I
t’s 50 years since we went to the moon,
and my earliest memory is being woken
in the middle of the night to watch Neil
Armstrong’s giant leap on a fuzzy black-
and-white telly. It’s strange to think they
were still making Morris Minors and
Carry On films in 1969, yet it was a year
that must have felt very different from 1960 for
those who lived through that decade of great cars
and bad decisions: 10 years that ‘swung’ for a
lucky few people in London, but for the rest of
the country appears to have begun the process
of setting us up for the mess we have now.
The good thing about being a kid was that,
while I didn’t have much say in anything (which
is as it should be), neither did I have the sorts of
worries and responsibilities that only seemed to
make adults shout at each other. Between the
ages of three and 10, all I knew was the things
that made me happy were toy cars of the Dinky
and Corgi variety. I don’t know which I got first,
but certain examples stick in the memory: the
Ro80 with working headlights that let me read
car mags under my sheets; the Silver Cloud in a
Perspex box attached to a cardboard ‘road’; the
Toronado with pop-up headlights and ‘Golden
Jacks’ that allowed you to remove the wheels.
I had most of the Gerry Anderson vehicles
(Dad bridled at the Captain Scarlet Spectrum
Patrol Car because it made annoying ‘nuclear-
powered’ noises), plus Bond’s DB5: the trauma
of losing the ejector-seat man is still tangible.
On a weekly basis I’d get myself all worked up
looking at the brochures, feeling hard done by
because I didn’t have this or that car. But when
I look at Dinky magazine No 6 (3d), a count of
the non-military/commercial stuff reveals that
I had about two-thirds of the inventory.
I was never interested in racing cars or super-
exotics you were never going to see in real life,
but police sets with Transits and Range Rovers
were a hit, as were American cars. I liked my
police Mini Cooper (when the box on the top
broke off, my uncle civilianised it with a painted-
on vinyl roof) and the HA Viva, which was two
generations out of date in relation to the real-life
Viva when my mum got it for me.
That was bought to placate me on one of her
boring shopping trips. For the same reason I got
a Porsche 911 German police car, which suffered
a smashed ’screen when a Ford Corsair mounted
its sloping nose in a front-end collision – one of
those accidents you couldn’t recreate if you tried.
To be honest I was spoilt and life was good,
with no annoying sisters to Hoover up the funds.I didn’tneedparentalattention:Mumjokedthat
shecouldhaveleftmeplayingcarsontheliving-
roomcarpetwhileshewentshoppingandI’d
havebeenin thesameplacewhenshegotback.
I seemedtogeta newCorgiorDinkymost
weeksfromthetoyshopinHoldsworthSquare
orWardle’sat TheBullsHead.Thelatterwas
a stepbackintimeevenintheearly’70s,Mr
Wardlebeinga grumpyoldmanina buff-
colouredsmock,straightoutofTheTwoRonnies’
‘forkhandles/fourcandles’sketch.
Thecarswentat a certainpoint,to bereplaced
byActionMan.Theworldof‘proper’Dinkys
andCorgiswasfadinganywaybythemid-’70s:
silly-looking‘Whizzwheels’werereplacing
rubbertyresyoucouldpulloff,andI wasn’t
interestedinKojak’s BuickRegal,theStarsky&
Hutchcarorsomeweirdpastichedragster.
Thegoodthingaboutgrowingupandgetting
a jobis thatyoucanrevisitthesechildhoodpals.
NexttomydeskI havethetopshelfofa book-
casededicatedtomyoldflames,mostpickedup
in ‘enjoyed’conditionat bootsales.I havea feel-
ingmoreanallyretentivecollectingassociates
sniggerat thisbatteredandsomewhatrandom
display,butit givesmepleasureeveryday.
Inanycase,I’mtootighttospendmoneyon
anythingperfectlydetailedorstillinitsbox.In
the’70s,boxeswentstraighttonon-recyclable
landfillwhileI gotonwithcreatingmyown
privateuniverseof world-savingscenarios.BACKFIRE
Mar tin
BUCKLEY
From top: Corsair with
slide-down windows
caused damage to a 911
police car; Central Garage
is a twin for the one a
youthful Buckley enjoyed‘Between the ages of three
and 10, all I knew was that
the things that made me
happy were toy cars of the
Dinky and Corgi variety’
September 2019 Classic & Sports Car 61