First Family Car Mobile SK92024

First Family Car By Chow Kat Liang
Mobile format V1 by Chong See Kui

Our first post WWII family car, a black Ford 10 used car was purchased and shipped from Singapore in 1950. It was one of those models that a crank was needed to start the engine. When it failed to crank start, we had to resort to pushing the car to start. My father drove it to his job in Seria every day and it really served its purpose as we literally ran it to the ground. At one point, it became so bad that there were holes in the rusted floorboards and we had to cover them with steel plates to prevent someone stepping through them. The car had so many miles on it that it had far exceeded its odometer’s range. However, we were quite happy and proud of this old clunker since not too many people in the area had owned a family car during the early 1950’s.

Among my siblings, my oldest sister, Ngen Song was the first to drive the car. Prior to getting her driver’s license she would practice her driving skills by negotiating the car back and forth along quiet streets. There were no car garages in the Malay Kampong house where we lived so the car had to be parked on the roadside. On one occasion after practice she tired to return the car to its original parking space, as she backed the car she under estimated the slope, lost control, it continued to roll toward a ditch and finally went over it and crashed into the fence of our neighbor across the street. She got panic and yelled for my brother Ying and I to her rescue. We got her out of the jam and later fixed the neighbor’s fence.

My sister admitted she only knew to drive, but was no car maintenance type. Normally, my father would drive and drop her off at school where she taught and then to his job in Seria. This time she was driving alone to school, on the way she noticed thick smoke pouring out through the hood, she was terrified and immediately stopped the car to seek help. Fortunately, a family friend was passing by and came to her rescue. He determined the radiator was completely dry. After letting the engine to cool and topping the radiator with water my sister was happily on her way to school.

One day after work on his drive home from Seria, my father spotted an employee standing on the roadside waiting for the bus so he stopped to offer him a ride. When he heard a door slam he took off thinking the guy was seated. Upon arrival at destination he stopped the car to let his rider out but when he turned his head to the back seats there was no one there. Perplexed and curious, he turned the car around and headed back toward the spot where he picked up the guy to find that he was still standing on the roadside awaiting his ride. What actually happened was the guy had a few large bags he needed to put them in the trunk. The door shut noise came from the trunk rather than the passenger door that my father thought it was.

One grey and overcast afternoon, my father and my older brother, Ying were driving in the old jalopy from Kuala Belait to Seria, suddenly, the heavens opened up, then came the downpour and my father could not see the road in front any further than 10 feet because the windshield wipers failed to operate (those days the wiper system was operated by vacuum from the engine via a vacuum hose and not electrically). So in order to rid the rainwater from the windshield, my brother had to locate the wipers mechanism with his hands under the dashboard and manually swing it from side to side to act as the vacuum system. Luck was on their side (tropical storms don’t last long) the sky soon cleared and they drove home safely.

One time the three musketeers (my older brothers and I) replaced the broken rear springs (those days cars only have leaf springs for the rear wheels) with thicker ones so that we could pack the whole family in it. We absolutely over did it, as the replacement spring had raised the car a good 6 to 9 inches higher and they were so stiff that when ever the car ran over rough surfaces it would bump our heads against the roof of the car. Needless to say, we had to switch back to softer springs.