I was a bit grumpy about getting the Talbot Horizon because I wanted a 1.3-litre car and I thought the 1.1 engine would be slower than the Marina, which was very slow.
Also, it didn’t have a radio as standard and so the first thing I had to do was get one fitted.
However, it was my first brand new car and when I got it I was quite pleased. It was dark green but with a nice light interior. The Horizon won the European Car of the Year title in 1979 and it was something of a ground-breaking car - a proper mid-sized hatchback with folding rear seats at a time when other cars (such as the Ford Escort, Austin Allegro or Peugeot 305 were all saloons or estates.
It was a nice looking car, clean and modern and very light and airy inside. Fuel economy was good and despite its 1.1-litre engine, it was able to maintain a cruising speed between 70-80mph quite easily (definitely better than the Marina). It was also quite roomy and very wide for its size, being a shortened version of the bigger Sunbeam Alpine.
The Horizon was designed by Simca, the French car maker, which had built quite quirky small cars including the Simca 1100, which the Horizon replaced. Unfortunately, Simca was on its last legs and it went bust, so the Horizon became part of the Peugeot/Rootes group encompassing names like Peugeot, Talbot, Hillman, Singer and Simca. The Simca name was dropped and the Horizon was marketed as a Talbot, built in France and at Ryton, near Coventry.
Build quality wasn’t too bad for its day and my car was reliable apart from one or two starting issues, when it wouldn’t fire and the engine flooded. At that point, there was nothing for it but to wait 10 minutes and try again, when it always fired up. Honing the starting technique meant it became a fairly rare occurrence. People brought up with fuel-injected cars just can’t appreciate the idiosyncrasies of carburettors and chokes.
The big problem for the Horizon was rust (this was the 1980s). They were real rust buckets and when I handed mine back at two years old, there was already bubbles on paintwork at the wheel-arches and on the leading edge of the bonnet. The paintwork also looked very dull after two years. Mind you, a colleague who had got a FIAT Strada as his company car had rust coming through the wings after a year! Nowadays one expects a car to last 12 years, back then a FIAT would rust away in five.
The Horizon was up against the Mk I VW Golf and, as other hatchbacks like the Escort Mk III, Vauxhall Astra and Austin Maestro came along, the Horizon lost more and more ground until it was replaced by the Peugeot 309.
For Margaret and I, the Talbot Horizon was our first family car - it was the car we had when Tom was born and so it took our new baby back to show Margaret’s mum and my dad in Cheshire and it was also the first car I had to fit a child seat into. Back then, there were no universal fixing points, so it was a right fiddle and the folding-rear-seat design meant that top fixing points had to go way back in the boot.
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| Margaret with baby Tom at Berberis Close on a snowy winter's day in 1982 |
It was also a car which followed Peterborough United. Along with Peter Corder, my colleague at the Peterborough Standard, I covered every Posh away game (as well as home matches). Radio Hereward had started up and we shared the live radio reports from matches (and the fees) 50:50. It was useful extra money with a new baby and Margaret not working, but the car certainly clocked up the miles. As I had a better car and Peter was often left with a pool Mini, I tended to do most of the longer runs - Aldershot, Exeter, Rochdale spring to mind. Often I took Wilf Elmer along for company. Wilf was a life-long Peterborough fan and had followed them since he was a boy. He was retired from his job in the office at Phorpres brickworks and worked part-time at the Peterborough Standard helping us to compile darts and dominoes league results and tables. Wilf was well into his 70s but sharp as a razor and good company on a long journey.
He was a great bloke, but he could be a liability. Once we’d stopped at a motorway services and had nipped to the loo. I’d gone into a cubicle and Wilf was at the urinal. I heard a bloke asking him directions to somewhere and Wilf didn’t have a clue where he was. “Hang on,” I heard him say. “Eric, Eric (banging on the door) what’s the best way to ...” I’ve never given directions from a toilet seat before and, hopefully, never will again.
Another time, we were driving back from an away game. I’d been doing the final reports and interviews from the match and so Wilf had to hang on for half an hour and had gone to get himself a coffee. After we’d been on the road for a couple of hours, he said he needed a wee. Of course, we’d just gone past a service station and I said I’d stop at the next one. Well, it was a particularly long way between service areas and we’d come off the M4 onto the old road through St Albans to pick up the A1 (this was in the days before the M25). Wilf said if we didn’t find somewhere soon, we’d be seeing that coffee again (which I thought was an odd expression), but he was in dire need so I said I’d just pull over and he could relieve himself on the verge. It was pitch black and no-one was going to see. Wilf was out of the door as the car was coming to a stop and promptly disappeared into the darkness. He came back ages later, a little shaken. He’d dashed out of the car, taken a few steps away for modesty’s sake and found himself running down a steep embankment. He could have gone head over heels!
I didn’t have the Horizon for very long. At the time, the company had a policy of replacing cars every two years.
Also see:
Ford Popular - click
Bedford HA Van - click
Morris Mini - click
Vauxhall Viva HC - click
Citroen GS Club - click
Morris Marina 1.3GL - click
very nice thanks
ReplyDeletevery nice thanks
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