Some loved them, some loathed them, some even still own them. Whatever relationship we had with our first car, we certainly never forget them.
Here at Adrian Flux, we love stirring up a bit of motoring nostalgia, so we asked some of our friends and colleagues to gaze wistfully back into the mists of their youth to reminisce about their first drive.
Iwan Roberts
- Former Wales international, Norwich City and Leicester City footballer, now a pundit
- First car: Datsun Cherry hatchback, white, 1983
- Current car: Mercedes E250 Coupe
“The Cherry was about five years old when I bought it for £2,000 in 1988. I was a youngster playing for Watford at the time, and it took quite a hammering driving back and forth to family in Wales. I admit I didn’t really look after the car and didn’t give it too many services in the four or five years I had it – I once drove from Watford to Wales with barely any wear left on the brake pads. The noise was horrendous! I do remember getting 100mph out of it on the M25 (the brakes were fine this time), but it was no great surprise to me when the wheels seized up eventually. It wasn’t worth fixing and I sold it for £30 scrap.
Tiff Needell
- Fifth Gear and former Top Gear presenter, former F1 driver
- First car: Morris Minor Traveller, late 50s or early 60s
- Current car: BMW 535i Touring
“I bought [the Morris Minor Traveller] for £75 in 1970 – it was a typical Traveller with moss growing out of the woodwork and the window channels. It could barely do 70mph and most of the metal had rusted away – I used it to tow my first racing car, a Lotus 69 FF I won in an Autosport competition.
“I sold the car, which by this point was really not very sound underneath, and replaced it with a secondhand Ford Anglia van that need some DIY straps to hold it in fourth gear and to close the passenger door.”
Carl Fogarty
- Superbike legend and I’m a Celebrity… King of the Jungle
- First car: Vauxhall Cavalier, white, 1978
- Current cars: Audi R8 and Ford Ranger
“My dad got a deal on the Cavalier with a company he was doing work for. It was an ex company car and I hated it! If that sounds ungrateful you didn’t have to live with it…it was a rattly old thing and I never knew whether it was going to start most days.
“It had a red interior, which I thought looked a bit naff, so I was glad to get rid of it.”
Jonny Smith
- Fifth Gear presenter, motoring journalist and drag racer
- First car: VW Beetle 1500 deluxe, 1967
Current cars: A bit varied:
- Mk1 Honda Insight hybrid with 315,000 miles
- Austin Allegro V6 sleeper
- 1964 Chevy Impala SS lowrider
- 1968 Dodge Charger 383 4-spd
- Chrysler 300C Touring CRD
- 1975 Enfield 8000 EV hot rod aka Jonny’s Flux Capacitor.
“I was aware the 1500 Deluxe was quite a desirable model in the aircooled VW world, but at the time all I cared about was finding a sloping headlight Beetle which wasn’t riddled with rampant rot.
“It was found in a completely out of date Autotrader mag – like 5 months out of date! – sat in my mate’s bedroom. I called on the desperate off-chance, and the car hadn’t sold. I dragged my old man and brother down to Newton Abbot in Devon to view it, and haggled the chap from £1400 to £900. It was his wife’s car and she had decided to get something more modern instead. An MG Metro. Fool.
“Out of the 120+ cars I’ve owned to date the Beetle really is my most sentimentally important. It marked my coming of age, my newfound independence and steps into the big wide world. I bought it when I was 16 (in 1995) so me and my dad could tinker it into fine fettle ready for when I passed the test first time exactly two months after my 17th.
“There have been a few hairy moments in the car – once when a brand new faulty set of HT leads left me stranded on Exmoor, so my brother towed me home waaaay too fast with a threadbare 2-metre long tow rope.
“Then there was the time I shed a tear because, as I was borrowing a friend’s inspection pit to underseal the Beetle’s chassis, I pulled the car forward from underneath to rust-proof a different section, the car started freewheeling and, before I had time to climb out the pit, it rolled out the garage, down the drive and straight into my best friend’s Polo coupe. The boot lid, which is a shape only made for one year on the car, was trashed. Ouch.
“It will always be the last car I let go of, because it always makes me smile. Next year I’ll have had it 20 years and, if funds allow, I’ll start the long awaited restoration. I’ve not had it on the road since 2004 but have been carefully collecting rare and NoS (new old stock) parts since.”
Dave Vitty
- Formerly Comedy Dave from Radio 1, co-founder Stripey Horse production company
- First car: Ford Cortina 2.0S, silver, 1981
- Current car: Audi A4 Avant 2.0T S LineA
“[The Cortina] was a handsome beast with a black vinyl roof – the S obviously stood for sport! I inherited it from my dad, and there was something really cool about those old Fords, which was probably to do with those great old shows like The Sweeney and The Professionals.
“For my 21st birthday, a mate bought me one of those huge black rubber spoilers that you could buy in Halfords, and I bolted it on to the boot, at which point it became affectionately known as the Ford Wicked.
“What I hadn’t realised though, was that the extra weight of the spoiler meant that the boot wouldn’t stay open, which made it tricky loading in cases of Kestrel from Asda during my student days. It was a two-man job, as somebody needed to hold the boot up. It was a great car though, and was far more interesting than the Fiestas and Corsas that were being driven by my contemporaries.
“My dad bought it in an auction in Derby for £2000 in about 1984, and I was with him at the time. The petrol gauge never worked, so you had to use the trip mileometer and fill up on 200 hundred miles. It didn’t corner very well, was hazardous in the wet, and during its senior years, braking with urgency was an interesting experience, where all four wheels would brake in completely unique ways. This four-wheel independent braking system would result in the car snaking all over the place and you had to hang on tight to the steering wheel to keep it in a straight line.
“This happened once on a roundabout on the A4 going to Reading when I first joined the BBC. It was a bright winter’s morning, and the roads were wet from the melting ice the night before. I used to like to double de clutch and change down into third and take the roundabout as fast as I could, to make me feel like Colin McRae.
“Unfortunately on this occasion, the rep in a BMW 318 in front of me bottled it at the last minute and slammed on the anchors, forcing me into an abrupt braking situation. I jumped on the brake pedal, all four wheels locked up and the car skidded all over the place as I desperately tried to keep it in a straight line. My efforts were fruitless and I slammed straight into the back of the rep’s car, knocking his cheap suit jacket off the peg in the rear.
“His whole bumper was caved in and the car looked a mess. By contrast, the only damage to the Ford Wicked was the two mounts for the spots on the front grill had been pushed back about an inch, which had cracked one of the plastic fins on the grill. We exchanged numbers and I left him there to pick his jacket out of the footwell, and pick up bits of his rear lights and bumper, as we carried on to work. That car was a tank!
“I loved that car. I must have had it for about seven or eight years, at which point things started to go majorly wrong, so I sold it to my mate Andy the Greek for £100, and bought myself a white Capri. People used to think I was joking about owning a white Capri until I turned up outside in it.”
Robert Balls
- Manager, Bikesure
- First car: MG Midget, red, 1978
- Current car: VW Golf GTD
“I loved the smell of [the MG Midget] and how it felt driving it in the summer with the top down – it was the next best thing to a motorbike for me at the time. Even though it was the rubber bumper version, it still used to get some nice, positive attention and it looked great when it was all polished up. Though romantic endeavours in a Midget were a challenge…
“Unfortunately it used to overheat on hot days when you travelled over 30 miles so I used to have to wait for it to cool down. I paid £2,800 for it and sold it on three years later.”
Gerry Bucke
- General manager, Adrian Flux
- First car: VW Polo 1.0 CL “breadvan”, Mark 2, red
- Current car: Land Rover 110 Twisted
“I got the Polo for free when my Nan gave up driving after having three accidents in it, so it was her last car and my first car.
“This model was nicknamed the “breadvan” because of the squared-off rear end. I think the first car to get the breadvan nickname was a Ferrari 250 GT racing car; this was no Ferrari but it was red, light and plenty fast enough for a youngster’s first car.
“The Polo died after a couple of years of my driving, however.”
Matt Ware
- PR and content manager, To The End
- First car: Hillman Imp 875cc, dark orange
- Current car: Audi A4 Avant V6 TDi
“I didn’t go looking for a Hillman Imp – it was just fairly cheap (£300), at a garage nearby and, most importantly, a car.
“Described as “not a bad old tub” by the salesman, it was the Rootes Group’s equivalent of a Mini but with the engine at the rear – you know, like a Porsche 911.
“Similarities ended there though; the Imp was sprightly enough around town and I did once get it up to 80mph, but its aluminium power unit was prone to over-heating (which it once did all the way to Great Yarmouth).
“In the end, it wasn’t reliable or cool enough (literally and stylistically), so it was sold for what I paid and replaced by a mark one Ford Escort – which turned out to be a death trap, but that’s another story…”