by John Ledbury

Created on: March 03, 2009   Last Updated: February 04, 2011

My first car was a 1947 Ford Anglia. I bought it in 1963, aged 19.

That Ford Anglia was the love of my life. I called her "Miss Henry" after the great Henry Ford..

As soon as I sat in her huge comfortable red leather seats I was smitten. To me, this was the latest in motoring technology. (Not long ago I was in a museum that had a Bakelite display. I was reminded that Miss Henry had a lot of Bakelite on board) .The whole dashboard panel was made of Bakelite. It was perfectly shaped. In the centre was the large speedometer. The way the dashboard was shaped, made it easy to store anything on the shelves beneath. It didn't have a glove box, as some cars do, but that didn't matter, as I didn't have any gloves.

On the right side of the speedometer face was the ammeter, a quick check now and again just to see if Miss Henry was charging ok, and as ever, she would be.

To the right was the fuel gauge. There was always seemed to be more fuel on board going up hill, than going down, according to the gauge.

More than once I was lucky that the gauge wasn't too accurate, Miss Henry and I coasted home late at night more than once, with the gauge showing empty.

To get her roaring into life, although roaring isn't quite the right word for an 8hp Ford Anglia, , the method was to put the key into the ignition switch, pull the choke knob, marked with a C, out about an inch and then twist it to the right to lock it. Then pull the knob marked with an S, to operate the starter motor, and as soon as the engine fired, let go of the knob, and it would sprang back into place. Miss Henry would then purr, usually.

If it was raining, the windscreen wipers worked when the knob marked W was pulled out. When the car was going up hill in the rain, the wipers would almost slow right down or even stop, because they worked by vacuum from the manifold. the little 8hp engine didn't have much vacuum to spare.

The cars lights were controlled by a large control unit, into which the ignition switch was fitted. To get the side lights on it was turned to position 1. For headlamps, it was turned to position 2. When driving at night, it was necessary to dip the headlamps, this was done by pressing the dipper switch, which was located on the floor, to the right of the clutch pedal, with my left foot.

If the car had direction indicators, as mine did, although some cars didn't have any, the control for them was in the centre of the solid Bakelite steering wheel.

If intending

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