60s Cars

The Mini, the sixties would not have been the same without it!

Minis were popular cars in the sixties.  Some went for a two-tone colour combination with a black or red roof.  One lady bought a grey Hillman and painted it with flowers in true hippie style.

"My first car on HP was a Vauxhall Cresta in two tone yellow. It had bench seats you could lay on. I rolled it when drunk, and my insurer went bust so I had to pay the loan off with no car."


Although in the sixties the British car industry was still strong, a few foreign cars were still finding their way to our shores.  A couple of the more popular were the Renault Dauphine and the Fiat 500.

We asked about the new motorways

Some found them fantastic - "awe inspiring", "marvellous" and "excellent" were some of the comments.  Others went out of their way not to use them: "Mother avoided them and used the Fosse Way - What's good enough for the Romans...".

Service stations were not well-liked.  They were expensive for petrol and food and not considered pleasant.  Only one lady told us that:

"I never used service stations until the late 60s and thought them fantastic compared to the lorry drivers' pull-ins we'd had to use for long runs previously. Somewhere to change baby in comfort and WCs that worked!"

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