HARRY PEARSON
THE BIG TEES
While elsewhere in this issue we consider the advantages of an Audi, Porsche and
Lamborghini, Harry Pearson recalls the days when motoring wasn’t always done in style
Car crash
O
motoring fashions
ne sunny Sunday morning in the
summer of 1970, a Porsche 911 in a
dazzling shade of lime green turned
up in Great Ayton. The couple who were
riding in it parked outside the Royal Oak
and went inside for lunch.
By the time they came out again, it seemed
just about the whole village had come to
gawp at this remarkable German sports car.
Some had even surreptitiously touched
it, as if it was some saintly relic, and would
cure skin ailments or cause hair to sprout on
balding heads.
All of us stared at it with awe-struck
wonder – as if at some alien visitor from a
distant planet. To see such manifestations
of curvaceous Teutonic sexiness in North
Yorkshire in those days was an extraordinary
event, almost as much of a surprise as if
Ursula Andress had emerged from the Leven
opposite Suggitts wearing a white bikini.
Nowadays you see such cars all the time,
but back then there was still a festive sense of
novelty about prestige motors – they were a
thing you glimpsed only in adverts, or in the
pages of the catalogues for Matchbox, Corgi
or Dinky toys.
The sight of a real Volvo P1800 or Aston
Martin DBS created as much excitement as
the appearance of the man who drove them
on our TV screens (Roger Moore in The
Saint and The Persuaders) gunning down a
villain might have done.
After our family’s Saturday morning
shopping trips to Middlesbrough, my father
would often take a diversion on the drive
home, just to see the electric blue Lotus
Europa twin-cam special – as sleek and
swinging as George Best in a polo neck
dancing with Pan's People – that was usually
parked outside a council house in Brambles
Farm.
If it wasn’t there, we’d feel a genuine sense
of anti-climax – like those moments when
I can’t forget
A Porsche 911 has always been able to cause a
stir, as opposed to the “clunk y” Austin Princess.
the telly went on the blink just as the theme
tune for Shoot! had started.
My father loved sports cars and could tell
you all about them, but he never owned one.
He worked for British Steel. British Steel’s
biggest customer was the British motor
industry. My father had a works car and the
car always had to be British.
Back in the 1960s that wasn’t so bad. We
had a Riley 1.5 that, with a following wind
and a bit of ‘shunting’ from its passengers,
could freewheel almost all the way from the
car park by Captain Cook’s monument to
Worthy Pearson’s newsagents.
Later, we had a Morris Oxford – built like
a tank and fitted with the sort of button-
backed leather seats that wouldn’t have
been out of place in a gentlemen’s club, and
a rear-engined Hillman Imp that would
do impressive rally-style skids whenever it
snowed.
The trouble set in when we hit the
seventies and Dad came home one evening
in a brand new Austin Maxi. The problem
wasn’t so much the car as its colour scheme.
Nowadays, motors come in a pretty dull
selection of colours, but in those days the
spirit of psychedelia still ruled the design
departments (my mum had a Vauxhall Viva
in kingfisher blue with a burnt orange stripe
down the side).
Dad’s new Austin Maxi was roomy and
comfortable and even – wow! – had a radio.
The trouble was the paintwork was harvest
gold while the seats were grass green vinyl.
It was like driving round in a puddle of dog
vomit.
But at least the Maxi worked. Sadly, the
same could not be said of the impressively
wedge-shaped Austin Princess (burgundy
with a matt vinyl roof) which grated and
clunked around, making a noise like a fistfull
of loose change dropped in a blender.
In the film The Full Monty one of the
characters attempts to commit suicide in an
Austin Princess. There wasn’t much suspense
in the scene for me – I knew from bitter
experience the engine would cut out.
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