In 1967 I drove a 1953 Austin A40 Somerset drop head to and from college every day. At the time I worked at one of the first McDonalds in the San Francisco Bay Area. The trip from the east bay, across the San Mateo Bridge to school, was about fifteen or twenty miles. I'm sure I suffered the same problem many have dealt with typical to that sweet little car. The problem was with exhaust valves two and three being only about a 1/2 inch apart . The head had to be warped, and I had no source of replacement. I felt lucky enough just find the (225-16?) tires. Every hundred miles or so, as I drove down the road, the Austin would loose power and make the faulty sound, telling me that the head gasket had burned through between the cylinders. After school and my work shift I just had enough time, in the late afternoon, to put the problem right. I had stacks of head gaskets hanging on a nail in the garage. In time, with practice, I could pull the head, spread a dab of a polymeric "Liquid Steel" into burned out grove between the valves, sand down the repair and have head back on in little more then an hour.

But then It happened on my way home from school. During my second term, a women in an old Nash Rambler slammed on her brakes in front of me for no apparent reason. It happened in excavated underpass. To avoid her, I went up the bank and tipped over, rolling the Austin twice. The front wind screen popped out as the frame bent in an upside down V. The car came to rest on it's side next to me. I undid my safety belt and dropped down to the glass strewn asphalt on my shoulder. I'd watched the world spinning before me and emerged without a scratch. The women drove off, I'm sure, without a clue to my loss. The car was righted after the police came, and in spite of the carnage it suffered, I was able to drive it home. Oh, how I loved that little car. I felt devastated. Miracle of miracles, some how, considering how rare they were in California, I was able to find another A-40 drop head in a junk yard with a bad engine, but the magic was never quite the same.

Because I was working and going to school too, I wasn't carrying enough unites to avoid being drafted for an Army stint in Vietnam. I sold the second car to a friend who abandon it on the freeway without registering it in his name. A letter was forwarded to me from the Motor Vehicles Department telling me that I was being held responsible for it's abandonment. After sending a letter to the DMV explaining my situation, I never heard another peep. I'd always dreamt of finding another drop head A40 and adapting a better engine to it. I also wanted to convert my A40 to right hand drive. Austin had conveniently designed the car to make it possible, or at least I thought so at the time. I can't imagine what it would be like to find parts for one now. Having another A40 probably wouldn't help to recapture that magic interval in my misspent youth. Accident and all, I'll treasure her dinged fenders, her iron-on patched top, her intermittently lit turn flags, was all part and parcel of her wonderful memory.

Bruce Duncan
Castro Valley, California