My dad had one of these, back in the 1960s. It was a black 1956 Sapphire 346, registration XPJ 3. I don't recall it having an automatic badge on the boot, but it was automatic, as opposed to the optional pre-selector version. We were a big family, and MPVs were still a couple of decades away. The car didn't originally have seat belts, and never actually needed them, by law, but dad fitted static three-point belts to the front seat i.e. the left and right ends of the bench seat. My two elder sisters, my brother and the older of my two younger sisters sat 4-abreast in the back seat. I sat on the centre armrest of the front seat and my mum had my youngest sister on her lap. It's just the way things were back then. We lived in a village just north of Bristol and travelled like this to holidays in Weymouth in Dorset, and occasionally up to Melton Mowbray in Northamptonshire to visit relatives. There were no motorways back then, so the journeys were not short. The car was a bit unreliable at times too. I remember the electrics getting wet in torrential rain as we passed Temple Cloud on the A37 south of Bristol. Dad could get quite frustrated and I remember him pressing the starter button on the dash so hard that the whole panel would flex. Eventually, dad got rid of it and, as we'd moved into Bristol itself, we all used public transport and dad rented a car when we went on holiday. After such a grand car, when he did finally buy another family car, it was a Ford Corsair 2000E, with Ford's awful V4 engine in it.
My dad had one of these, back in the 1960s. It was a black 1956 Sapphire 346, registration XPJ 3. I don't recall it having an automatic badge on the boot, but it was automatic, as opposed to the optional pre-selector version. We were a big family, and MPVs were still a couple of decades away. The car didn't originally have seat belts, and never actually needed them, by law, but dad fitted static three-point belts to the front seat i.e. the left and right ends of the bench seat. My two elder sisters, my brother and the older of my two younger sisters sat 4-abreast in the back seat. I sat on the centre armrest of the front seat and my mum had my youngest sister on her lap. It's just the way things were back then. We lived in a village just north of Bristol and travelled like this to holidays in Weymouth in Dorset, and occasionally up to Melton Mowbray in Northamptonshire to visit relatives. There were no motorways back then, so the journeys were not short. The car was a bit unreliable at times too. I remember the electrics getting wet in torrential rain as we passed Temple Cloud on the A37 south of Bristol. Dad could get quite frustrated and I remember him pressing the starter button on the dash so hard that the whole panel would flex. Eventually, dad got rid of it and, as we'd moved into Bristol itself, we all used public transport and dad rented a car when we went on holiday. After such a grand car, when he did finally buy another family car, it was a Ford Corsair 2000E, with Ford's awful V4 engine in it.
You could at least spell "Armstrong" correctly!
Nice The Armstorong Siddeley!!!Automatic???How Many Old?
Not the best choice of music for an A-S. "Light classical music" - eg The Typewriter, In a Monastery Garden and similar would be closer to the mark!