Pictures Of Devon In The 1970S & 80S

[porca misèria]

And not a single Pokemon Go to be seen.

Pokemon gone.

[SarahBell]

Those cars would've been old, even in the 1970s. That is, more than old-banger. Old enough that only an enthusiast would take the trouble to maintain such an antiquity.

Is this not what people used to do though, to keep an old car until it really didn't work anymore rather than just cos you fancies a shiny new one?

[Frank Hovis]

Is this not what people used to do though, to keep an old car until it really didn't work anymore rather than just cos you fancies a shiny new one?

I think that's what a smaller number of people still do, mainly IME through lack of money which means that they don't have the option. My brother-in-law has limited cash but avoids debt so he keeps cars as long as he can but needs sufficiently reliability to get to work. Old Daewoo atm, which he bought very cheaply (?£500) and has run for four years. He's never going to keep a car that long because he can't afford the outlay to buy a newish one so he's buying 12+ year olds in not great condition and getting what he can out of them.

The majority of people I know do chop in their car after a few years despite it being perfectly ok; I did once purely because after seven years of trouble free motoring I wanted something a bit more powerful.

[jay67]

I love old photos. Tried to recognise the cars on the left hand side of the original photo,and I think they're as follows..Triumph 1300, Hillman Minx/Humber(?), Vauxhall, Fiat 600(?), and an Austin A40. Could be wrong though.

[MrPin]

I was disappointed not to see a Humber Super-Snipe Imperial.

[frozen_out]

The one thing that generally strikes me about 70s/80s pictures (in fact all the way up to the 90s) of my hometown is the variety. Real shops selling real goods. Now it's all just poundshops. And much, much dirtier than it used to be.

Outside of the town centres the general landscape of towns and cities has changed enormously. I was watching the Fred Dibmah documentary on YouTube last week, first filmed in 1979, the general landscape probably wasn't too different to how it looked in 1929. By the mid-90s, particularly once the nu-labour regeneration schemes had got going we were living in a completely different world.

[happy_renting]

I love old photos. Tried to recognise the cars on the left hand side of the original photo,and I think they're as follows..Triumph 1300, Hillman Minx/Humber(?), Vauxhall, Fiat 600(?), and an Austin A40. Could be wrong though.

Not a Humber, but either a Hillman Minx, Singer Gazelle or Sunbeam Rapier. All basically the same body.

I was disappointed not to see a Humber Super-Snipe Imperial.

My uncle did his own badge engineering with a Snipe. He stole an extra 'M' off another HUMBER to turn his into a BUMMER and re-arranged SNIPE into *****.

[billybong]

The cars even had better names in those days.

[porca misèria]

The cars even had better names in those days.

Mine was called Henry Forward. Kept wanting to take me to Agincourt.

[Rare Bear]

I love old photos. Tried to recognise the cars on the left hand side of the original photo,and I think they're as follows..Triumph 1300, Hillman Minx/Humber(?), Vauxhall, Fiat 600(?), and an Austin A40. Could be wrong though.

Did my driving test in Ireland in a Triumph 1300.

Edit to add:

Strange electrical setup on that car. It had a dynamo rather than an alternator Now cars with dynamos were generally if not always positive earth. However the Triumph 1300 was negative earth, I would assume in aticipation of switching over to alternator during the course of production. I took my mothers car to the main dealer to be serviced and they managed to reconnect the battery the wrong way and fried either the dynamo or the controller thingie. It shows how little electricity was consumed by a car in those days in normal daylight driving that it was possible to use the car for several days until the new part was delivered.