Thinking back 20 years, I recall that the first thing I bought after buying my first classic was a good old Haynes Manual – a process that I repeated for the next few purchases because it was, and still is, the default setting for ‘getting off to a good start’ when it comes to familiarising yourself with the inner workings of your old car.
While those cars have since moved on, the bookcases in the Port household still display some of those manuals, but for me the real delights are the various other handbooks which also take up considerable shelf space.
Car boot sales, second-hand bookshops, charity shops and, more recently, ebay have all provided some of these rash purchases but occasionally it’s nice to pause and remind myself just why I bought them in the first place!
Because I have owned a fair few classics from the BMC stable, there is a considerable number of different incarnations of the standard handbooks available when the cars were new.
Along with the aforementioned Haynes manual, they were, for me, the only two publications I needed in order to try and keep my Morris Minor, MGB or Mini on the road.
The ‘simple’ things were covered in the well-thumbed stapled BMC handbook and illustrated very effectively with the trademark line drawings and although they got a little more fussy as the 1960s gave way to the ‘70s and ‘80s, the essence remained the same.
