The getaway car

You can learn a lot about my dad's approach to car maintenance from the time it was found the car wouldn't start because the starter motor had fallen off. It was hammered back on with a mallet.

Job done.

Never particularly flush with cash my parents would buy crap cars, to be honest they were probably borderline scrap, and then spend a small fortune adding seat belts - these were 70s cars and they were knackered. I remember a blue Peugeot 504 with an engine so noisy when my dad started filling it with petrol a guy ran across the forecourt shouting "NOoooooooo" because he was convinced it was one of those exotic French diesels.

But the car that looms largest in my childhood memory was a Ford Cortina Mk4. I recall it as being a bright metallic green with a tan interior. KVY 550S was born the same year as me and given my memories I was probably about eight when we got it - I could check... I haven't. Apart from the dutifully installed rear seat belts it was the typical late 70s Ford and on anything other than the perfect day it contributed to the unmistakable suburban sound of engines turning over and failing to start.

We used to call it "the getaway car" on account of the bloody thing never starting.

With me and my brothers in the car, and my parents arguing about whether they'd flooded the engine again, we'd sit in uneasy silence before commencing further attempts in the desperate hope the battery would hold out. We'd threaten the it with the scrap yard and then it would start. A car with proper personality. 

I remember alternators and exhausts being annual consumables. A trip to a tiny auto parts shop that stocked, clearly badly, reconditioned alternators was a delight.... so filled with fascinating oily things. Early on my dad had bought a new exhaust from Charlie Brown's that came with a lifetime warranty. That warranty did for the next few years when, without fail, part of it would drop off.

Once, with everyone strapped in, my mum went to start the car but the key wouldn't fit the ignition barrel... because it was the front door key for the house. Yet she was sure this is what had unlocked the car. Later, for science, I tried a few other implements such as a discarded lolly stick. Yep, that would unlock the drivers door. In fact anything strong enough to turn what Ford referred to as a "lock" would open the door. We didn't bother fixing that.

Eventually rust ate through the scuttle panel and front bulkhead. This was structural and difficult to fix so spelled the end of the car. 

Before the final drive of doom to the scrappy, my dad stuck a for sale sign in the window. A chap came along and offered £150. Not bad... scrap was about £25. Done.

It was a few weeks later we were sat round the dinner table when the doorbell rang. A policeman. "About your car sir, KVY 550S". In the days when the DVLA was notified by the new owner of the car they hadn't bothered which, it turns out, wasn't a great surprise.

The car that would never start had been used, as the getaway car, in an armed robbery in Leeds. 

A week later, the same again. Same officer even.... Our old Cortina had been used for ram raiding in Halifax.

This family car, which can't have been more than 11 years old when terminal rust dealt it a death blow went out in a blaze of criminal glory

I was so proud.