“After its poor beginning it’s really rewarded us because you can do anything with that car, you can pull anything, and it’s never let us down apart from that first instance,” says Keith, chatting at the workshop opened by his father Terry in 1947.

“It’s been a real tough workhorse and stood up well to extreme tasks like carrying concrete posts and quarry tiles, which weighed it down so much the rear mud flaps were on the ground.”

Now, the car he didn’t want will never be sold.

“It was only ever for sale once, when the dealer sold it to me, and it will eventually pass to my son William,” says Keith. “I just don’t part with anything.”

He’s not kidding, with father and son owning many cars between them, including some gifted to them by grateful customers.

“We’d had Volvos in the garage to work on, and they seem very robust. I was very impressed with how they were built.”

So off they went to the Volvo dealer in the city, aiming for an estate car in white, their usual choice of colour.

“I said ‘I’d like a white one’, and the salesman said ‘oh no, they look like an ambulance in white, you need orange, a safe colour’,” remembers Keith. “Orange had been voted the safest colour.

“I asked him if there were any new models coming out, and he said ‘no, an estate car is an estate car’, so we bought the 145 for £2,650 and collected it on August 1, 1974.

“However, in September 1974 the 245 arrived…”

Things didn’t get much better when Terry decided to check the car over ahead of his son’s trip to Scotland.

They had got as far as Lancashire and, with too much of the journey left to risk wrecking the engine, got a colleague in the trade from Norwich to travel north to tow them home.

“I said to the dealer I would like either a refund or a new car, but they refused and said they were going to put a new engine in instead,” says Keith, who reluctantly collected the Volvo after several weeks.

“Within a few months there was rust coming up on it and all sorts. You could also see that the dealer had painted the doors when it was new – under streetlights they looked a yellowy colour and a different shade to the rest of the car.

“Eventually father gave it a respray in 1980 in its original orange cellulose paint. That’s the same paint that’s on it now.”

“I’ve had the cylinder head adapted with hardened valve seats to take unleaded fuel, and while the engine was down I put new pistons rings in and new crank bearings.

“I had a replacement fuel tank put in it last year, and get very good service from Paul in the stores at Hylton Gott at Crimplesham, who gives me part numbers to get proper stuff for it.

“If you service them with decent stuff and you service them when they should be serviced, anything will last. People ridiculed Skodas, but we had them coming here in 1971 and they advocated changing the oil and filter every 2,000 miles and, if you did it, they never gave any trouble.”

These days, the Volvo is used as it always was.

“If I’ve got anything to cart about I use it, if I want to go up the dump and put the garden rubbish in the back, I use it,” says Keith. “That’s what they’re for – it’s not an ornament.

“You do get a lot of people interested at shows, but I do wonder why people are so interested in that old car.”

William, who works in the garage with his father, and is just as much of a car hoarder, remembers being dropped off at school in the Volvo.

“Probably the first thing I can remember is riding in the middle of the back seat of it in my child seat, and seeing the rear fog light sign on in the centre console,” he adds.

“I think that car will outlive us all.”

“It’s just me, and I will never let that one go,” he says. “I would be a bit lost without it. I don’t want to spend all my time gardening, I like to be able to do things with the car.”

Peter, now 79, started his motoring journey in a sit-up-and-beg 1949 Ford Anglia aged 18, before upgrading to a 1953 Ford Zephyr 6, “very powerful but too expensive to run as a young lad”.

The more sensible replacement was a Mini, first a van and then a car, followed by a Vauxhall Viva after he met his wife Pat, who used to drive it to work, leaving Peter to ride the Honda on his shorter trip to Newage Engineers (later Cummins Generator Technologies).

After its three-month job as a commuter car, the A35, with its 948cc engine the more powerful successor to the popular 803cc Austin A30, was taken off the road for a restoration.

“When you join the owners club, you meet people, you get friends, you go out and get together and it becomes an enjoyment, meeting people with the same vehicles.”

Among the trips were a visit to Longbridge arranged by the club in 1984 (pictured), and national club rallies as far north as Blackpool and as far south as Brighton.

“You could go to something every weekend if you wanted to, there were that many events,” says Peter. “Some meet ups were just for a meal, and we used to go round a lot of the museums in Lincolnshire, to East Kirkby where the Lancaster bomber is, things like that. It was a good thing to do, because we could see different things.

“Even in the winter we’d meet for dinner once a month and, because most of the Lincolnshire members are based around Lincoln, we always had the longer drive to get there.”

Driving the little car long distances was rarely a problem.

Over the years, Peter has collected more than a dozen trophies for best in show, all the more impressive given the car has been used in nearly every one of its 67 years.

“I’ve had lots of wins with the car,” he says. “I’ve got that many cups upstairs I don’t know what to do with them.

“And I know every mile I’ve done with the car, and everywhere I’ve been – it’s all written down in a notebook.”

The A35 has now covered a little over 66,000 miles, and the original engine has only given real trouble once, for which Peter blames his former next door neighbour.

“Every so often I used to open the garage door and keep it running, because you can’t just leave it standing idle, and she complained about the fumes,” he remembers.

“At the time I was changing the antifreeze and I was running it up to get all the air bubbles out of the system. I should have told her to go away but, trying to be a good neighbour, I switched it off.

He was alerted to the vehicle by a fellow club member in 2002, and travelled to Caterham in Kent to see it.

“Once I’d seen a pickup, I wanted one,” he says. “Two other people had looked at this one and thought it was too far gone, but I decided to take it on because it was so rare.

“It had been standing derelict for 25 years in a tin shack with no doors, and it was in very poor condition.”

Peter paid £600 for the wreck, with his first job to get the pickup on four wheels because the wishbone had rotted away (pictured).

He bought two A30 donor cars because, although it’s called an A35 pickup, its body panels come from the earlier car.

Plenty of new panels were required though, plus a replacement floor that Peter says was a factory reject off the production line.

The engine was replaced with a unit from someone in Leicester who had abandoned a kit car project, but Peter has rebuilt the original unit which now serves as a spare.

“But they are both still used regularly, and when we’re out people will come and have a look, smile and ask questions.”

Having said he would never sell the saloon, what about the pickup?

“There are times I think I’ll let the pick up go, and some people would sell to get the money back, but money doesn’t matter,” he says. “No, it’s what I’ve done, and I enjoy it. It’s nice to look at them, and when you get both of them in the garage parked facing the same way and you see both grilles, they look fantastic together.”

As for the more distant future, would Richard – an MoT tester who helps his dad out when he really needs it – be interested in keeping them on?

“He was very interested in the beginning, and he doesn’t show it but I think he’s a bit attached to them,” says Peter.

“I don’t think he’d let them go.”

Even when the Triumph was laid up for all those years, there was never any consideration given to selling it.

“It’s been with me for so long, and you don’t discard family members just because they’re getting a bit past it,” she explains.

Eileen’s first car was also bought from an auction, where her parents were regular customers.

“My parents owned Aycliffe stock car stadium, and they used to go to the car auctions all the time,” she says. “They bought me a diarrhoea coloured Mini Clubman, which I hated on sight.

“I hardly ever drove it and they got rid of it. My second car, which I think I bought for myself for £200, was a white Marina TC 1800 and I had that for ages until it fell apart.

“Then my boyfriend at the time bought me a Fiat Mirafiori, which was a complete rot box, and I remember him getting rid of it for a fiver. That was £850 down the drain.”

Then came the ‘76 Spitfire, though Eileen had her eye on an emerald green Triumph TR7 for sale in the same auction.

So what were her first impressions of the Pimento red Triumph?

“That it was really fast and really powerful,” she laughs. “I absolutely loved it, and I took it everywhere, all over the country.”

When she joined the merchant navy, she was posted to college in Cardiff, a long way from her Darlington home.

“They send you as far away from home as possible so you can get your independence,” she says. “I drove there and back for about six months without any problems at all, although the tank only does about 210 miles, so I spent a lot of time in petrol stations filling up.

“I remember everybody at college was tinkering under their cars, and one of the greatest things about the Spitfire is when you want to work on the engine you open the bonnet and sit on the wheel, because the whole of the engine is completely open.

“I did quite a lot of work on it, including fitting some self bleeding brake nipples. When I met Steve, I was equally as handy as he was, but I’ve got lazy now and I let him do it.”

“It was in a garage for a couple of years, but then Steve agreed to renovate somebody’s MGB so the Spitfire went out on the drive again,” says Eileen. “It was very neglected, but when we moved into this house in 2000 it finally went into the back of the garage. It was completely unloved, though, because this house needed so much doing to it. The Spitfire was the absolute last thing on our minds, we didn’t drive it, and it wasn’t taxed.” Here it is pictured in 2019.

In the years leading up to the Triumph’s long incarceration, Eileen had other cars to drive, indulging her passion for American muscle cars.

They include a Pontiac Fiero and a Pontiac Trans Am, which rotted so badly that Steve decided to use its chassis and engine to build a Dax Cobra.

“We built an extension to the front of the garage, and the Spitfire sat at the back and got forgotten for years and years,” she says.

Some work had already been done, however, including a replacement engine at about 100,000 miles, a brand new chassis at the end of the ‘90s, a replacement gearbox fitted with overdrive from a Triumph GT6, and a new hood.

Those boxes included a multitude of parts, including new brake lines, hoses, suspension components, clutch, wiring loom, carpets, and seat foam and covers.

Steve got busy with his welder to sort out corroded sills and floor sections, repaired any issues with the chassis, including repainting and filling the box sections with rust inhibitor, and flipped the car over to seal the underside.

“A friend of mine said he could paint the body, which was useful,” he says. “So we put the body on the chassis then it went away for about six weeks.”

“When we were deciding on the colour, Steve was insisting it wasn’t Pimento red, but I kept saying it was,” adds Eileen. “But I remembered it before it got faded and tatty. Let’s face it, we’ve all faded after 40 years.

“And when we took all the bits off and he took the underseal off the bonnet clips, underneath was the exact colour of the original car, and I was bang on.”

While the body was away, Steve stripped the engine and replaced parts as required, before it was eventually lowered back in with a hoist.

In the summer of 2021, the Spitfire was finally back on the road, with its first significant journey to the Heveningham Hall car show.

“I drove there at a ridiculously low speed,” says Eileen. “It was terrifying because I drive big muscle cars of more than 300hp, and this has got 79.

“It’s pretty gutless and it’s about the size of a roller skate compared to most other cars. On the A12, I was terrified of going above 50mph. Over the last 20 years every car has got larger, even a Mini is bigger than this now. I don’t think my fear has increased, just the size of the cars.”

As for the future, the Triumph is going nowhere, as long as Eileen can comfortably get in and out.

“We will sell it, and the set point is when I can no longer get up from a low seat without using my hands, or without grunting,” she says.

“So I practise every day to get off the bottom stair in the house with no hands and no grunts, because that’s about the height of the Spitfire seat. As soon as I need to haul myself out, or my knees or hips go, I’ll have to sell it. Who knows when that’s going to be – another 10 years maybe?”

But the Honda, powered by a 598cc twin cylinder motorcycle-derived engine, quickly worked its way into the family’s affections and dad Ken couldn’t bear to let it go when it developed clutch problems three years later.

“My dad had fallen in love with it, because it was different, and quirky,” says Andy. “He was always going to do it up, and I remember in the late ‘80s he went into the Honda dealership and gave them a list of parts, and they said ‘oh yeah, we can still get those bits’, in the days when you could. But he never got round to doing it.”

He recalls in the early ‘80s the car being moved from his grandmother’s house to his parents, on a tow rope behind his dad’s rusty old Datsun Bluebird.

“That was an experience because the car wasn’t running at that point, so the servo wasn’t working,” he remembers. “It was the first time I’d ever been behind the wheel in it, and it was scary because I had very little brakes, and just enough battery for the indicators and brake lights to work.”

“When he first saw it he was flabbergasted,” says Andy. “He couldn’t believe it was the same car, it was quite a transformation. He’s so proud of it – every time I take it round there he always comes out to see it.”

Andy, a commercial manager in the food industry with a background in engineering, is no stranger to small cars.

After cutting his motoring teeth on motorbikes, and racing karts, his first car was a Fiat Panda, his first of no fewer than seven Pandas.

But while he had previously restored bikes, the Honda was his first stab at bringing a car back from the dead.

By the time 2017 rolled around, those parts that had been readily available in the late ‘80s were now incredibly difficult to find.

And many, many parts were needed for a car that gained the nickname ‘flaky’ for its decaying state.

Andy made good use of online forums and Honda car clubs to build up a network of contacts, sourcing parts from all over the world – a gearbox oil seal from a small Italian motorcycle dealership, track rod ends from Japan, tyres from Germany, and pistons and rings, plus sills, from the US.

“Fortunately the interior, even though it was filthy, scrubbed up really well,” he adds. “The only thing that had to be replaced was the centre section of the rear seat, where the mice had got in.”

It became clear that the Honda had already been resprayed before Ken and Val bought it, with the near side indicator pod leaning back at a slight angle to signify accident damage.

“I’ve left it like that, because it’s part of the car’s history,” says Andy. “These only ever came into the UK in Pop Orange, which is a great sounding 1970s colour, so I had it resprayed in its original colour.

“The go faster stripes were a dealer fit, so no two cars are quite the same. I got a local company to trace them, and we fitted them as badly as Chapman’s had done back in ‘73. The two sides aren’t the same, but as you never see the two sides together it doesn’t matter.”

Andy’s first ever drive in the restored Honda was to get petrol from a nearby garage. So what was it like?

The car is no show queen, with Andy using it regularly, including in winter as long as it’s dry.

“I try to use it two or three times a week – the worst thing you can do is not use it,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll go to a car show and do the shopping on the way back. I’ve had bags of cement in there.

“If I go shopping, I’m usually late back, because there’s usually someone waiting to chat to you, or they want to take a photograph. Most of the time people don’t know what it is, though a lot of people think it’s a Civic because it shares the same indicator pods.”

During Andy’s first ever trip to a car show, he was surprised to be approached by a man who said ‘I know your car’.

“I asked him how and he said ‘I worked at Chapman’s and I remember it because the number plate matched the engine size, and as a young kid you remember those sorts of things’,” he adds. “He was so surprised to see it. He told me his job was to clean the cars, so I joked ‘so it’s your fault it bloody rusted’.”

“It’s a continuation, something I remember as a kid, and it has given me an immense sense of satisfaction getting it back on the road,” he says. “At times when I was out in the garage, scraping all the rust off with the car on its side in the freezing cold I thought, ‘why the hell am I doing this?’

“But it’s nice that my parents never threw it away, and I felt that I had to start what my dad wanted to start, and actually finish it. I have promised my partner I’m not doing another one!”

As for the future, neither of Andy’s daughters seem very interested in the family heirloom.

“That’s quite sad, but someone said to me at one of the shows ‘give them time, they’re young’,” he says. “It would be a real shame to lose the family connection. I have thought about putting it on loan at a local car museum, but I’m going to use it for as long as I can.”

Now the 1993 Rover, powered by a twin-cam Honda engine, looks much as it did when John and Hazel first fell in love with it after spotting it for sale on a shopping trip in Thetford.

“I’m really pleased to have it back looking more like it did when I originally bought it 27 years ago,” says John. “It’s definitely a forever car. Darren is also pleased it’s back to normal – but he’s definitely not having it back…”

John left school at 15 to be a butcher’s boy in London, riding a trade bike with a basket on the front, before riding a series of motorbikes as a rocker in the ‘60s.

He passed his driving test at 17, and cut his motoring teeth on a Triumph Herald at 17, before a trio of Ford Cortinas, the last one a sporty, lime green 1600E with a black vinyl roof.

“Then we bought a larger caravan in 2005, and the Rover was struggling a bit up hills, so we thought it best to get another car and bought a Vectra. That started it all off!”

John and Hazel ‘sold’ the Rover to Darren, but John smiles: “We’re still waiting for the money…”

Darren used the car for commuting between his home in Thetford and work in Bury St Edmunds for about six years before he was made redundant.

He initially couldn’t afford to run the Rover, and then didn’t need it after securing a job within walking distance of his home.

The Rover was last MOTd in April 2011 and, for the next 12 years, it served as nothing more than a parking deterrent for neighbours.

“We worked under jacks and axle stands, and many knuckles were skinned. At times the language was somewhat colourful, but we also had plenty of laughs.

“On one occasion we spent nearly an hour trying to get the rear fog lights working. We checked the bulbs and wiring and anything else we could think of without success. Then it suddenly dawned on me that they would only work with the dipped headlights on. I turned them on and hey presto, we had working fog lights.”

John had only ever repaired cars, not restored them, but Steve had a little more experience of buying and doing up old cars to sell on.

“I was either over there helping him do his cars, or he was over here helping me,” adds John. “It’s just a hobby for him – we’re not real mechanics, just DIY ones.”

Given how long the car had been sitting idle, now with 93,000 miles covered, it was mostly a question of cleaning up some items and replacing others.

The same could not be said for the bodywork, with the lacquer flaking and discolouration of the grey plastic bumpers.

“It was in a right state, with the paintwork on the spoiler completely coming off,” says John, “but it only needed a little bit of welding on the sills, which was quite surprising.”

Having prepared the body for a coat of its original Flame Red and grey paint, John tried his hand at spraying the door frames.

“But it wasn’t very good, so I thought we’d get a professional to do it,” he adds, the car going off to Terry Hannant at TPH Motorsports in East Harling. “I’m so chuffed with the job he did.

“The only thing he couldn’t get right was the bumpers. He said whatever he put on there, it didn’t change colour. So I came back and thought about it and tried different things and, in the end, I tried black shoe polish, put it on and it came up lovely.”

The couple joined the Norfolk and Norwich Rover Owners Club, which caters for cars up to 2005, and now intend to use it for shows and sunny days.

“Now we’ve got it back, we’re going to keep it and enjoy it,” says John. “It’ll live in the garage all the time until we go out.

“We took it to a show at Old Buckenham, and got quite a lot of comments. People came up to me and said ‘my dad used to have one of these’, or ‘I had one of them’, which was nice really.

“Theirs might not have been a GTi, it might have been a standard one, but it brought back memories to them.”

The Rover may have only been back on the road for a few weeks at the time of writing, but John reckons he’s already polished it four times.

He certainly knows how to treat a Duchess.

“It looked nice sitting in the showroom, all sparkly and shiny. It was a bit out of the ordinary, and I’ve always been one for something a bit different.”

Paul shelled out the list price of £6,000 – no discounts, because this was a “special model” – and their new Nova was ready in August ‘85.

But it wasn’t long before the novelty of the convertible had worn off for J.

“Four years later she said ‘I’m fed up with driving it’,” says Paul. “The main complaints were that there was no power steering, and the wind blew her hair around.

“The steering is very heavy, I think because it’s got the big Compomotive alloy wheels compared to the standard Nova’s smaller wheels and skinny tyres.

“And with a black roof it was baking hot in the summer, with no aircon. If she had the roof down it messed her hair up on the commute to work, and with the roof up it was too hot.”

Paul was offered only £1,000 for the Nova Cabriolet as a trade-in for a new Astra Starmist, which came with power steering and decent brakes.

“It was going to be J’s car, because I was about to change my Cavalier GL for my first company car, an Opel Manta GTE,” he says.

The Cabriolet was delivered exactly as it had appeared in the showroom, in Carmine red with gold Compomotive gold alloys (since repainted), a rubber rear spoiler, and gold pinstripes along the side.

Despite these embellishments, it was the most basic model, a 1.2 with no radio and no passenger wing mirror, both of which Paul soon added.

It was only later, when Paul was looking online for an original brochure for the Cabriolet, that he realised his car may well be the first one made by Hutchinson, and used for promotional purposes.

The small sales pamphlet featured a Carmine red saloon with gold alloys, rear spoiler, gold coachlines, and no black plastic side strips.

“I really don’t know if it is the brochure car, but I’ve never seen another one in that colour with the gold alloys, and I’ve never heard of any others,” says Paul. “All the ones I’ve seen have either got standard wheels with trims or have had alloys added. And I’ve never seen the gold coachlines on anyone else’s, which makes me suspect it could be.”

“Most of its miles were done sitting on a motorway at 60mph. Anything faster than 60 was horrendous because of the noise and vibration.”

It turned out the car wasn’t quite as rigid as it could have been.

“When you jacked it up you couldn’t open the doors, or if the doors were open you couldn’t shut them, because it flexed and twisted so much,” says Paul.

“Above 60mph the wheels started to shake, and it wasn’t wheel balancing, it was just the whole car rattling around.”

When the car was being recommissioned many years later, he found a strut brace (pictured) made for the Nova rally cars on eBay, and fitted it to the two front suspension mounting points.

“I couldn’t believe the difference,” he adds. “On the road, it drives in a straight line and the wheels don’t wobble – it’s a revelation.”

But back to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and the Nova was laid up in the garage for many years, following Paul from one house to another, while he drove company cars, moving from the Manta to a Vauxhall Calibra 16V.

“He was bored, I think, but he worked for a car spares place and he said they were getting rid of all their Nova bits,” says Paul. “So we wheeled it out, jacked it up and had a look underneath. “It’s a bit like Trigger’s broom underneath now – everything is new, the springs, rear drum brakes, shocks, fuel sender.

“The floor was rust free, but the fuel tank was full of corrosion and gunk, and Graeme managed to find a brand new one in Canada of all places. It was remarkably cheap at about £80.”

Once the Nova was fighting fit, Paul and Graeme would take it to local classic car shows, with J staying well away.

“She won’t even get in it,” he laughs. “She thinks it’s a ridiculous thing and won’t go anywhere near it. I remind her it was her choice to buy it all the time!”

The car has done about 4,000 miles since its resurrection, but has been back off the road for a couple of years as Paul has baulked at the £200 cost of annual road tax.

But with its 40th birthday on the horizon, when it will become tax and MoT exempt, Paul decided to get it tested in July 2024.

“I suppose I’m keeping it to protect it. I think it should be protected for posterity because it is so rare, and there certainly aren’t any that I know that are in that original condition. I’d love it to go to someone who would look after it or stick it in a barn somewhere or in an unusual car collection.”

There are other options for the car in the future…

“I’ve jokingly said I want to be buried in it, but that would need quite a big hole,” says Paul. “And I’m always threatening to leave it to Graeme, because he hates it, although he likes working on it and coming to the shows with it.

“He says ‘please don’t’. Jason rolls his eyes a bit when I talk about the Nova, but he thinks it’s quite amusing and he understands the attraction of it.”

But no-one understands the attraction quite like Paul, who revels in driving a car that may well truly be one of a kind.

“It was her decision, not mine. I think she felt the same way, but she knew what it meant to me.”

And it’s been with Jim ever since, its continued presence taking on even more poignancy after Linda passed away a decade ago.

“It means everything,” he says. “It’s a pet, and it’s just emotional because of my wife, who loved the car.”

Jim, now 70, passed his driving test at 17 in January 1972, when his dad had a Ford Prefect waiting for him.

“By the time I’d passed my test my dad had got another car, so I had his ‘58 Austin A35 instead, which was a wonderful little thing,” he says. “I’d driven the A35 when learning and felt at ease in it, so we gave the Prefect to my cousin.”

Things moved up a gear or two after the A35 with a Triumph Vitesse, followed by a Ford Cortina 1600E, “a fabulous, beautiful car, that had already seen some renovation, but rust got to it in the end”.

It was replaced by a standard MkII Cortina, but then came the opportunity for Jim to buy his first company car.

“The reason it was in the showroom was because it was blue, and people wanted white ones and red ones,” says Jim, “but it’s a bit different because it’s got the little mica chips in it.

“I think it’s a better colour – in the sunshine, it sparkles. It’s beautiful.”

The car was delivered on January 26, and Jim describes the “out of this world” feeling of his first proper drive in Toyota’s mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive marvel.

“It was just sublime, like nothing you’ve ever driven in your life before,” he says. “In my childhood years, dad had a motorcycle with a large sidecar which held my mother and myself.  “Riding in that was quite exciting as you were much closer to the road than in a car, and travelling in the MR2, especially as a passenger with Linda driving, brought back those childhood memories. You were so close to the road and seemed to be going much faster than you actually were!”

Jim had driven sporty cars before, but both the 1600E and Vitesse were souped-up versions of standard saloon cars.

“She wouldn’t drive it – she said ‘it goes too fast’,” he says. “I said ‘it only goes as fast as you tell it to’. So in the end, at 8am one weekend morning I told her ‘we’re going to go to the A12, come on’.

“We’re going along and I said ‘how does it feel?’ She said ‘it’s marvellous, lovely’. ‘Does it go too fast?’ She said ‘no’ and I asked her ‘is that why we’re doing 80mph?’ She loved it as much as I did after that.

“I admit that I don’t drive it the way it’s supposed to be driven. I don’t like speed, and I don’t throw it round corners – in fact, my tyres degrade rather than wear out.

“And driving it demanded extra concentration, as you were so small in traffic. Lorries, especially, didn’t see you on motorways or roundabouts, demanding constant vigilance of other drivers’ behaviour. But that was a small price to pay for driving such a wonderful car.”

Having bought the MR2 following his redundancy, it was used more frequently while he undertook stints as a wine salesman, postman, and Royal Mail delivery office manager.

“The first thing I said was ‘sorry’, which sounds stupid, and then I thought ‘are you going to blow up? What’s going to happen?’

“Just at that minute, an articulated lorry came past and, because of the draft, it blew the fire out.

“Then I saw the little oil cap still sitting on the engine, looking at me. I hadn’t put it back on and there was oil everywhere – it was a mess.”

Concerned at what damage had been done, Jim called the RAC.

“The chap turned up and said ‘it’s the only car fire I’ve ever been called to where it’s still a car’,” he says. “He was the most wonderful man. He said it hadn’t burned anything, and we found somewhere not far away to pull off the road more safely. He then cleaned the engine for ages, filled it up with oil, it ran fine, and off I went. It purred up to Norfolk, and it’s purred ever since.”

“Again, it had become a pet and it meant something,” says Jim. “It was Linda’s favourite car, and that’s why I’ve got to keep that going.”

There’s also a 20-year-old Toyota Yaris on the drive, which belonged to Jim’s father for the first 10 years of its life, and a Ford Fiesta ST bought a year ago.

“They’re all pets, and they will all last as long as I will,” he says.

Of the four, “Little Blue” is the one that has bagged the prime garage slot, and Jim – who joined the MR2 Drivers’ Club 35 years ago – rarely lets it out of his sight when it’s not tucked away inside.

“I don’t take it very far these days, and I don’t leave it anywhere I can’t see it,” he says. “I wouldn’t park it in the town centre and go shopping, no chance.”

When he last checked, he was one of just three MR2 club members in the UK to have owned their MkI car from new, a record he plans to extend for as long as he can.

“I can’t imagine being without it,” he says.

“He said ‘I’ll need more than that’, so I said ‘well, it’s been nice meeting you’ and off I went to get in my van,” he remembers. “Then he came over, put his hand out and said ‘OK, £200, it’s yours’.”

But the Tiger wasn’t any old Avenger and, though it took him the best part of 30 years to get the Hillman back to its best, John gradually became attached to a car that put the Ford Escort Mexico in the shade.

His initial plans to sell it never came to pass, and he says he “fell in love with the car”.

“I’m quite proud of how it’s turned out, and there are now only 20 on the road, so it is a little bit special,” says John, now 76, whose father had owned an aqua blue Avenger.

“I’ll keep it until it comes to the point where I can’t drive it anymore, then perhaps I will put it up for sale, but it will be a wrench.”

The Avenger Tiger, named after the 1960s Sunbeam Tiger sports car, was launched in 1972, with a batch of 100 cars placed in showrooms to draw attention to the standard range of cars.

Under the guidance of Des O’Dell at the Chrysler Competition Centre, the Avenger GT’s 1500cc engine was modified with an improved cylinder head with bigger valves, the head skimmed to produce a compression ratio of 9.4:1.

With a pair of Weber 40 DCOE carburettors bolted on, power was up to about 95bhp, all of which produced a Mexico-beating 0-60mph time of 8.9 seconds and a top speed of 108mph.

All of this was clothed in an eye-catching Sundance yellow paint job, with black side stripes interrupted by ‘Avenger Tiger’ graphics before extending across the boot spoiler.

John’s car is an early Tiger II, registered in January 1973, which lost the MkI’s bonnet bulge in favour of matt black paint, and featured twin headlamps and alternative paintwork in Wardance red.

The Tiger was renowned for its thirst, a less than impressive 19mpg was common, and the first thing the club members advised him to do was change the gearbox.

“They were all saying I needed to put a Sierra five-speed gearbox in it, because otherwise I’d be dipping my hand in my pocket to fill it up with petrol every week. So I did that, got a conversion plate, and it makes it quite nice to drive.

“I also picked up the stripes for it. The secretary at the time worked at a place where they make them, he said he could get me a set.

“I also got a set of wheels. When new, they had Dunlop black and silver wheels on them, but I thought the Rostyle ones looked a little better. I still have the original wheels and I’m thinking about having them refurbished and put back on again.”

“The only thing that was reconditioned was the paintwork on the outside! It had even got some muck in the sump.

“It was a bit disappointing, and an awkward situation because I got on well with the bloke I bought it from, and I kept putting off doing something about it.

“In the end I decided not to mess that friendship up, so I took it elsewhere and had it reconditioned – rebored, new pistons, and another cam.

“The pistons were a little hard to find, but we did find a set. I had to get an exhaust manifold handmade in Sweden by a club member, which cost me £600…”

With the engine finally running as it should, John has been out and about with his wife Lynda at car shows around East Anglia, including Bury St Edmunds, Bradon, Weeting and Felixstowe.

The Tiger has not only provided John with a source of pride, but it also spurred him on to complete two further retirement renovations, a 1952 Morris Oxford and a 1972 Mini, the latter completed over two years during the Covid period.

“It’s a good fun retirement hobby,” he says. “I’ve enjoyed being involved with cars my whole adult life, and I’ve made a lot of friends through getting parts etc and joining the different clubs.”

Dodging the seemingly inevitable showers for our photoshoot, John puts his foot down to show that the Tiger has lost none of its zest.

“We had it on the dyno at Hangar 111 at the weekend, and it was showing 95bhp,” he says, “although it does need some new jets for the carbs.”

If you should happen to spot John and his Tiger at a show, take a good look – it may be the only one you’ll ever see.

“The 4.7-litre engine – a derivative of the racing engine – is a really solid, reliable motor.”

With 32 years of memories bound up in the car, anyone looking to buy it will always be given an apologetic smile and a shake of the head.

“As far as I’m concerned, I was thinking of being buried with it,” he laughs. “If the vikings are buried with their chariots, horses and longboats, maybe I should be buried in the car. It’s an East Anglia thing!

“But the sensible answer is, I’m sure it will end up with a descendant – my children have often mentioned how much they appreciate thrift, especially in an ancestor.”

His son, also Michael, is “sensitive to the fact of the design elegance, the brilliant engineering, and the investment that’s been made in it”.

Michael (senior) has spent a lifetime messing about with cars, from the E-Series Morris Eight he and some friends found abandoned near their home in Cheshire on the edge of the Pennines.

“I always like to tell people my first car was an E-Type,” he smiles. “It had been left unlocked and was in a fairly chronic state.

“There was a little gang of three of us who played cricket in the street nearby, so eventually we commandeered it.

“I went to a place called Heathmans in Parson’s Green, and the choice came down to an Espada or a Merak, and I went for the Merak,” he remembers.

“I bought it in haste and repented at leisure.”

As well as issues with rust in unseen places, Michael was dubious about the Merak’s weight distribution between front and rear.

“At high speed, even if you’ve got the air dam it will lift a little bit, so the steering becomes ludicrously light, and then you’ve got the Citroen LHM system which locks the brakes just like that,” he explains. “So if you’re on anything other than a straight road and a good surface it skips and hops and jumps, and I’d love to know how many of those have ended up in hedges or lampposts.”

As it turns out, Michael’s Merak did end up in a ditch, courtesy of the garage he had left it with for fettling when he returned to Hong Kong.

“The mechanic, who was giving it a final test the day before it was being delivered to me back in Oxford, had gone straight over a mini roundabout and into a ditch, thus writing it off,” he says.

“His insurance paid, he found another bodyshell and over the next year he reassembled it, so I did end up with a Merak for a couple of years.”

“Among the many things I hadn’t checked was that the windscreen wipers worked, which they didn’t.

“So I had to drive it from Putney to Oxford in this irritating rain that’s sort of always there but not terrible, and you couldn’t drive fast enough to drive it off the window.

“So the first drive wasn’t wonderful, and I was late for dinner with some friends. Instead of a 50-minute drive it became quite a lot longer, because I really couldn’t see what I was doing.”

Notwithstanding the wiper problem, Michael found the Indy – the last Maserati to be produced before Citroen’s ownership – quite a challenging car to drive.

“The important bits are very spread out,” he says, “with the gear lever quite a long way away. It’s a big car, which I quite like because I’m a bigger guy, and it is rather an expansive way of driving. Of course, you think of the Italians throwing their arms around…

“But the cockpit is comfortable. A lot of these performance cars are quite claustrophobic, quite tight, but this isn’t.

“It’s a Gran Turismo, it’s not a sports car in the sense that it’s not got the tight little gearstick and small precise movements you’d want in something you want to drive really fast. This is different, and it’s lovely. It was designed for autostradas, so long distance cruising is what it’s about.”

Michael and his wife Jan have attended many annual Maserati International events, held on a rotation basis mostly in Europe, over the years, but things didn’t always go to plan.

On its first event, the Indy broke down on a race circuit somewhere in rural northern France, because of the failure of the clutch master cylinder.

After returning home on more public transport, the car was repaired in situ thanks to McGrath Maserati, and so a second journey was made to recover her.

More successful were trips to Monte Carlo, Norway, Spain, and Saturnia in Italy, where it won its class (“it was particularly satisfying winning in Italy”).

“One of my best drives ever was from the Classic at Monte Carlo in the early days,” says Michael. “There must have been some imperative that I can’t remember now, but we left Monte Carlo at 7pm in the evening and we were on the first ferry at Calais, having driven through the night.

“It was just a fabulous drive. The Indy cruised completely uncomplainingly, and those French roads were just perfect.”

The rally to Norway, arranged by the local Maserati club, also stands out for all the right reasons.

When Michael bought the car, it came with the private registration GUS 345, but the seller had indicated he might want it back when he had a suitable car to put it on.

That time eventually arrived, and Michael needed a new plate.

“I wanted 1 NDY, and I tried to find it by going to the usual reg transfer folk,” he says. “After drawing a blank, I went to the DVLA and found it had never been issued, so I then wrote a furious letter to them saying ‘I need this number plate immediately!’.

“Two years later, almost to the day, a little brochure dropped through the letter box which said ‘there’s an auction of number plates you might be interested in’, one of which was 11 NDY.

“So I went down to the auction and snapped it up; this was in the late ‘90s. A couple of dealers asked me if I was called Andy, because they couldn’t figure out why it was an interesting number plate.”

It’s a cold April day when we meet, with a northerly wind whipping across the vineyard, but Michael is looking ahead to warmer days, a full summer of events, and September’s 2024 international rally to Austria.

“It’ll be a lovely drive,” he says. “It’s just so nice to have a car like that, and I can’t see why I’d stop driving it until I literally can’t drive anymore.”

“A friend of ours had a Fiat, so Ruth decided she wanted one. We went to a garage and there was a Fiat standing alongside this 320, and I said ‘how can you compare that with that?’ She said ‘all right then, we’ll have one of those’, and that was the start of the BMWs.”

Phil upgraded to an E21 323i, just before the E30 325i came out, but his head had already been turned by a much larger beast.

“I used to see the 6 Series about and I thought ‘I’d love one of them’,” he remembers. “They were the price of a house when they were new, the flagship of the range at the time.”

When he saw his dream car up for sale at a garage near his Cambridgeshire home in 1990, he had a decision to make.

The building trade was not in the best of health, but the car was up for what appeared a relative bargain.

“In those days, an X or A reg was going for that sort of money so, when I saw it was a C reg, oh yes…” he says.

“I went in and saw the chap and said ‘why is that so cheap?’ and he said ‘because we’re selling it for a customer as a private sale’.

Although his car carried an ‘M’ badge when he bought it, it is not the M88-engined ‘M’ model, any more than it has the Hartge upgrades, despite the badge that remains on the car.

Phil is only the second owner since the car’s early life as an ex-demonstrator, and its second life as a getaway car…

“I’d had the car for three days when the police came round and said ‘can we have a look at your car?’” he smiles.

“I said ‘why, it’s not a hot one is it?’ ‘No, we believe it’s been involved in a series of robberies’. It turned out it was the getaway car for a series of computer robberies and, at one of these robberies, they found a torch from the glove compartment.

“They wanted their forensic people to match it up with the socket in the car. I never had the torch, so I was going to have to go to court to say that, but the chap pleaded guilty in the end so I didn’t have to.”

Phil and Ruth are inveterate caravanners, but asking for a tow bar to be fitted to the 6 Series caused some raised eyebrows.

“They said ‘you can’t put a towbar on a car like this’, but that’s basically almost all it’s used for now, towing the caravan,” he says.

“When we are away in our caravan and we go shopping, I always park in the most remote area I can find.

“Last year when I was in one of these positions, we came out  after collecting supplies and there was  a small car parked right next to me. The chap driving it was sitting in it, he opened his window and said to me ‘you parked over here so nobody would park next to you didn’t you?’ I told him he was correct…”

Despite this obsessive carefulness, there’s sometimes no accounting for other drivers.

“On June 18, 2022,” he says, the exact date seared into his memory, “this chap came out of a side road and ran into me in Evesham (damage pictured).

“I rang Andy up and said ‘you’d better see if you can source a new wing’. He had a phone round and there was only one left in this country, so I said he’d best buy it. It was £830, though the third party’s insurance paid for it.”

It wasn’t the only mishap on Phil and Ruth’s cross-country travels.

“My local garage here then sent the callipers away and got them refurbished and it was right as rain again.”

Waiting for parts to come from Germany is not uncommon, however, and over the years Phil has had to replace the instrument cluster, the fuel tank, and the car’s computer ‘brain’.

Rust has been an intermittent problem, with the other front wing also replaced, and some major repairs to sills, wheelarches, rear quarter panel, bootlid, and rear panel (pictured).

“Andy was restoring an E-type when he was doing my wheelarches, and the radius is the same, so there’s a bit of this E-Type wheelarch welded in mine,” he smiles.

The wheels themselves were swapped in its early days with Phil, from the standard type to a set of Dotz, for two reasons.

“These ones are easier to clean, but also the tyres for the original wheels are a metric size only made for the 635 and the Ford Scorpio,” he says. “The price of a tyre, if you can find them, is £450 each, so it was cheaper to buy the modern wheels and modern tyres.”

Given caravanning is a May to September pursuit, the BMW spends a fair amount of time in the garage, resulting in problems with not only the brakes sticking, but the oil seals in the gearbox drying out.

“He had been at the wedding, and his dad asked him what car he wanted to go in for his prom, and he said the 635,” adds Phil. “When I was cleaning it to get it ready for you, there’s still glitter in there, even though I’ve Hoovered it God knows how many times.

“It’s my mate’s granddaughter’s prom this year, so it might be doing another one.”

Pencilled into the diary for 2024 are caravanning trips to Battle, Rutland, Suffolk, among others.

“We go away every month if we can from May to September,” says Phil. “I don’t use it enough really, because I do like driving it. Although it’s 39 years old, it’s still got really good performance. As they say, it’s the ultimate driving machine. It’s fair to say it doesn’t do many miles to the gallon of polish.”

The MkI 6 Series is an increasingly rare sight on the UK’s roads, although Phil does remember forming part of a convoy of three travelling into Ventnor on the Isle of Wight.

“If you do see the odd one, it’s always hands up and a wave,” he says.

“We do struggle a bit getting in and out of it now, because it’s a bit low. Ruth has to sit on two cushions to see. But as long as we can get in and out, it’ll be there.

“Nothing compares to it for me – I wouldn’t be interested in anything else. As Queen sang, ‘I’m in love with my car!’”