Sandra Schluter - Our Zephyrs.
Hi there, my name is Sandra and I am Karl’s wife. This is a
story of how I became interested in Zephyrs (not Karl
My Dad had Zephyrs and all us kids became very attached to
them. They were our day-to-day car as well as our car that we would all go on a
trip in. They took us everywhere we needed to go.
Firstly there was the old Mkll, which us kids kindly named
"Beetle Bomb" and had many different panels from donor cars and as a
result was multi coloured. I can’t remember too much about this car except that
we were very proud to own it and all its colours made it even better (to us
kids anyway).
Then there was a faithful old Mklll Zephyr. Boy were we
excited when we brought this one. It was two toned (which was a big improvement
from the Mkll
This poor old car was stolen on 3 occasions. The first
time, it was gone for 3 days before it was found smashed up on one side. It
went away and was panel beated and painted down that side (in REAL paint so it
looked really smart on that side). I really missed the old girl while she was
away. Dad put a cutout switch on it after that, but again it was stolen from
outside his work. The police said that the thieves had probably watched Dad for
a number of days and knew exactly where the cutout switch was. This time though
it was recovered that night and in one piece. The next time it was stolen from
outside our house at night and they pushed the car up the street so as not to
wake anyone. Only when they got to the top of the street, the Doberman
dogs from the house on the corner started up a right racket, and the
thieves took off.
We went many miles in this old car and had a lot of fun. I can
remember one time (out of many) that Dad went to do U turn only to have the
gears jam up and leave us stranded in the middle of the road, on a steep hill
and cars piling up behind us. Dad had to get out of the car, get underneath it
and release the gears. We thought it was funny but I’m not sure he did!
The old girl never had carpets in the back, which we
thought was really neat and it kept us amused for hours on long trips. We would
eat minties (lollies) and one of us would roll the papers up and put them
through the hole in the floor in the back and the rest of us would watch them
fly out from underneath.
Dad always said the car went better on the way home as we
had a tail wind!!
Dad sold the old car for $100 in 1983 and brought a Morris
Marina. I have to say I cried when they took the poor old girl away. I was sure
that they wouldn’t care for her like we did and sure enough, it was written off
within a month of them owning it.
I have owned a number of cars now (mainly Fords
So there has always been a love of Zephyrs in my heart and
always will be. Nothing technical in this write up, just a lot of treasured
memories
Sandra.