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Spanish Motor Prehistory

CONTENT CO-SPONSORED BY THE RENTAL PORTAL
OF OLD VEHICLES DRIVINGCLASSICS.COM

It is an unstable morning on a Saturday in May and we are driving on the AP 7 motorway; only the rum rum off the asphalt, the sun glows bright yellow, and suddenly a dark cloud overshadows the landscape. Without realizing it, the car headlights come on automatically; at one point a light shower falls and the wipers act obediently and on their own remove the raindrops.

I am sitting as a passenger with my son in a modern 4 × 4 car. He has to contact classic car owners for his company in a concentration of a town on the Catalan coast; I accompany him out of complicity and support, and also because they are occasions for conversation and spontaneous coexistence that we enjoy from time to time.

We take advantage of these types of outings to talk about the divine or the earthly, and suddenly I say “Your grandfather would be very proud of your initiative. For him it would have been like the culmination of a great dream ”. That said, we spent a few minutes in silence and only the slight rum rum the motor.

In this lapse, making memory, the memory of how it all began passes through my mind:
The history of the motor in my family. I note that it is a long sequence, which begins with my father and his bicycle that he bought for 100 pesetas.

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In the early 50s there were possibly more toys than cars on the street. The author in his first "machine"

My father was a man with a passion for traveling, for discovering that there was beyond the horizon, and he did not care - there was no other remedy - to work 14 or 16 hours a day with many Sundays included; And let's not talk about the unthinkable vacations as understood today, that we were in the early 50's.

The fact is that he managed to buy a small motor that was attached to the rear wheel and that by turning a small mechanism that rested on the same tire, with the pressure and weight of the propeller itself when turning, and with more or less rubber wear, moving the bike forward without pedaling: "Fantastic! we are already motorized ", He said.

The next step was to fit his Rex - that's what the motor was called - on a tandem bike and "Eureka!" he exclaimed, he could now travel with his whole family: father as a driver, mother as a passenger behind him, me with 6 years in a basket on the frame bar and, finally, my two-year-old brother in another basket behind, on top of the same motor. Imagination has no limit and we had the whole world ahead of us.

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In the absence of better options, bicycles were the delight of speed lovers

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Between two wheels

The world with those means ended more or less ten kilometers from home, and my father soon understood that it was too limited a horizon according to how he had imagined it. So after the corresponding economic recovery, his obsession was to buy a real Villof brand motorcycle. It was 125 c / c and it didn't even have a gear change.

The family was distributed in the same way as on the tandem bicycle, and the horizon became a little further away. I remember that we had to accelerate from a distance so that we could climb certain slopes and, if we did not get there, it would make the clutch slip a bit and laugh at the photos that they send us by e-mail of Chinese families completely uploaded on their motorcycles.

The thing was complicated by an error in the calculations, and my little sister was born; and five at the Villof was too risky. My father had to take another step, working mountains of hours, shifts and moonlighting, such as mowing and packing wheat. The next thing was a real second or fifth hand sidecar motorcycle, who knows, from before the Second World War. Three wheels in total, a whole BSA

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The whole family, in the BSA

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"Fantastic! The whole family can travel now ”, he exclaimed delightedly, the girl in mother's arms in the sidecar and my brother in a chair that was opened by lifting a lid from behind the sidecar. Dad was driving and I was behind him; its 500 c / c and side valves were nothing to be said for, but the horizon was about 100 kilometers away.

It was not bad, the star trip was from Barcelona to Olot and Besalú in two days and with a tent. We saw the volcanoes and historic bridges live that until then only appeared in certain books and postcards; and we spent half the summer explaining it in the cool of the nights, making a circle of neighbors with the chairs in the middle of the street.

If by chance a vehicle appeared - some with gas - even though it was heard five minutes before it arrived, he would move away, and we would continue with the pleasant chat that the neighbors listened to fascinated. Ah! and all documented with two or three photographs, since my father had his bellows machine as befitted any good pioneer. We were already in the late 50s of the last century.

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Soon, things would start to improve in the Piel de Toro ... (From Dutch National Archives)

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The humiliation caused by the couples of highway policemen, who with their Indian and Harley installed themselves at a certain point, always the same, and there they stopped each and every one of the vehicles that passed for no reason has remained in my mind. The method to succeed was that beforehand the driver, in his portfolio of documents and permits, placed 25 pesetas among them.

The policeman who stopped you invariably asked for the documentation and, while he was checking it conscientiously, the second policeman pretended to examine all the lights, brakes, etc ... And when he said aloud "everything is fine", the other returned the documentation and very seriously said "go forward please". Naturally the 25 pesetas had disappeared. We then specialize in alternative routes and country roads.

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To the microcar and beyond

The "BSA" would get hot and lose power on the climbs, we had to stop and wait for it to cool down, and dad invented a fan inside a kind of saucepan with a strap, which would come out of the chain sprocket or I know where , to ventilate and cool the cylinder; but it was not an efficient or stable solution, it had a lot of cheap crafts and few means.

Another jump had to be made: the girl was growing up. We were in the days of microcars and the replacement for the BSA was a David, a three-wheeler, one in front that supported the engine with a twisted leaf spring and two behind. To say that it was a 4/5 seats and convertible seeing it today can be a joke with little grace. But with the satisfaction of traveling all more or less well seated and with three double gears that allowed to climb all the mountains in the world, little joke with that ingenious roadrunner.

Mechanic Francesc Roig repairing a tricycle at the David factory (MG file)
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Photo of Dávid, from the archives of Manuel Garriga (unknown author) /
Video of the No-Do of another of the national tricycles, thanks to PassionForTheAutomobile

When I was 12 years old and my dad was by my side, he would let me drive and I gave him the occasional scare. As we all continued to grow, at the beginning of the 60s the first real car arrived, an incredible machine, and for the first time we went from a single cylinder to two. A “DKW” with wooden doors, canvas roof and frame and also from before WWII. This brand corresponds to one of the rings of modern Audi that in the past were the legendary and revolutionary Auto Unión.

The fantastic and long-awaited DKW ended its time in the family badly. I was 14 years old, without a license and in hiding, while my father worked, I escaped to go for a walk with friends ... I dominated it, I thought very well. In some curves and downhill it gave him a small hit of the steering wheel and accelerator, making him skid on the rear wheels. My friends enjoyed it and I was the king of the mambo, until in a curve the wheels turned but with the excess speed the car continued straight. The branches, logs and the ground finally stopped us and, although we escaped unscathed, the car there died.

I think I have never felt so sorry for my disastrous behavior and its outcome, nor for my father's reaction to seeing his family car. Deep down I knew that it would not be economically easy to buy another; In other words, after a long history of motorizing ourselves, we were returning again, and because of my irresponsibility, to the bicycle.
After about half a year, Dad managed to buy an amazing Seat 600 second-hand with a loan and some savings, but this is another story.

What do you think?

Written by Hector Olle

Héctor Olle is the alma mater de Drivingclassic.com. On this website, the concept of renting old vehicles is taken to a new terrain, in which it is enjoyed by both these and their owners. It is a tour service in which individuals offer their car in exchange for a negotiable amount and a time in good company with another fan. Thanks to this scheme, you have access to a wide range of vehicles, while having a good time and getting first-hand information about the chosen model. And it is that nobody better than the owner of one of those vehicles with which we have always dreamed of telling us, in a climate of sincerity, its virtues and defects. Apart from these individual experiences, some of the vehicles can also be used for weddings, anniversaries, business meetings, inaugurations, exhibitions, advertising campaigns, cinema, tourist routes or any other type of events and celebrations. Conducirclasicos.com adapts to everything in order to stimulate the sector, in such a way that links are created between people with the same hobbies, making the exciting world of the classic vehicle known in a rewarding and unforgettable way, revaluing and enriching this wonderful hobby .

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