Driving Tests 56 years ago? Never!

I can talk about this with authority as I sat my driving test in the 1950’s – 1955 to be exact. The car was my Dad’s Austin A12 and being reminded of it the other day when I saw the accompanying photograph, it was fascinating to compare the tests and the vehicles since.

The A12 was black, as seemed to be the case with most of the cars in our part of Scotland in those days. I’m not going to go on about ‘how things were made to last in those days,’ all I’m going to do is highlight the differences and how things were easier in those days – oops, I did it, didn’t I?

Already having a motorcycle licence, having passed my motorbike test the previous year on my BSA 250cc, prior to trading it in for my Triumph Tiger 110, helped a lot as I already knew the rules of the road. My Dad taught me to drive and he was very patient with me, when I think back. As for the motorcycling, there isn’t much anybody can do to help you with that. They can show you where the brakes clutch and throttle are, and then wish you bye-bye as ride off, or fall off, into the sunset.

The UK car test hasn’t changed a lot in the past half century; candidates still have to drive in traffic – stop giggling at the back there, to us back then it was traffic, OK? They still have to do Emergency Stops, Three Point Turns, and Left Hand Reverses and answer Highway Code questions. What has changed nowadays is they may be asked to do a Right Hand Reverse and they may be asked to open the bonnet (hood) up and show the examiner where certain parts are. What has changed dramatically is that the word ‘traffic,’ now means bumper to bumper and kerb to kerb vehicles. But, the vehicles aren’t as complicated as today’s drivers like to think.

Another thing has definitely changed; the candidates may have to be able lift the bonnet and indicate various parts of the engine, but I’ll bet you a £ to a penny that they couldn’t actually do anything under that bonnet. Although it wasn’t necessary for the actual test, we had to work on the car so that it would be capable of surviving the driving test. We had to be able to adjust the spark plug gaps as well as the point’s gap. We also had to be able to change wheels and tyres, not to mention altering the petrol mixture

Now, the modern sparking plug is an engineering device, so complicated that only a mechanic is allowed to touch it. As for changing wheels – when was the last time you met anybody who changed a wheel – who wasn’t working in a garage.

The petrol back then was leaded and it had the most aromatic smell to it. I used to love helping my pal in his Dad’s petrol station; I got an energy jolt every time a car came in to fill up. I can’t remember what price petrol was in those halcyon days, but I do remember that even then it was too expensive for a teenage office boy. But as there were no filters on petrol tanks it was so easy to siphon petrol off for my bike.

The A12 had ‘running boards’ an extra that is being advertised a lot nowadays on trucks. Running boards – on both sides of the car – were a necessity when your car wouldn’t start, which was often. If it wouldn’t start with the starting handle you had to push it. When it started going fast enough for the driver to jump in and engage 2^nd gear (1^st was usually too low and tended to stall the car), not only did the driver need somewhere to jump onto, so did the passenger pusher.

As for winter tyres, there was no such thing. When the snow got heavier we used chains, and a pain in the ass it was, but it had to be done. If it was just rain, and the wipers, which were vacuum operated, didn’t work, each wiper had a knob on the inside of the car and the driver could use that knob to move the wipers outside.

And as for indicators? There wasn’t a problem about how often they should flash, we didn’t have flashers. We had semaphore indicators but during the test we had to use arm signals for a certain length of time.

For turning right, you stuck your arm straight of the window

For turning left, you put your arm out of the window and from the driver’s point of view, gave large anti-clockwise circles. (Remember I’m talking about left hand drive UK)

For slowing down, arm straight out of the window and move your arm up and down.

If you tried to do that in today’s traffic snarl ups, you’d lose an arm – apart from which modern motorists don’t know seem to realise that the indicators are for telling other drivers what they are about to do, not what they’ve just done.