’The Car of Childhood’

The first car I remember is my father’s Lincoln Zephyr. It was a four-door  'sedan' (with 12 cylinders!), which he got in the late 30s while living in America and which he brought with him (springs sagging with family treasures - including a large number of 78rpm records, as I recall) on the boat from Halifax to Liverpool when we moved to Scotland at the end of 1951. 

Despite frequent breakdowns and its unsuitability for British roads in the pre-motorway era, he held on to this absurdly large gas guzzler until, ten years later, one of the half-shafts broke and the UK Lincoln suppliers couldn’t provide a replacement. By then, it had accrued around 140,000 miles on the clock.

Today’s blip features a tiny, 4" long, two-door Dinky Toys version, which my children gave me as a birthday present several years ago in recognition of the family car with which I had grown up. It’s not the saloon but the coupe— inspired by the real-life, and much more dashing, 1939–40 Lincoln–Zephyr V–12 coupe. Still, this die-cast model captures the sleek waterfall grille and airflow styling of the era, of a car I had become so fond of.