Dad's Cars and Motorcycles

After Dad died Mum gave me a sheet of paper in Dad's handwriting containing a list of motorcycles and cars. Most were owned by  Dad, but not some of the later ones. They are listed in the order of ownership, most with their registration numbers. I remember Dad telling me that he'd written this but I didn't see it while he was still alive. He reckoned he had a good memory for registration numbers and I remember him telling me (in the 1980s?) that he'd been trying to remember the number of Uncle Bill's Bullnose Morris from the 1920s and it came to him one night in a dream. Dad used to go out with Uncle Bill sometimes to collect milk churns in the car.

But there's more to this list than just vehicles. There are dates scattered through it so we can get a rough idea of when he owned the various vehicles. He also mentions where he was working when he had certain vehicles.  He hasn't mentioned the year of manufacture of the vehicles but we've figured out most of them from the registration numbers.  

Vehicle usage during the war years was difficult mainly because of petrol rationing. And as a serviceman in the RAF it must have been unusual to own a vehicle because of the cost. And yet it seems as if Dad was never without a motor cycle or car. There may have been more petrol available when he was in Canada and those cars he had over there had big engines and would have needed a lot of petrol. Maybe cars were sold cheaply because of that. And one of his cars was an Opel Kadett which was only about 5 years old when he sold it in August 1941 just before he went to Canada. Maybe it was cheap because people didn't want to have German cars.

Here's the list that Dad wrote, followed by pictures of the vehicles in the same order as the list up to the early 1970s. The later cars in the list were owned mainly by others in the family. 

England 1936 - 1941

Canada 1941 - 1943

England 1943 - 1960