About the Author

Julian has worked as a Motorcycle Development Test Rider since

1996 and has also contributed as a writer and photographer to
motorcycle magazines in the UK, Australia and Portugal. He has
travelled more than one million miles on motorcycles and visited 27
different countries whilst doing so.
He is also a student of archaeology, a musician, a keeper of pet goats
and a lover of dogs.

For Dad
Arthur William Amos

Julian Amos

TEST RIDER:
THE TRUE MOTORCYCLING
ADVENTURES OF A SECRET
DEVELOPMENT TEST RIDER

Copyright Julian Amos (2015)

The right of Julian Amos to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for
damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 9781784559069 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781784559076 (Hardback)

www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ

Motorcycle illustration by Susan Franks

Printed and bound in Great Britain

8

Acknowledgments

If it wasnt for my father, Arthur Amos, Id never have discovered the

real joy of motorcycles or learned about the wonderful art of home
mechanics though Im still not very good at it not to mention my
interest in unusual and mostly unloved odd vehicles. Who else could
have owned such an eccentric collection of motors that included,
amongst others, a four seat kick-started BSA three wheeler, a two
stroke three cylinder four door Wartburg (pre-mix!), a plastic 850cc
Reliant Robin three wheeler and a Daf 33 Variomatic driven by
elastic bands? Fantastic!
If it wasnt for my uncle, Ken (Eugene) Austin, I perhaps wouldnt
have had such an interest in world travel or a taste for the better things
in life. If ever there was a dead-ringer for Roger Moore, it was him. I
also have my uncle to thank for instilling my passion for fine
motorcars and motorcycles that matches my love and enthusiasm for
the odd ones.
If it wasnt for Nick Wilson Id never have become a test rider or had
anything to write about.
If it wasnt for Alan Cathcart and his enthusiastic encouragement, I
would never have plucked up either the courage or the audacity to
write this book.
If it wasnt for my two original proofreaders; my mother, Yvonne
Amos-Caller, who is far more used to tales from the likes of Agatha
Christie or Colin Dexter than stories about motorbikes, and my other
proofer Pete Long who appears fleetingly amongst these pages and
is one of my oldest friends, then there would have been far more
mistakes within these covers.
If it wasnt for the generous help of my old Triumph friends and excolleagues, Paul Bowden and Julie Baker who also appear in this
book then the original short Kindle version would never have
materialized in the first place.
If it wasnt for my long-suffering girlfriend, Susie, who spent many
months looking after our large family of four-legged furry-faced
critters all on her own while I sat on my backside and wrote and wrote
and wrote, then this book would never have got finished.
Thanks to you all.
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10

Foreword
Despite trying hard on occasions to look it, Ive rarely been
sensible. Whilst my contemporaries have been getting married,
having children and settling into respectable jobs with good
prospects, Ive been getting on with the things I enjoyed when I was
a kid, riding motorbikes and playing a guitar.
Occasionally my complacency was spoilt by having to get real
jobs in order to pay bills and eventually even (gasp) a mortgage of
my own, but I always seem to have just about clung on to the life
less-ordinary that I hoped for as a youngster.
All this became somewhat easier when I landed a job where I
was actually paid to ride motorcycles. Not just that, but paid quite
well too. Whod have thought it possible? It did mean that
sometimes Id have to do things on a bike that required the odd risk
odd usually being the word but as Id grown up reading exciting
adventure books, the feeling I was taking a bit of a risk every now
and then just added to the excitement of doing something a bit out
of the ordinary.
This isnt a book about how to become a test rider, but instead it
tells how I almost accidentally became a test rider for what is
probably Englands most famous motorcycle manufacturer, and of
the many strange situations Ive found myself involved in as a
result. As such, I suppose it is about as close as you are going to get
to a book about how to be a Test Rider, and, particularly, what you
might expect. But I hope youll find the stories a bit more human
than that. After all, however professional people try to make
themselves appear, I love the way the human element often quickly
engages to make things go ever-more pear-shaped...
Amongst these motorbike stories youll also find some of the
other things Ive been getting up to in the background whilst Ive
1

been working as a test rider. Music and cars are two of my other
favourite pastimes and have always gone hand in hand with bikes.
Youll find some of my best friends in these pages too, which, as
Im an Englishman, does of course include dogs. Every one of my
adopted kids happens to have four legs and comprise of not just of
the aforementioned dogs, but also goats and sheep, and the story of
how this rather unusual situation occurred at the end of what
seemed like a normal day twenty years ago, is told as a warning to
you all!
Even though Im now privileged and lucky enough to be paid to
ride the very latest, fastest and most advanced motorcycles in the
world for a living, I must admit to being a bit of a dinosaur in my
outlook on modern day life. I dont have much regard for ultramodern technology, fast-paced living and keeping up with fashions
and fads and the like. Its been suggested by my colleagues that Ive
become a silly old duffer before my time and they may have a
point, but at least Im a silly old duffer whos done a bit and its
that bit that I hope youll enjoy sharing with me by reading this
effort of mine, that blows the lid off the little-known and secretive
world of motorcycle development test-riding, and attempts to put
into words for (as far as Im aware) the first time ever, what its
really like to be a factory Test Rider.

When I Grow Up
The whole machine was alive with an electrical-like buzz, as the
massive buffeting turbulence and vibration shook my head around
on my shoulders as if I were an Action Man doll. The sliced air
stream rushing around my taped-down visor drowned out the
tormented mechanical howl of the screaming engine and I glanced
down for a split second to try and focus on the rev counter. The
throttle was pinned to the stop. My left toe had taken the weight of
the gear lever and a little more pressure beyond, and just at the
moment that the needle reached the red, I flicked the throttle off a
few degrees and then straight back to the stop. In that instant I felt
my toe take the gear from fifth to sixth in a tidy, seamless, clutchless change. Momentarily the machine seemed to hold a constant
speed and then very slowly began accelerating again. I was deadcentre of the main straight at Bruntingthorpe Airfield and Test
Track, almost at the half-way point where you reach a small rise
that, once passed, suddenly presents the rest of the main straight to
you, looking like a long unfurled grey ribbon. In the heat of the day
a mirage would appear with a row of shimmering red and white
cones seemingly only a few seconds away when travelling at high
speed. These cones showed the right hand turn into the bottom
hairpin that was actually another mile away. This strange quirk of
nature often made me flinch from my concentration as I came over
the rise before my brain caught up with the illusion. At this half way
point there is an adjoining piece of track on the right, linking a
return loop of the circuit, and it was here that the company truck
would be parked, giving the attending mechanic a good view of
almost the entire circuit. Out of the corner of my eye I caught sight
of the mechanic who had been sent with me. J.P. was no longer
relaxing on the plastic chair where Id left him half an hour
3

previously. He was on the edge of the circuit, waving both arms

madly above his head. Something was wrong. My mind sped
through possible reasons for his panic. Glancing around the small
cockpit I attempted to read the instruments; oil pressure, oil
temperature, water temperature, RPM. I tried to make out the image
behind me from the vibrating blur of silver where the mirrors
usually were, to check for smoke. Then just as I came over the rise I
realised what the fuss was about. Two gigantic glaring lights were
approaching me head-on about a hundred feet away, travelling at a
good rate of knots about twenty feet off the ground, and dropping
fast. It was a light twin-engine aircraft coming in to land, and we
were seconds away from collision!
The well-known saying about having your life flash before you
at a moment like this might well be true. I usually find though, that
if I have a few seconds of drama whilst riding, I prefer to spend
them trying to save the situation. My reflexes have not often let me
down and Ive managed on many occasions to gather a motorcycle
back under control from ridiculously precarious situations where it
seems all must be lost. Only when everything happens in an instant
have I found myself sliding along the floor hoping Im not going to
hit anything hard. An aeroplane is quite hard...
I suppose as a schoolboy, amongst the impossible careers you
imagine for yourself when you grow up, being a motorcycle test
rider might nowadays be a bit out of fashion. It featured pretty high
on my list though, amongst the other old favourites; pilot, racing
driver, explorer, secret agent and if being Brett Sinclaire from
The Persuaders was a career, then Id quite like to be him too.
Strangely though, despite idolising Barry Sheene, I never wanted to
race motorbikes. Id have loved the chance to be a racing driver, but
with bikes, I only ever wanted to be a test rider. That was probably
something to do with my choice of motorcycle books as a kid. They
were always about the history of the manufacturers and how the
machines they created were developed, so I could have wound up a
design engineer I suppose, but that wasnt heroic enough for my
schoolboy mind to find exciting. One thing was for sure though
Id never read anything in my collection of old books about testriding leading to this kind of thing...
Our garage at home was an interesting place. Dad had always
ridden motorcycles and there was always something with two
wheels that needed cleaning or fixing. During the time my two
4

sisters and I had been around though, hed had to be content with
owning fairly small capacity machines to commute to work on. We
were not a well-off family, and a cheap-to-run bike to get to and
from work was as much a necessity as a pleasure, but even so, these
were very exciting to me, and started a lifelong interest in
motorbikes, as each one, however small the capacity and value, was
treated as a very special object of desire. Amongst them was a
rather rare gold-coloured CZ 175 in semi-trail bike trim that had a
strange clubby gear lever that doubled-up as a kick start. I
remember dad swapping the original carburettor on this bike for a
British made Amal, the factory of which was just our side of
Birmingham, and so was handy for rebuilds and spares. I was
delighted to find that the arrival of this new carb also required the
addition of an extra chrome lever on the handlebars that worked the
choke. Exciting stuff for little fingers! Then there was a red Honda
CD175 twin that had very deep shapely mudguards and a fully
enclosed chain case. I remember this bike as being quite a squat and
bulky machine for such a tiddler. A Suzuki 120 two stroke single
arrived one day as a long term loan bike, from a dealer whod had
one of dads Hondas back for some extensive work under warranty.
For some reason I found this bike fascinating. I may have been
particularly keen because it was the first bike hed had that I could
sit on, touch the ground, and hold up under my own steam. It was
quite an unusual design too that interested me a bit odd looking
with a pressed steel frame that the engine was bolted to from the
rear of the engine cases, with no other engine mounts or front down
tube whatsoever which allowed the engine to just sit out as if
floating in the unobstructed air flow. This was the first bike Id
seen with a pressed steel frame rather than the more usual tubular
frame, which although hardly a new development, (itd been around
for decades), I thought was quite clever. His very last bike was a
blue Honda Benley CD200 four stroke twin, that hed often pick
me up from school on. This one had been bought from Devimead
the Honda dealer and BSA specialist whose tiny showroom was
half-way up Wilnecote hill on the A5 near Tamworth, just a mile or
so from our house. This little Honda was only a year old when he
bought it in 1980 and was the newest and shiniest bike hed owned
since the 1950s. I cant imagine any machine that was more
mollycoddled than this one. Every weekend the bike would get
stripped down for a thorough clean, the hot engine getting
thoroughly covered with Gunk from a small tin and stiff thick5

bristled brush kept especially for the job, while the tank and side
panels waited, sitting on the grass lawn, for their coat of wax. The
smell of that hot Gunk has always stayed with me and is as firmly
embedded in my memory in connection with sunny days and
motorcycles, as is the smell of Castrol R. During winter the little
bike was still worked hard on the daily fifty mile commute, and to
help it survive, the frame and all chrome, including the wire wheels,
were liberally coated in Waxoil, which would stay in place until
spring time. The bike looked a right old nail during this period to be
honest, especially the wheels, and I couldnt wait to help get the
bike cleaned up again in spring time, when it would get an even
more thorough strip down and clean, leaving the sparkly blue and
chrome machine looking better than new.
Many Saturday mornings in the 1970s and early 80s were spent
riding out on the pillion with Dad to visit the bike shops along
Stratford Road in Birmingham. There were many to wander around
in the old days, gathered in this one area of the city. You could
spend all day criss-crossing the street to take a look in-turn at each
of the old and tall time-weathered Victorian buildings that were
now the homes of small motorcycle shops or spares suppliers at the
street level. My very favourite of all of these bike shops though,
was Vale-Onslows. The ancient showroom was always packed
with obscure old machinery and smelt of oil and petrol and fusty
pre-war excitement. The creaky oil-stained wooden floor boards
were well trodden from more than a hundred years of use, and were
covered here and there with worn patterned linoleum, and even this
must have been over half a century old. Light flooded in through the
huge plate-glass display windows that were still of their splendid
and elaborate Victorian vintage, and the ceilings and doorways still
attempted to impress with their ornate carved decoration a carryover from an earlier and more genteel age, and amongst this time
capsule of mingled earlier eras, I can just about remember a young
boy about my own age that was the grandson of the shop owner. He
was a chubby little kid that made a lot of noise as he clambered over
all the bikes and charged around the place jumping off things,
seemingly with no sense of any potential danger. The shop itself
was owned by Len Vale-Onslow, who in the 1920s and 30s had
raced his own machines which he called The Super Onslow Special,
or, as it said on the petrol tank, simply, SOS. I suppose it was
unusual for a schoolboy to be up to speed with the history of Len

and his SOS, but I was. I knew all about his unusual Villiers based
water-cooled two stroke engines, and the fact that he was the first
person to design and fabricate high-level exhausts.
I knew all about Len and SOS because of a strange twist of fate
that ultimately had a great bearing on my future and perhaps was
the fundamental grounding that inspired me to try and become a test
rider many years later. During that period my uncle and auntie had
been living in Nigeria, having moved there with my uncles job. He
held a lofty position with Dunlop, and a few years before had been
involved in the development of Dunlops latest World Beater
Tyres. As a rather expensive promotional gimmick, the company
fitted a set of these new tyres to a car and had them driven twice
around the world without being replaced. The chap that drove the
car was my uncle, Ken Austin and my Auntie Irene went along too.
The vehicle chosen for the trip was a rather nice metallic brown
Hillman Hunter Estate, and he brought it over for us to see before
setting off. This was followed by months of postcards and letters
from exotic locations from all around the world which, in my young
enquiring mind, began a wanderlust that never left me. My uncle
was also a motorcycle enthusiast. Hed owned a Rudge, a couple of
Matchless and three Ariel Square Fours amongst others. Later on,
in his new job out in Africa, he couldnt get hold of his favourite
magazine, Classic Bike, so asked my mom and dad to buy it for
him and keep the copies to be collected when he made the trip home
once or twice a year. This suddenly gave me access to reading
material I would never have dreamed of looking at previously, and I
became fascinated by these old bikes and their manufacturers, many
of which were long gone before I was born, so I suppose thats what
started off my interest in motorcycle development. My favourite
contributors to the magazine were Alan Cathcart and Dave Minton
and I eagerly awaited each months edition to read about their test
riding exploits on the many vintage and classic machines. This
fuelled my interest even more, from the descriptions of the handling
and ability of the bikes and I took things further by searching
everywhere I could think of to find old books and magazines the
older the better, such as the period British magazines, popularly
known as, The Blue Un and The Green Un, (The Motorcycle,
and Motorcycling), which filled my own motorcycling vocabulary
with words and phrases Ive been stuck with using ever since; I
prefer to use the term, motorcycle or machine. Also, the

machine has a saddle, definitely not a seat, and most

importantly I am a motorcyclist and never a biker!
At about the age of twelve, it seemed that my friends and I were
all suddenly developing an even greater interest in motorcycles at
the same time, especially where dirt bikes were concerned. Two
brothers who were school mates of mine had talked their parents
into buying them a field bike to play with on the bit of rough ground
around a big lake at the end of our road. At the time, none of us had
any idea what the strange little 80cc Suzuki had been originally, but
it was a cool-looking little dirt bike now that fired our imaginations.
Years later I found out that far from being a home-built field bike,
this little Suzuki was in fact an almost completely standard and
incredibly rare K11t Suzukis first ever off road trail bike from
1963, and perhaps the very last one in existence in Britain even
then.
A few months later the older brother left school and started an
apprenticeship that enabled him to buy a brand-new air-cooled
Yamaha DT175 which was (and strangely still is) one of the most
exciting things Id ever seen. This became his daily transport and
their new dirt toy at weekends and they offered to let me have their
old Suzuki for just 15 if I wanted it. Easter was just around the
corner and I managed to talk my parents into buying me the little
machine for an Easter present instead of chocolate. It still amazes
me to this day that I was allowed to have it!
Soon after, I remember sitting astride my new pride and joy in
my school uniform and dirty shoes, with no helmet or gloves, and
Dad standing alongside me explaining how things worked. I pulled
the clutch lever to the bar and Dad stomped the gear lever into first,
I engaged the clutch, gave her a bit of throttle and spun the rear
wheel up with a cloud of dirt. I was off.

The World s a Stage

The year 1982 brought my sixteenth birthday and I was able to buy
my first 50cc road bike. A moped known as a Honda Express was
purchased from a neighbour for 100 and suddenly my world
opened up. I thought the little machine would go faster if I took the
basket off the handlebars and this also improved the looks and
aerodynamics considerably. I also found that whilst riding down the
local Polesworth Hill at full-chat, I could back off the throttle very
slightly and starve the engine of fuel, thus making the engine race.
Sometimes I could get as much as 31 or 32mph! Of course, what I
would have liked to have owned at this time was the dream of every
sixteen year old bike nut of the period either a Honda SS50, or,
better still, a Yamaha FS1E. These bikes had to have pedals to be
legally recognised as a moped (which was part of the strange
learner laws in the UK at the time), but these pedals folded up out
of the way and so the whole thing looked like a real motorbike.
Around school, legend had it that in the right hands an FS1E was
capable of maybe 45, or even 50mph, especially with some special
tuning mods to the silencer and carb, but unfortunately I was never
to find out if my hands were the right hands, and I remember being
able to keep up with one on my Honda Express one day, so perhaps
I would have been a bit disappointed after all
Id had a couple of off-road dirt bikes by this time including an
MZ TS250 that I rebuilt from boxes of bits to create my own ISDT
lookalike. I was too young to ride these on the road though, so a
moped it was, until the following year when at the age of seventeen,
I was allowed by law to ride a 125cc, 12hp machine. Id developed
quite a soft spot for East German MZs after my TS rebuild, and as it
happened, a brand new MZ TS125 could be bought at Devimeads
new huge showroom half a mile further down the road from the
9

old one for just 399. That was for the deluxe version too, which
they called the Alpine, which had such luxuries as chrome panels
fitted to the sides of the petrol tank! I bought the best one theyd got
in the shop on the never-never at 18 a month, which included a
bright blue waterproof one piece over-suit, a red crash helmet which
I think was made by a company called Laser, and a pair of rubber
Derry boots. I must have looked quite a catch you can imagine
A174 XOC was an Alpine version in silver. How I loved that bike. I
went everywhere on it, even camping in Wales. My mates thought I
was mad as theyd all managed to raise the money to buy Japanese
125s, but these were out of the reach of my pocket at more than
three times the price and so I consoled myself in the knowledge that
I knew of MZs fantastic racing heritage, although this fell on deaf
ears where my mates were concerned. They laughed a lot when I
told them that Suzukis racing two-stroke technology had all come
from MZ...
The only thing I loved as much as my bike was my Fender
Telecaster. Id been playing guitar in bands since I was fourteen and
by the time Id got my new MZ at seventeen, my band at the time
Sitting Pretty, had just released a single (remember those round
vinyl things?) and were doing pretty well. We were often featured
in the local press and had a large following of teenage-girls (the
screaming schoolgirl variety) in our home town. Wed also been
promised a feature as an up-and-coming group in the well-known
girly teenager magazine, Just 17. For this reason Id decided not to
follow my dads footsteps into the RAF, even though Id been keen
on this direction for years. I thought dad would be upset about this,
but it turned out he was quite chuffed that when we walked around
town together Id sometimes get asked for autographs. I can see his
face now beaming! He even went on tour with one of my bands
one summer, driving one of the two van loads of equipment along
the south coast of the UK and around the Isle of Wight for us. I was
anxious not to tie myself up in something that I couldnt get out of
when the inevitable offer arrived from a record company, and for
this reason, as well as deciding against an RAF career Id also
decided not to bother applying to Art College either, which was
another option Id been considering when I left school. I did,
however, land a job designing logos, lettering and artwork with a
small company in town a position Id attained using my school art
folder to impress and was the sort of job I might have been offered

10

if I had gone to art school. This, rightly or wrongly, made me feel

like Id saved myself three years of college an eternity when
youre that age. Later on, I got interested in photography too, and
trained with a wedding photographer briefly, before settling on
portraiture as a favourite subject. Ive continued with this on and off
over many years since as a side-line to earn a bit of extra cash
whenever I was desperate, even shooting the odd wedding every
now and then, though photographing weddings as lucrative as this
was was never really an arty enough occupation for me to want
to take it up full-time.
As the 1980s went on, nothing in life much mattered except
guitars (mainly vintage ones), motorcycles, (also mainly vintage
and classic ones), my bands (up to the minute, and as far as I was
concerned, the best thing youd have ever heard), and, my latest
passion, cars. This latest obsession with motorcars was the start of
another life-long affair that over the years has bought much joy,
despite occasionally causing desperation during breakdowns,
especially through the very many years of cash-strapped struggling.
But this desperation and lack of funds almost went hand in hand, as
it meant I gained a few mechanical skills and an ability to sniffout cheap spares...
Dad started teaching me to drive from about the age of fifteen in
our family car at that time, a yellow Ford Capri 1600XL of 1972
vintage. By the time I got my provisional licence to enable the
purchase of my Honda Express at that magical age of sixteen, I was
driving that Capri with L plates fitted every time we went out as a
family, including all the way to our caravan in Tywyn near
Aberdovey in Mid Wales. Also, as it happened, my best friend at
the time, a chap called Pete Long, who was also the bass player in
Sitting Pretty, had already passed his driving test. This meant that I
could drive our family car if he sat in the passenger seat at the same
time as long as I kept L plates on the car. I lose track of how many
gigs we travelled to like this, when we werent travelling in one of
his own old Morris Marinas. He liked Marinas for some reason (if
you dont already know, bass players are always a bit odd!), and
had three or four of them over the space of a couple of years in
those sunny and colourful days during the mid-1980s. This meant
though, that just before I reached seventeen I was able to apply for
my driving test, and just a couple of weeks after reaching that
minimum UK driving age, I took and passed my test at the first
11

attempt. This was quickly followed by the excitement of buying my

very own car. This car, though, should have given me a clue as to
my destiny with regard to personal taste in practically all my
motorcars from this point on that I was destined to follow dreams
rather than sensibilities! On a trip out to visit my Nan in
Birmingham, we drove past a used car dealer where I spotted a little
red two seat sports car that made my heart skip a beat as we went
by. I left mom and dad at my Nans house and went back to have a
closer look. It was a 1969 Tartan red MG Midget Mk3. The sills
had rotted through on both sides, the carpet was thread bare, the
floor pan which was clearly visible through the holes in the carpet
was crumbling rust and directly below the foot-peddles was a hole
in that floor pan that you could have passed a rugby ball through.
The stitching was coming apart on the leather seats, which, along
with the leather rim steering wheel were turning powdery white
with mould and a sign in the windscreen stated in bold letters,
SOLD AS SEEN. It was love at first sight. Looking back now,
that little MG was a recipe for disaster, and indeed, in the end it
certainly was, but it taught me an awful lot about car mechanics. To
this day Im still enthralled by MGs, and Midgets of all eras
especially, despite the fact that Im of rather larger stature than I
was back then... The Mk3 of 66-74 used the famous and longlived A Series 1275cc engine from Austin. This push-rod, overhead
valve engine was the same as the one fitted to the legendary Mini
Cooper S, including the sporty twin carb set up, but was slightly
detuned from the Cooper S spec. This leaves plenty of scope for the
keen home-tuner to do some fettling in that true MG fashion. The
wonderful thing about MGs for me is that despite their fantastic
racing heritage and pedigree that mixes-it with names such as
Goldie Gardener and George Eyston, they remained so
unpretentious. It was the sports car for the working man if you
like, or perhaps, like the Mini, it was a classless motorcar, loved
by the wealthy and the hard-up alike and considered a national
treasure by a good deal of car enthusiasts in the Britain that existed
in the mid twentieth century. Certainly, for me, as the years have
gone by, and Ive found myself a member of various exotic car
clubs where I didnt mix comfortably with the other owners (as
opposed to enthusiasts) this appeal has just become more attractive,
and as a result there have been several more MGs through my hands
in the last twenty years. If you can excuse me reminiscing about
four-wheeled vehicles for a little while longer, that first drive home
12

in this car was a life changing experience. The dealer insisted on

one of his mechanics driving because the car was on the garages
trade plates, but I accompanied in the passenger seat. Ill never
forget the B road from Kingsbury to Tamworth that was taken flat
out, as I peered over the drivers left arm to try and take a look at the
speedometer, which hovered backwards and forwards shakily
around the 100mph mark. After the sharp S bend through the
railway tunnel at the village of Piccadilly, the throttle was pinned
once more to the floor or where the floor used to be and the little
MG twisted and twitched its rear end as it scurried onto the straight,
the steering wheel quickly writhing left and right in the drivers
hands in small corrections. Flat out in second all the way to the red
line, flat out in third to the red line, into fourth foot flat on the
floor again. The engine screamed and the hood flapped madly
against the hood frame. Wind noise howled past the thick
aluminium screen pillars and the little twin S.U carbs gasped for air
noisily their mouths wide open like hungry chicks. If this was all
happening now Id probably be furious at the bloke for driving my
new car like that, but at that time, and at that age it was terrific. I
suppose it was just as well though, as the introduction to old sports
cars and MGs especially, perhaps couldnt have been more inkeeping or inspiring for a seventeen year old. As for that famous
MG slogan though; Safety Fast I doubt it!
A few months later a 1972 Ford Cortina Estate (in a shade of
brown that was very out of fashion at that time, but would look
good again today) was bought, as it was obvious my MG was going
to take quite a good deal of work before the dreaded MOT was
booked. This car cost me 250 which was 100 less than Id paid
for my rusting MG. The car was particularly useful though for
carrying my amplifiers around to gigs and rehearsals, and for a long
time my huge Vox amplifier became an almost permanent feature of
the boot where it was left at all other times due to its size and
weight. After sliding this Cortina into the back of another car at
some traffic lights in heavy rain and writing it off, (I was 17
remember!), I found a rare 1300 Fiat called a 3p Berlinetta Coupe
(3p referring to the Italian tre-porte or three-door). This revy
little sports flier was so much fun, especially as it was a bit quicker
than the trendy fast Fords of the era, the XR2 and XR3, which, (Im
now ashamed to say), Id like to go hunting for.

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