My Favourite Car Was A Triumph Spitfire From The Cornwall Garage

A Memory of Hatch End.

I bought my favourite car in Hatch End from the Cornwall Garage in 1970. It is on the right of this view beyond the row of shops and the crossroads of Uxbridge Road and Cornwall Road.  It was a 1966 Triumph Spitfire, pale blue with two black "racing stripes" up the long bonnet over the hard top and down the boot!  It cost me all of £465 in April 1970. I rather think that the car is no more as I drove it for four years until selling it in my new home town of Sevenoaks to a local fireman who thought he may have mechanical and welding skills to strengthen the rusty body! Although these cars did not have large engines they were blessed with excellent acceleration thanks to a low body weight. Sadly the cornering was not great and it was possible to hang out the tail in spectacular skids!  

The Cornwall Garage was run by decent and honest people and they looked after me and my car most reliably. As a result I went back there in later years and bought two new cars from them when they became a Fiat franchise in the 1980's.

There were other garages in Hatch End. In Cornwall Road itself there was a small workshop which specialised in servicing three wheelers.

In the main road - probably just where the photographer is standing -   was Spurlings, a Vauxhall dealer. I recall my father buying a Vauxhall Viva in a quite disgusting shade of "vomit yellow" from them in 1969.

On the left of the picture near to the junction with Grimsdyke Road was a truly old-fashioned petrol station. Remarkably it was in the midst of a row of shops close to MacPhails the Greengrocer. They turned a handle to pump the petrol through a rubber hose attached to a very long gantry that swung out over the wide pavement. Health and Safety considerations didn't apply in those days!