The weather was exceptionally mild that Christmas holiday and one amazing morning our whole family got ready to go for our first drive in the first motor-car we had ever owned. This new motor-car was an enormous long black French automobile called a De Dion-Bouton which had a canvas roof that folded back. The driver was to be that twelve-years-older-than-me half-sister (now aged twenty-one) who had recently had her appendix removed.
She had received two full half-hour lessons in driving from the man who delivered the car, and in that enlightened year of 1925 this was considered quite sufficient. Nobody had to take a driving-test. You were your own judge of competence, and as soon as you felt you were ready to go, off you jolly well went.
* * *
In Danny the Champion of the World, Danny was even younger than Roald Dahl’s sister when he took to the road.
‘I will not pretend I wasn’t petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn’t be exciting if they didn’t. I sat very stiff and upright in my seat, gripping the steering-wheel tight with both hands. My eyes were about level with the top of the steering-wheel. I could have done with a cushion to raise me up higher, but it was too late for that.’
* * *
As we all climbed into the car, our excitement was so intense we could hardly bear it.
‘How fast will it go?’ we cried out. ‘Will it do fifty miles an hour?’
‘It’ll do sixty!’ the ancient sister answered. Her tone was so confident and cocky it should have scared us to death, but it didn’t.
‘Oh, let’s make it do sixty!’ we shouted. ‘Will you promise to take us up to sixty?’
‘We shall probably go faster than that,’ the sister announced, pulling on her driving-gloves and tying a scarf over her head in the approved driving-fashion of the period.
* * *
Roald Dahl’s favourite car as a grown-up was a BMW.
* * *
The canvas hood had been folded back because of the mild weather, converting the car into a magnificent open tourer. Up front, there were three bodies in all, the driver behind the wheel, my half-brother (aged eighteen) and one of my sisters (aged twelve). In the back seat there were four more of us, my mother (aged forty), two small sisters (aged eight and five) and myself (aged nine). Our machine possessed one very special feature which I don’t think you see on the cars of today. This was a second windscreen in the back solely to keep the breeze off the faces of the back-seat passengers when the hood was down. It had a long centre section and two little end sections that could be angled backwards to deflect the wind.
We were all quivering with fear and joy as the driver let out the clutch and the great long black automobile leaned forward and stole into motion.
‘Are you sure you know how to do it?’ we shouted. ‘Do you know where the brakes are?’
‘Be quiet!’ snapped the ancient sister. ‘I’ve got to concentrate!’
Down the drive we went and out into the village of Llandaff itself. Fortunately there were very few vehicles on the roads in those days. Occasionally you met a small truck or a delivery-van and now and again a private car, but the danger of colliding with anything else was fairly remote so long as you kept the car on the road.
* * *
Drivers and cars had to be licensed in Britain from 1903 – but nobody was actually tested to see if they could drive a car until 1934.
* * *
The splendid black tourer crept slowly through the village with the driver pressing the rubber bulb of the horn every time we passed a human being, whether it was the butcher-boy on his bicycle or just a pedestrian strolling on the pavement. Soon we were entering a countryside of green fields and high hedges with not a soul in sight.
‘You didn’t think I could do it, did you?’ cried the ancient sister, turning round and grinning at us all.
‘Now you keep your eyes on the road,’ my mother said nervously.
‘Go faster!’ we shouted. ‘Go on! Make her go faster! Put your foot down! We’re only doing fifteen miles an hour!’
* * *
Roald Dahl bought a car in 1936 – for the grand sum of £14. He must have been one of the very first people to take the new driving test.
* * *
Spurred on by our shouts and taunts, the ancient sister began to increase the speed. The engine roared and the body vibrated. The driver was clutching the steering-wheel as though it were the hair of a drowning man, and we all watched the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. We were probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour when we came suddenly to a sharpish bend in the road. The ancient sister, never having been faced with a situation like this before, shouted ‘Help!’ and slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel wildly round. The rear wheels locked and went into a fierce sideways skid, and then, with a marvellous crunch of mudguards and metal, we went crashing into the hedge. The front passengers all shot through the front windscreen and the back passengers all shot through the back windscreen. Glass (there was no Triplex then) flew in all directions and so did we. My brother and one sister landed on the bonnet of the car, someone else was catapulted out on to the road and at least one small sister landed in the middle of the hawthorn hedge. But miraculously nobody was hurt very much except me. My nose had been cut almost clean off my face as I went through the rear windscreen and now it was hanging on only by a single small thread of skin. My mother disentangled herself from the scrimmage and grabbed a handkerchief from her purse. She clapped the dangling nose back into place fast and held it there.