50 Years of Cars

At a family gathering, we were trying to remember which cars we'd each owned in the past 5 decades. It wasn't conclusive but we remembered most of them. I'll kick this off with the fact that I passed my driving test in a Morris Marina.

There were four of us. At some point, everyone had owned a Ford. One was a Z-back Anglia which had so much rust that large stickers of Magic Roundabout characters were holding it together! There were also Cortinas, Escorts, a Ford Fiesta and at least two Ford Sierras. At one time, two of us drove a Sierra 4x4 to Cannes, Côte d'Azure; apparently this model wasn't available in France at the time and some local car enthusiasts stopped us to chat about it. Oh, and a Galaxy MPV.

We've all had Triumphs, too - in fact, three of us owned the same blue estate car. Other Triumph models included a Toledo, Dolomite and a TR7. Alpha Romeo's AlphaSud was another car that passed from one of us to another - at only 3 or 4 years old, it had more rust than the ancient Ford Anglia mentioned earlier. We followed this with an Alpha Romeo Giulietta. Another Italian car we had was a Lancia Thema, which was brilliant - they stopped making right-hand drive Lancias at some point.

We had a Saab Aero 9000. Whatever it was, it looked amazing but I hated it. The leather seats were so smooth that I kept sliding down, despite wearing a seatbelt. That didn't last long, either.

Our older cars included Austin Mini, Mini Clubman and an Austin 1100. At one point, I even owed a small generic van but couldn't tell you what make/model it might have been - I didn't have it for long. 

Onto Vauhall: the first was a Vauxhall Viva in the 1980s, which I owned for one week and it was so awful that I then swapped it for another car. It's been almost 30 years since I bought a Frontera repplaced by a top-of-the-range Vauxhall Carlton Estate (our second Carlton). More recently, I owned a Vauxhall Astra and a Mokka. 

We've had a few 'Asian' cars: Mazda 626 (also owned by 2 other familly members), Toyota MR2, Nissan 300ZX Sport, a Honda Civic, a Mazda RX7, Toyota MPV plus three Lexus SUV hybrids. We also ownedan American brand - a Grand Cherokee.

British cars not yet mentioned: We've had a classic Jaguar MkII, a very old Range Rover, a Discovery, and two Freelanders. 

I've only ever bought one French car, it's an electric Peugeot e208, my current car. 

German cars: we've had a couple of VW Golfs, a Scirocco, a Mercedes 300SL, an Audi TT, three BMWs (3 series soft top, 5 series and X5) and, yes, my other car is a Porsche (Cayenne). 

I'll update this if I remember any that I've missed -not including the two-wheelers we owned prior to taking our tests! Meanwhile, this in an interesting read about who owns which car brand.