In 1955 an elegant MG TC open top sports car became the first of many “Tin Lizzies” for Jim Hickman – and with it came a Europeran adventure that few people could ever dream of.

Jim would call all his subsequent cars “‘Lizzie”, after the original nickname for the historic Model T Ford.

He was brought up in Warley and trained as a pattern maker with Midland Motor Cylinder, part of the Birmid group, in Smethwick.

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When he married his sweetheart Iris in 1954, the couple moved into a property in Eve Lane, Upper Gornal, where they have lived ever since.

A year after they got married Jim decided to buy his first car – a six-year-old MG TC priced at £345. And he still recalls his nerves at having to visit his bank manager to borrow the £300 needed to complete the deal.

“I had to put my best suit on and it was quite daunting when I was called into his office.”

There were no problems with the loan, however, and Jim and Iris became one of the first couples in their area to own a sports car.

Jim says: “It was a lovely sports car of its day – minimal instruments, no heater or radio, no indicators, just a flap to stick out your arm. It had a 1,275cc engine and the top speed was 75mph ‘with a following wind’.”

In 1958 they decided to take “Lizzie” on a 2,300-mile drive through Europe and, after a cursory check of the oil and water, the couple set off. They decided to fly across the channel with the TC in the hold of the plane.

This may seem an extravagant way of crossing the Channel but this was not only the pre-Tunnel era, it was before the arrival of roll-on, roll-off ferries.

Neither had flown before and the couple were surprised at how low the plane was on the half hour hop from Lydd in Kent to Le Touquet in northern France.

“I can remember saying I was surprised there were any chimneys left in Le Touquet, we were that low,”said Jim.

But they were soon on the road and heading for the Alps. Jim remembers: “The mountains were no trouble for Lizzie. Its little engine never missed a beat. Whenever we stopped there was always a crowd gathered round the car.”

They drove through Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Austrian Tyrol and then into Germany where they experienced their first taste of motorway driving and visited fairytale castles as well as the atmospheric Bavarian Black Forest.

Their trip did not pass trouble-free, however. In Koblenz they had their cases stolen and had to return to Ostend to catch their return flight in just the clothes they had on. Amazingly, German police recovered their luggage and forwarded it on, minus some bottles of alcohol and with some of Iris’s dresses altered, to make them bigger.

“We kept Lizzie about a year longer then traded her in for a beautiful Italian Red Triumph TR2 sports car,” says Jim.

He left engineering to run Hickman’s Fruit, a greengrocer business in Stone Cross, West Bromwich, before moved on to fruit and veg at Asda. But late in his working life he returned to his original vocation as a pattern maker until retirement in 2001.

And since his first “Lizzie” he’s driven a succession of desirable cars including a Mark II ‘Morse’ Jaguar, Mini Cooper S and Mitsubishi Sapporo Turbo.

He can recall a holiday to East Anglia in the Cooper S with his wife, three children, mother-in-law and all their luggage crammed on board.

Then there was the time in 1967 when his wife reversed into another car at a set of traffic lights in the Jaguar, only to return home and demolish a wall in the garage too.

“To this day she’s never driven since,” says Jim. “Though to be fair, first gear and reverse were very close together in that car.”

He and Iris are both aged 80 now and although they have enjoyed a number of cars together, Jim reckons none can top his current Lexus IS. “I’ve driven some lovely ‘Lizzies’ over the years but I wouldn’t swop any of them for this one.”

By Motoring Editor Peter Carroll