The top picture here is of a 1952 Vauxhall Velox that I recently encountered at a local town show. It bought back memories for me because my father had one of these when I was a kid and his, too, was black. A few years before I could legally do so, he even let me once have a drive although decided this was a bad idea when I nearly put it through our neighbours hedge. He loved this car just like he loved all of his cars from his very first owned ’30s Wolseley Hornet convertible in which he courted my mother through to the Cavalier he cherished when he died.

Saturdays for him were often spent with his head under the bonnet, or lying underneath the thing, tools spread everywhere, tinkering with this or adjusting that. And Sundays, of course, they were off for a drive. His family were the first people to own a car in the village I grew up in and he was so used to the mechanical workings that he bemoaned the rise of electrical components and would have hated my computer controlled Audi. No – he would have loved to have driven it but hated the fact that he couldn’t repair it. Except, of course, it doesn’t really go wrong. A Sunday drive in the late ’50s often ended up counting the cars pulled up on the side of the road, bonnets up, refusing to go any further. How often do you see that now?

And that’s my problem. Because I have always had a hankering to get a ’40s or early ’50s Jaguar. Whenever I see one I just want to buy the thing. But then I remember my Dad and all the cars on the side of the road and I realise that I haven’t got a clue. I can usually manage to get the bonnet open and I can do the oil and water thing and the rest is just… lots of bits of odd shaped metal and pipes all joined together in some chaotic, mystic fashion. I know the names of some of the components as well – but I wouldn’t be able to identify or find them. So rather than having some motoring fun I play it safe and don’t remember the last time a car of mine actually broke down.

The Ford Consul is vintage 1962 (the last year this model was made). In 1959. my eldest brother worked as a test driver for Ford and took me in one of these up the M1 the day it opened. I was 8 years old and still remember being awestruck by this huge road that just went on and on and the speed that we ate up the miles.

They might not be real vintage – but it was fun to see them both again.