Driving a classic car Oldclassiccar - visit the classic cars homepage (C) R. Jones 2008

Driving a Classic Car (and how to stay sane)

Piloting a machine of venerable age is not something to take on without a certain amount of forward planning. If you're used to driving a modern yawnmobile, where you just hop in, fire it up, pick a CD and set off at 90mph in a mad rush to the wine bar, then you'll get a shock when first you try driving an older motorcar. What follows is a commentary on an average journey made in a car of advancing years, in this case my Standard 10, a machine built in the latter half of the 1950s. Any handbook that came with an old car would have gone into great depth about the pre-flight checks that are prudent to make before embarking on any journey. The checklist would include the tyres, engine and other fluid levels, lamps, and so on, and it does pay to take a few moments to check these things before setting off, likewise its an excellent idea to have an array of tools on board and a few routine spares should the unimagineable happen, and your vehicle fail to proceed. Once you've established the car is ready for the off, and all four corners are as you left them, its time to hop on board. There are not many keys to choose from, and most of them will now open most of the locks on the car, regardless of their original intent, due to wear and such like. Once clambered aboard, you'll feel like you've done an HG Wells and travelled back in time. No on board computers, air con, central locking or ABS here, welcome to driving, 50s style. There is but one dial, which courtesy of a wayward needle, suggests an approximation of your forward velocity, with fuel gauge flickering away below for good measure. Indicators are on the column, although many cars of the period still had a rotaty knob on the dash for this. My car has flashing indicator lights, but many of its contemporaries still sported popup semaphore indicators, a lovely period touch but not one that Mondeo Man will be looking out for. The main lamps are controlled by one of a bank of knobs in the centre of the dashboard, main beam being selected by a clunky great foot switch buried away beneath the fraying carpet in the footwell. There is a heater, but a passing moth emits more warmth so can be ignored - demisting is best effected by that great invention, the opening quarterlight, hinged for your convenience on both front and rear doors on my particular car. Safety is not a great strongpoint of the older car, so it pays to think about your driving. In fact there is a school of thought that cars today are so safe that people think themselves to be invincible and therefore take more risks. Driving a classic car is a constant reminder that in the olden days, safety considerations usually limited to fitting larger chromium bumpers, or recommending the wear of driving gloves to improve grip on the slippery steering wheel. There are no padded bits, only rock hard edges and sharp edges, all beckoning to rearrange your molars should contact be made. Just remembering this concentrates your mind on the job in hand, rather than on your mobile phone or the blonde at the bus stop. Seatbelts were not an original fitment back in the 50s (apart from on certain Volvos), and many old cars do not have suitably reinforced pillars to take modern fitments, so go carefully. The firing up procedure will also come as a surprise to anyone brought up with Corsas and Vectras. Place the key into the ignition, and turn one position. Assuming the gear lever is in neutral (big wavy wand action will confirm this), give it some choke (remember choke?) and pull on the starter knob, the cable attached to the knob manually giving the starter the big OK to do its job. With a little luck the engine purrs into life, the merest death rattle as oil pressure is sought the main confirmation that internal combustion is in progress. If the oil light does not go out shortly after ignition, then you have a problem and its probably best to switch off. The glowing red lamp will have gone out now too, suggesting that the dynamo is now up & running, providing a charge to the battery. Ok, so it's now time to take your place on the Queen's highway. Most classics have conventional manual gearchanges, there being very few automatics about. If you have an old Daimler or Lanchester then you may have the delights of pre-selector gearboxes to contend with (basically you select a gear before you need it, then hit the 'clutch' pedal to actually invoke this ratio) - a small number of old racing cars also have pre-selectors, but they're beyond the scope of this general ramble. Some manual gearshifts are done via a column change, such as I once had with my A40 Somerset. This takes some practice, but soon becomes second nature. My Standard has the curious Standrive transmission, whereby clutch actuation is via a little switch on the gearlever, as opposed to the usual floor pedal arrangement, but for the sake of simplicity here, I'll assume mine is like any of the other 95% of Standard Tens that have conventional arrangements. Now, pressing the clutch to the floor is no guarantee that first gear is necessarily there for the taking - most gearboxes of the time do not have synchromesh on first gear, so unless care is taken a fearsome gnashing of teeth can be achieved by a too hasty selection of first gear. Often the best bet is to nudge 2nd gear, which seems to smooth the move into first gear, after which a hint of throttle and the usual checks sees you setting off at a leisurely pace down the road. It's about now that the other big difference between old and new cars becomes apparent, in the steering. Whereas most modern cars benefit from power steering, and precise rack & pinion steering, the majority of older cars employ steering boxes and lots of links to transmit your input from the wheel, to the roadwheels themselves. Several inches of play in the steering is not at all unusual, and it often feels that input from the steering wheel is stirring a vat of lard, rather than transmitting a request for a change of direction, so once again forward planning is the name of the game. Soon it's time to select the next gear, but woe betide anyone who tries to rush the change. Whereas a modern yawnmobile will allow all manner of abuses, such as rushed changes, only pushing the clutch pedal halfway to the floor, and so on, a 'box that has been around for 40+ years requires some respect, and I find it better to treat the change as two seperate actions, ie 1st to neutral, then neutral to 2nd, with a pause in between. I'm usually in top gear by about 30mph. My old girl is a little leggy in the mechanicals department, so I don't like to push things too hard. The gearing of older cars usually lends itself to this approach too, most cars being very lowly geared, and set to be revving quite hard at what is not a quick speed. At some point, there'll be the need to slow down. Forget your modern car here too, which probably benefits from disk brakes, servo, and ABS at the very least. The Standard, as with most porridge-like saloons of the 50s, relies on drums all round, in this case hydraulically operated, but many still had cable or rod operated mechanisms. Not that theres anything wrong with a drum set up so long as its well adjusted, just that it does need more fettling to keep it in top order than with later arrangements. More dashing cars in the 50s, such as the XK150 Jaguar, were fitted with disk brakes in line with the company's Le Mans experiences, but these cars were really only the preserve of the more well healed cad, much as is the case today with remaining examples. As all advanced driving courses will highlight, most modern day drivers do not plan far enough ahead , but this is an essential requirement with a classic steed whether its braking, steering or collision avoidance that we're talking about. It's also a sad fact that most modern car drivers are spectacularly impatient, and will do their upmost to overtake a 'slow old wreck' at the earliest opportunity, if only to preserve their pride and image with their passengers. Such shenanigans can induce anxiety in the classic car driver, but the best solution is to just ignore that pratt in his lowered LED-equipped Astra or Nova who insists in hanging 3" off your rear bumper, in the mistaken belief that a) you'll go quicker b) you'll pull over and let him through (although it is often easier to let them shoot past just to get them off your tail). It can be risky driving one of the quicker cars of the 1950s, as this can catch out your average muppet in their modern blob. They see an old car heading towards them in the distance and they often assume that it must be going slowly as its old, and pay little attention to it when pulling out from a side road say. Unfortunately for them, that old car could be a tweaked Mk2 Jag, a vintage Bentley, or any 1950s 'sports' car you care to mention, and there's every chance that it's moving at a considerable pace, so yet again forward planning is the key to safely driving any old car, whether it's fast or not, and you have to assume that those around you have not seen you coming. Sadly great pace is not something I often encounter whilst navigating the Standard, it's woeful gearing and tired mechanicals limiting things to 40-45mph, any more and the vocal rear axle drowns out all other sounds, and the various engine noises take on a yet more strained note. After all this, less diehard drivers may assume that driving a classic is an act of lunacy, rivalled only by those who launch themselves off Brighton Pier every year in the belief that they can fly. A classic car is one that has to be treated carefully, and each facet of its character and operation understood and not taken for granted. Assuming you're willing to take the time to learn all this, it can be very rewarding, just make sure you factor in more time for any given journey :) You can read more about the pro's & con's of running a classic car here: Owning classic cars.

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