length of time. But no doubt there were always plenty of methods of getting around that.
In all those years my own father's frustration with this situation grew and grew. Your only options were to buy either a newish car at an outrageous price, or something as old as the one you had already got. The one way to buy something decent at a sensible price would have been to go for a new car - and you couldn't do that. His Ford Prefect, bought new in early 1940 in anticipation of petrol shortages and replacing a thirsty Ford V8, had served him well throughout the war years - he had an essential user's petrol allowance - but it was now exhausted, rusting away, down-at-heel and falling apart, a bit like the country as a whole. Somehow or other it still took us to Devon every year - eight or nine hour journeys, through the middle of every town - the luggage piled up on the open boot lid and covered with a khaki Home Guard groundsheet. It always got us back home, sometimes battered as in the year when a couple of girls in a tiny, early-1930s Austin Seven ran into the back of us in Newton Abbot, and one occasion without the middle of its three forward gears which had gone absent whilst we were at the furthest point from home. All the time, as the new models started to appear, like the Ford Pilot, the Morris Minor and the ultra-modern Standard Vanguard and Armstrong Siddeleys, we were increasingly overtaken by these desirable machines as we trundled along at our maximum cruising speed of about 40 m.p.h. It wasn't until 1952 that my father decided that he had to do something. And so, if he couldn't beat them, he joined them by pulling a few strings at Standard-Triumph to whom he supplied copper and brass. As a result he was permitted to hand over goodness knows how many months of salary in exchange for a new, grey Triumph Mayflower. This was a revelation: apart from its newness and its independent front suspension it actually had a radio AND a heater. The old Ford Prefect went on its way, various parts of its chassis moving independently of each other, but still worth to the dealer about £100, a depreciation of £50 over twelve years.
But my father's heart was always in big Fords. At around the time he took delivery of the Mayflower, Ford announced their new MkI Consuls and Zephyrs. He was in a main dealer's showroom in Birmingham at crack of dawn the very next day to put his name down for a Zephyr Six. He proudly reported back that he had been given the code Z2 which meant, he said, that he would be allocated the second available car. Nothing more was heard and some time later I was discussing with a friend at school the non-arrival of this car. My friend advised me that his father too had been given the same code by the same dealer. Clearly the "2" signified "yer average, dumb punter whom we can continue to treat like **** as we have done for the last six years" whilst the OTHER list, with no doubt a "1" in it, contained all the names of the deserving cases, almost certainly including mates in the trade. Gradually, though, the supply situation eased and in the middle of 1954 - nine years after the end of the war - my father took delivery of a new Zephyr which he had managed to obtain from Chambers in Sutton. Many weeks later the original dealer - from whom he had no doubt purchased his previous two Fords in the 1930s when his custom was more valuable to them - contacted him and graciously advised him that a car was now, after a two-year wait, available for him to buy. I sincerely hope that he told them where to stick it!
Below are the Ford Prefect (in spring 1943 or 1944 when only three or four years old, with your humble correspondent seated on the running board); the Triumph Mayflower (1952, new) and the Ford Zephyr (in Lincolnshire on my last day in the RAF, pictured with Danny, a fellow sufferer - Sept.1956).
Chris
It will be hard for younger forum members to visualise just how difficult it was to obtain new consumer goods in the years immediately after the war and how great was the unsatisfied demand. Everything seemed destined for export so that we would not starve and, with a bit of luck, not become any more bankrupt than we already were. This was particularly the case with new cars. Even if you could afford one - and it was a big "if" -- they were impossible to obtain. And anything newish that did appear on the secondhand market was sold at a huge premium over its original new selling price. There was a considerable racket: new cars seemed to get into the hands of those with a legitimate need such as doctors, the miraculously lucky and, particularly, those "in the know". Any individual purchaser had the opportunity, if he wished to take advantage of it, to cash in at any time and sell the vehicle at perhaps 50% more than he had paid for it. It was some time before new car buyers were forced to sign an undertaking whereby they would retain their car for a specified length of time. But no doubt there were always plenty of methods of getting around that.
In all those years my own father's frustration with this situation grew and grew. Your only options were to buy either a newish car at an outrageous price, or something as old as the one you had already got. The one way to buy something decent at a sensible price would have been to go for a new car - and you couldn't do that. His Ford Prefect, bought new in early 1940 in anticipation of petrol shortages and replacing a thirsty Ford V8, had served him well throughout the war years - he had an essential user's petrol allowance - but it was now exhausted, rusting away, down-at-heel and falling apart, a bit like the country as a whole. Somehow or other it still took us to Devon every year - eight or nine hour journeys, through the middle of every town - the luggage piled up on the open boot lid and covered with a khaki Home Guard groundsheet. It always got us back home, sometimes battered as in the year when a couple of girls in a tiny, early-1930s Austin Seven ran into the back of us in Newton Abbot, and one occasion without the middle of its three forward gears which had gone absent whilst we were at the furthest point from home. All the time, as the new models started to appear, like the Ford Pilot, the Morris Minor and the ultra-modern Standard Vanguard and Armstrong Siddeleys, we were increasingly overtaken by these desirable machines as we trundled along at our maximum cruising speed of about 40 m.p.h. It wasn't until 1952 that my father decided that he had to do something. And so, if he couldn't beat them, he joined them by pulling a few strings at Standard-Triumph to whom he supplied copper and brass. As a result he was permitted to hand over goodness knows how many months of salary in exchange for a new, grey Triumph Mayflower. This was a revelation: apart from its newness and its independent front suspension it actually had a radio AND a heater. The old Ford Prefect went on its way, various parts of its chassis moving independently of each other, but still worth to the dealer about £100, a depreciation of £50 over twelve years.
But my father's heart was always in big Fords. At around the time he took delivery of the Mayflower, Ford announced their new MkI Consuls and Zephyrs. He was in a main dealer's showroom in Birmingham at crack of dawn the very next day to put his name down for a Zephyr Six. He proudly reported back that he had been given the code Z2 which meant, he said, that he would be allocated the second available car. Nothing more was heard and some time later I was discussing with a friend at school the non-arrival of this car. My friend advised me that his father too had been given the same code by the same dealer. Clearly the "2" signified "yer average, dumb punter whom we can continue to treat like **** as we have done for the last six years" whilst the OTHER list, with no doubt a "1" in it, contained all the names of the deserving cases, almost certainly including mates in the trade. Gradually, though, the supply situation eased and in the middle of 1954 - nine years after the end of the war - my father took delivery of a new Zephyr which he had managed to obtain from Chambers in Sutton. Many weeks later the original dealer - from whom he had no doubt purchased his previous two Fords in the 1930s when his custom was more valuable to them - contacted him and graciously advised him that a car was now, after a two-year wait, available for him to buy. I sincerely hope that he told them where to stick it!
Below are the Ford Prefect (in spring 1943 or 1944 when only three or four years old, with your humble correspondent seated on the running board); the Triumph Mayflower (1952, new) and the Ford Zephyr (in Lincolnshire on my last day in the RAF, pictured with Danny, a fellow sufferer - Sept.1956).
Chris
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