My father was very proud of our first car, a Ford New Beauty. We called it ‘Airtight Annie’.

          We had friends, the Lincolns who had a car they called ‘Windy Wendy’. The two cars often went on picnics together.

          It took two people to start our car. One to crank it up to turn the 4 cylinder engine over, and the other person in the cab to work the choke and the fuel lever.

          It had big wheels and was most likely a 1926 model. It was good for going through flood waters, not uncommon in Hawke’s Bay in those days.

          How cars have changed. The first new car I bought was a VW ‘Beetle’. They had a great rear engine motor which put the weight on the back wheels. It was a great car for driving over paddocks when I was a Farm Advisor in Taranaki.

          The first ‘Beetle’ I purchased, and I bought three of them had no petrol gauge so I had to make a dip stick to see how much fuel I had in the tank.

          After three ‘Beetles’ I purchased a DKW an AutoUnion (Audi), a three-cylinder two-stroke. It was a most attractive car but it has some bad habits. On a long journey it gained speed as it warmed up. If you put your foot down to pass another vehicle it would cough and slow.

          On my first visit to Hollywood, that would be in 1946, I met a man that designed cars. He designed cars for the desires of wealthy film stars. He proudly showed me the latest drawings he was doing for a Mr Kaiser.

          Mr Kaiser was a multimillionaire shipbuilder who had been mass-producing utility merchant ships, known as Liberty boats during the war. After the war he turned to building cars for the mass market. He set up the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation and produced many models. They were stylish looking cars. I would have liked to have owned one.

          What a thrill to see the prototype design of a new car.

          The Kaiser cars failed and ceased production in the USA in 1955. I suspect the design were too radical for the time.

          The second time I visited Hollywood was when I was lent a new car in Philadelphia. It was Chevrolet Chevalier Malibu. It had plenty of power but no modern conveniences like air-condition. To find our way we purchased a road- atlas and marked it up each day.

          In 1968 each Eisenhower Fellow was lent a new car to travel the country to attend appointments and seminars. Joyce and I drove from coast to coast in the USA – not once but twice.  That took seven and half months.

          How cars have changed. Fuel sources have changed from diesel, petrol,oil and petrol mixed, hybrid electric, with electric/petrol engines, and now electric cars are again fashionable.

 What’s next? Perhaps hydrogen cars using water for fuel.

Geoffrey Moss(mossassociates.co.nz)

“Innovation thrives on encouragement and dies with routine, regulations and bureaucracy”