[Jolly Jack]

Yesterday Mrs. JJ. reminded me of our journey from Yorkshire to Kent in a Renault 4CV in 1966 - pic below (I hope).
I had sold my 2.4 Jag. Mk1 at Leeds auction and needed a car. My dad had bought a 1954 Renault 4CV for my mam to knock around in, but she never did. He said come and get the car and you can have it, so I travelled down and picked it up and use until I found another car I liked.
It had MOT and tax, but the first thing I noticed was the poor brakes, but it drove ok, with it's 3 speeds and 750cc and would stop.......(ish)
I got it back to Ferrybridge and the fist thing I did was to try and fix the brakes - I say try because I couldn't get any parts from anywhere. It needed new slave cyls. all round and new shoes. I did manage to re-line the existing shoes, but new slaves or even repair kits were impossible to find and nothing in any breakers.
By this time the hydraulics were useless and the handbrake was the only anchor!! My dad had informed me that one of his friends was selling a 1961 Vauxhall Cresta which was something I was looking for, I decided to take the Renault back to Kent with just the handbrake!! Mrs. JJ insisted on coming so we would do it at night. Out came the front passenger seat - the 'carry-cot', for our one month old son, would take that position and she would sit in the back with our two daughters - no seat belt and car-seat regs. in those days.
In the end, the journey was uneventful, if slow - traffic was light even through London and we got there safe, but I was knackered with extra concentration. I did buy the Cresta, which was automatic, which failed a year later - another saga of searching for parts!!

The pic is from a museum in France but our car was the same colour.

JJ.