A brief history of the cars of my life Part 4

​By Jim Lodder

How Jim Expected and wished his Maxi looked like.

The Maxi was very reliable, but not exactly exciting apart from the morning that I pulled into the coal yard at Aberystwyth railway station. ( I went there early every morning to collect the newspapers for the shop ) The front nearside wheel came off and rolled down the yard in front of me! I'd had a puncture the previous day and forgot to tighten the wheel nuts after I lowered the jack. Fortunately I managed to find the errant wheel nuts and fix the wheel back on, properly this time.

As the Maxi started to develop rust patches, one of the downsides of living right by the sea, I decided to smarten it up with a change of colour as well. I bought a product called “Repaint” which claimed that despite being a brush on product the finish was as good as a respray. Oh the gullibility of youth!

I managed to get the use of a large brick building on the caravan site that was used as a workshop during the week, but I could only have it from Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon. So drove it in Saturday morning, cleaned it, rubbed it down, repaired the rust (bodged would probably be a better description) masked up the glass edges, degreased it and set about applying the Repaint primer coat, which was white, with a large paint brush. Finally finished late evening, locked it up, and adjourned to the pub. I returned on Sunday morning ready to apply the nice bright red top coat (the Maxi was previously a mustard yellow colour) and set off full of confidence with my big paintbrush, the same one I’d used the previous day for the primer. However as I put more and more top coat on it became increasingly obvious that the primer wasn’t completely dry. No doubt I’d put too thick a layer on, and my lovely shiny red colour was slowly turning a very streaky pink! And that’s how it stayed for the next 3 years until it too was scrapped.

The Maxi was replaced with a dark green Mk2 Ford Cortina that came along courtesy of my first wife. I never really got along with that one (the car, not the wife, although she would become ex wife just 7 years later!) I could never get the Cortina to run satisfactorily and was getting mpg in the low teens at best, so quite quickly “moved it on” as they say and bought my second Triumph Herald, this time a dark blue saloon with mandatory white side stripe.

oh Look!a stock photo, in case you forgot what a Herald looks like.

 I managed to run the Herald on a shoestring as we had no money to spare and a baby on the way. My newly acquired father in law took pity on his poor daughter and was so concerned about his future grandchild travelling in “that old banger” (he had no taste) that he bought us a “proper car”. However it was a Johnny Foreigner so must remain unidentified here. We went through a few JFs over the next years, apart from a green Hillman Hunter GLS (nice car) and a hand painted blue Mini Van, so there must be a gap in this blog until, post-divorce, I moved on to the Rover P6 3500 V8, via a brief foray with a Triumph Toledo.

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