The Contemporaries

On my facebook page, I have stated a couple of times how tough it must have been being a big earner in the 1970/80’s.

Income tax was 83%, Ni a further 6.5% and then VAT was 12.5% for certain things.

The cars that we love from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s are a rare sight now but even back then, seeing a Yellow Countach parked next to a hearing-aid beige Austin 1100 must have created some attention.

I remember the first time I saw a Jensen Interceptor - a car with the best name ever and the impossibly extravagant goldfish bowl rear screen. It was parked across the road from my parents scruffy little pub alongside an orange VW beetle and a Hillman Imp with a backdrop of terrace houses. I crossed the road to look at it and walked past it half a dozen times to take it in - it was as if it had come from another planet.

But who owned these objects of desire when we were having power cuts, strikes every week and we only had 3 TV channels with no such thing as tinternet ?

One of my fellow petrolheads thats who - Robin A.

I will one day do his car history, but at one point he had a Lamborghini Countach, a Ferrari 308 and Testarossa, a Porsche 911 and 928, a Chevy Corvette and a TR7 - at the same time !!!!!

He has also had:-

Ford Cortina Savage, MGB ,Lotus ,E type,s 4.2 and V12 2 plus 2 ,Rolls Camargue, BMW 850 and 840, Benz SL, Bentley MPW, Jensen Healey and many many more that he cant even remember.

He was a big noise in landfill and I suspect the only people who could afford these things at the time were self employed or TV & sports personalities.

To Robin these were not classics, nothing nostalgic about them - these were contemporary prestige cars - only now do we look back at motoring icons with rose tinted glasses because we see them against a backdrop of more mundane commodity cars for getting from A to B.

Back then they were very stylish, prestigious, powerful, comfortable, desirable and the reserve of the rich and famous. Our dream cars have become our dream classic cars in our lifetime.

One of the best collectors out there Jay Leno says - ‘never sell’ - if Robin had followed that Strategy he would have had a very fine and valuable collection indeed today.

We dont have Jay Lenos riches, so will have to hope that running our petrolhead club will allow us to gather a handful of these fine machines over time, so that we can all then share access via the rental or shared ownership scheme. The great flaw in this plan is that at some point petrol stations will only be selling electricity for modern cars - what will we do then ?