Britain's bike friendly cars of the 1950s
Mon, March 29, 2021 
I got my first lightweight bike in 1950, it was only five years after the end of WWII and the economic turnaround in Britain and the rest of Europe was only in its early stages. Petrol was in short supply throughout WWII for obvious reasons. It was needed for the war effort, plus off shore oil had yet to be discovered in the UK. Oil had to be imported, and petrol was strictly rationed.
Rationing did not end at the end of WWII, in fact in 1948, (Three years after the war ended.) The Motor Spirit Regulation Act was passed by the British Government, and red dye was added to some petrol. The red petrol was for agriculture and commercial use only. A private motorist caught with red petrol in his tank, could lose his driver’s license for a year, and a petrol station selling red gas to private motorists could be shut down.
The scarcity of petrol throughout the war and the five years that followed, meant there was very little motorized traffic on the roads, and even when petrol rationing ended in 1950, the average working man did not rush out to buy a car, many had never owned, or even driven a car. Traffic was light even into the mid to late 1950s.
In the late 1940s, my pre-teen years, I would ride my bike after school, in the dark using battery lights, with no fear for my safety from my parents. This era is now referred to as the “Golden Age of Cycling.” On the Continent of Europe, cycle racing was the number one sport.
Looking back, it was a great time to ride a bike. Many of the cars on the road were pre-war from the 1920s and 1930s. New cars produced were like the Morris Minor (Above.) and the Ford Anglia, (Below.) had a tiny engines around one liter. (1,000cc.) About the size of many motorcycles today.
You could forget about zero to sixty in a few seconds, for most vehicles, even the new ones, *60mph was the top speed, and that was probably downhill with the wind behind you. Throughout the 1950s, on city streets, there were still as many bicycles as cars, there were even a few horse drawn carts still in use.
A car driver did not sit fuming at a traffic light because there was a cyclist or a horse and cart ahead of him. The driver was lucky if he could get above 20mph between lights, and a fit cyclist on a lightweight bike could get away from a light faster than he could.
The first Motorway (Freeway.) the M1, did not open until 1959. It was approximately 70 miles long from London to Birmingham. I remember within the first few weeks it was littered with broken down cars, as people took their old clunkers out and took them up to speeds they were never built to maintain. The Golden Age of Cycling ended from that point on, as throughout the 1960s and 1970s, more motorways were built and other main roads were widened and straightened.
During the 1950s, most of the people driving cars had grown up riding bicycles, their parents probably still rode a bicycle as their personal transport. They didn’t get upset with cyclists on the road, and they were content to cruise along at 30mph, occasionally reaching 50 or 60 on a straight road that ran downhill. At least they were in they were protected from the rain and cold.
Gradually all that changed, and now you have a generation who never rode a bike to school as a kid. Owning and driving a car becomes ever increasingly expensive, and with the spending of all that money comes an attitude of entitlement.
However, Britain is still the same size as it was in the 1950s, but with a far greater population. Improved highways mean that you can drive from one city to another in a very short time. But what do you do when you get to the big city, where there is nowhere to park, and streets where built for horse drawn vehicles?
The cars of the 1950s and before may have been underpowered by today’s standards, but they still got people from A to B. They were cheap to buy, used less petrol, and they were simple to work on. A person could do their own maintenance. Most of all because of their lack of power and speed they were less of a danger to pedestrians and cyclists.
*Footnote: I am sure someone far more knowledgeable about the Morris Minor will tell me it had a top speed was in excess of 60mph. But just as many of today’s cars have a maximum speed well over 100mph. few are ever driven to that limit.
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Is it time to opt out of the culture of speed?
All over the United States and indeed the world, people are riding bicycles. Forget about saving the planet, that is not the reason, it is a satisfying and civilized way to travel. Faster and more efficient than walking, and for not much more energy input. Compared to driving a person is burning calories rather than gasoline.
A person riding to work each day on his bicycle is traveling for free, he gets there in only slightly less time that his colleague who drives. In some congested cities the cyclists gets there faster. He has not had to allot time to exercise or pay gym fees. When he gets to his destination he has fewer problems with parking.
Many more people would ride bicycles but they are afraid of being hit by cars. There are still those who will try to intimidate and bully anyone in their way. The whole “Share the Road” concept is flawed in that it implies that the roads are for cars and cyclists are asking drivers to share space with them.
This is not the case, public roads are just that, “Public.” They are there for people to travel from their home to where ever they need to be. The right is for the person to travel, not according to the persons’ mode of transport.
Look at any car ad on TV and what do you see? The obligatory slow motion shot of a car sliding sideways in a controlled skid, cars driving at break neck speed on deserted streets and highways.
This is not reality, on today’s congested roadways. Not only is driving fast impractical, it is downright dangerous. And what useful purpose does it serve? There is a legitimate argument for being allowed to maintain high speeds for long journeys on freeways that traverse miles and miles of open countryside.
However, when freeways approach cities and become congested, there is a definite need to slow to the same speed as everyone else. It is the driver trying to maintain his high rate of speed under these conditions that not only cause accidents, but cause people to brake and in turn lead to the stop and go traffic conditions that are all too familiar.
Speed limits need to be lowered to 20mph in crowded city centers where there are many pedestrians and cyclists. Would such a speed limit have a great impact on people’s over all drive time?
In most cases drivers simply accelerate to race from one traffic light to the next. On long stretches of highway, traffic lights can be timed so someone driving the speed limit can have green lights all the way through a town.
The faster cars go the more space is needed between each car. Therefore, people moving slower but continuously in a procession can travel closer to each other. This means traffic is moving slower but on any given stretch of highway it is carrying a larger volume of vehicles. So is the overall flow of vehicles per hour that much less? Bottom line is, people still get to where they need to be.
The world is becoming more and more crowded. Populations are exploding everywhere including the US. Every person who rides a bicycle is taking one more car off the road, making more room for those who choose to drive.
Wouldn’t life be a little more pleasant if everyone slowed down a notch? So what if it took you five or ten minutes longer to get to work, at the end of each day would that make a huge difference? Of course wishing for this is wishing for Utopia, but who would argue that it would be better if less people had to die on our roads.
The cities across America that have adopted a “Bicycle Friendly” program, have found that when more people ride bicycles the overall speed of traffic slows. With that comes less fatalities, not just for cyclists, but across the board for pedestrians and motorists too.
Previously posted May 2012