june-august 1949

[richard]

june 1949 petrol , steel ( as well as meat dairy sugar and just about everything else ) rationing still in force , up to a 3 year wait on new cars for private use . lancashire vehicle registration office and on 25th june the clerk opens the ledger for vehicles to bear the prefix NTC at the top of the page .he enters NTC 541 a Francis-Barnett Bicycle ( further along the line we see this marked as w.d. 19.4.63 crashed wrecked or whatever but anyway withdrawn . the rest of the page is made up of generally run of the mill vehicles  - few private cars. on 2nd july he enters 553 a Bond Tricycle chassis number A/10/196 later along the line marked as w.d.23.8.62 . this is my car and it was not destroyed on that date but for some reason laid up anyway - perhaps the equivalent of SORN . ah just looked and the 10 year test came in in 1960 for the first time  making any vehicles due for a ministry of transport test and then once yearly perhaps these vehicles could not pass the test !  
i think these pages make fascinating reading if only to illustrate how starved the Great British public were of new private cars and perhaps why my car made in 1949 ,for export, was worth re-importing  

[marcus]

Interesting! Certainly we live in very different times. When I first started driving in the early 70s annual Tax was over 1 month's pay, and a tank of petrol was a week or two's pay, it irritates me that nowadays people complain about the cost of driving, yet they have big cars with 2 or more litres, CD players, heaters, electric everything and safety gear all over, SO very different from my first car...a 1959 Mini Countryman 848 cc engine, a bit of steel, four wheels and four seats

[Nimrod Cabin]

This is very interesting, just on this one page there are 5 Cyclemotors, there are 3 Cyclemasters (assume the black 25cc ones for 1949) and 2 Trojan mini-motors. This just goes to show in these rationed times how important personal transport was and by motorising your bicycle you could achieve 150+mpg on your quota. I think they were great, just think, in a Cyclemaster back wheel you have an engine, clutch, petrol tank, lighting coils, what a clever design of packaging. I believe originally designed by Siemens and built in the UK.

As Marcus says, in real terms motoring today is cheap and has been for a long time, just look at the amount of traffic on our roads, that says it all.

My first car was a Bond Minicar purchased in 1969 and I still have it!

[richard]

did anyone notice NTC 560 ?a Trojan Mini-Motor , Bicycle with sidecar -now that's a rare beast

[richard]

hi nimrod who are you ? do i know you and whats the Bond ? please answer one or all of the aforementioned   ah after a reminder I now remember of course !