Friends' Gallery Picture of the Month - February 2023

[Steve Parkin]

I have a friend who owns several historic buses, including a Dennis of similar vintage and his view is:

"Whoever made the suggestion that the bus in the picture is a Dennis is spot on. It is from a similar era as our Dennis, but a smaller type of bus for country lanes, equivalent to the modern-day minibus, and known as a Dennis Ace. They became known as "Flying Pigs" owing to their unusual appearance."

There's a good picture of one here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/41056391@N05/14888257020

[Parazine]

The vagaries of the British climate and the lack of decent corrosion protection on cars of the period meant that a Box Saloon was already well past it's sell-by date by 1946

I'm not sure when the local authorities started regularly salting the roads. I think it was probably in the 'fifties, with the upsurge in the car population. 

This is the real reason for the pitifully short life of many 'sixties and 'seventies cars, they just weren't built to withstand being driven in a highly corrosive environment. It caught the last of the pre-war cars that were on the road in the late 'fifties and early 'sixties as well. Unprotected steel, soaked in salt water has a very short lifespan.

My father bought a 1966 Riley 4/72 in 1970. It was 3 1/2 years old then and by the time it was 5 it was heavily rusted.

[Mike Costigan]

I think you may well be correct; I can recall winter journeys in the family Lagonda in the 1950s when the roads - even main roads - would be packed snow requiring my father to demonstrate four-wheel drifts at any and every opportunity

[Tony Griffiths]

As a child, I lived in Sheffield at 750 feet above sea level, on a NE-facing hill. Winters were great fun; we could sledge down the side roads - until the council came along with a man standing in the back of an open truck shovelling out not salt, but grit. That situation lasted until perhaps 1954 or 1955 after which salt must have been used.

[Reckless Rat]

Now they just don't come round.

[Robert Leigh]

Having only just read the other comments in this thread I am reminded that a woman living next door to us paid £275 for an RP from the local garage in 1947, so it had more than doubled in price since new!

[Mike Costigan]

Thanks for that titbit, Robert; I knew prices in the 1940s were high but I couldn't find any actual values. Significantly £275 may have been twice its new price, but it was also probably ten times its value immediately pre-War!

[Mick Hobday]

You also need to factor in the high inflation rate in general goods and services between 1938 and 1947 - 72% according to Bank of England figures.  Cars, being in very short supply in 1947, would naturally have increased by far more, so 100% or more inflation from 1938 values would seem likely.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary...calculator

[Old Dave]

Super Pic. Those were the days eh! lads - and you tell the youngsters today about it and they don't believe you. My grandchildren reckon that Grandad can't have a car older than himself.

[Archivist]

Possibly only the super observant would have noticed that, in the Pop Up museum, in one of the exhibits cases I had placed a couple of copies of Glass' Guide one shortly prewar and one post war. The pages that I left them open at showed the huge increase in the value of a Ruby after the war. That was the same for the value of any car, of course.

This was all driven by the introduction of purchase tax. Initially, in 1940, it was introduced at 33.33% but to drive the export trade this was increased to 66% for cars costing over £1000 in 1947. This rate was extended to all cars from 1951. In 1953 it was reduced to 50%.