`65th BIRTHDAY
► In answer to your request in your April 2023 Editorial and CMs 65th Birthday, I think it was 1960 when I bought my first copy of CM as I was getting interested in working on cars at 13. For some years I had been helping Dad to check his car over. No oil level, tyre pressure or bulb out systems in those days!
My first car was a 1957 Standard 10 bought for £20 from a local garage in 1965. After a short while the engine started to get noisy (piston slap due to me thrashing it to get all the 33 horse power working). I bought a replacement from my local scrapyard which had increased compression giving an extra 3hp – more than enough to pull the skin off a rice pudding. A few weeks later, when getting out of it, I put my foot through the floor. A quick job for David’s Isopon and fibreglass matting. What the eye doesn’t see, etc.
Six months after buying it, I traded it in to the same garage and got £30 for it and bought a 1958 F-series Vauxhall Victor. Now that was a car that needed body filler. You could almost see the rust coming through the paint! Keep up the good work. Peter Richardson
Just read your Editorial (CM, April 2023). I was two years old when Car Mechanics first
