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The one truly distinctive thing about the Wolseley

Mike's Pith & Wind - Not the Wolseley
Michael Granat e-mailed me a little while ago with some contemporary footage of the first car he owned – a ’65 Toyota 700 sedan. It got me thinking about the first car I drove.
Back in the ‘50s, New Zealanders were compelled to purchase cars directly from overseas – usually the UK – with diligently accumulated ‘overseas’ funds. Our parents acquired a Wolseley 6/90 by this method, much to my brother’s and my awestruck admiration. If you’re not sure what a Wolseley is, just watch almost any English crime film produced between the ‘30s and ‘60s and there’ll be a stock scene of police cars leaving the Yard, tyres a’squealing and bells a’ringing. This quintessentially English car is distinguished by an illuminated badge on the grill that immediately identifies it as a Wolseley. Without the badge you could be confused by its shape, which was quite reminiscent of a Citroën or a slightly scaled up Riley in the ‘30s and then resembled a slightly scaled-down Bentley in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
The oyster-grey 6/90 we had was the elegantly styled Bentley shape, which was immediately succeeded in the mid-sixties by the Pinninfarina-styled 6/99 that I thought quite ugly by comparison. I never really understood what all the fuss was about with Pinninfarina.
Anyway, both Richard and I were fortunate enough to be allowed to drive the Wolseley almost as soon as we had our driving licences, which in those days (in Christchurch) you could go for as soon.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - Happy moments
It is a very early, quiet spring morning in Christchurch New Zealand, probably 1967. It is not even 7am and I am walking beside the Avon River near Cambridge Terrace; the temperature is gentle, the sky a distant cerulean blue and the air filled with a morning softness that caresses the skin like the touch of velvet. I am returning to my student house leaving behind me a looping stich of footsteps in the dew. Unaccountably I am suddenly aware of the bounce and smell of the grass, and of all the world around me. I realise that I am quietly happy and I walked on with a high heart into the rest of my life.
One of the major problems facing modern man, to a lesser extent modern woman, is the problem of growing up - then suddenly growing old - with no apparent hiatus in between. There is no pause at the apogee of the trajectory of your life when you can see where you have come from and.. read more