A FORTNIGHT ago, we concluded our discussion of the identity of the car parked outside Barkers in Northallerton in the mid-1960s by saying: “Perhaps we shall never know for certain.”

We were wrong. “It was most definitely an Austin A60 Cambridge,” says Jean Gill, of Northallerton, “in either a turquoise or mauve colour.”

Jean knows because it was her father’s car – in fact, that’s him, Mike Scales, the managing director of Barkers into the 1980s, on the right of the group of three wearing a trilby.

“It would have been purchased new in the early 1960s from Motor Delivery in Brompton Road, where the Asda store is now. Three or four years later, the next car would have been a Austin 1800 from Motor Delivery, but he had so many problems with that that he wrote to the chairman to complain.”

Compared to Northallerton’s current parking issues, which regularly adorn the front page of this paper, the mid-1960s were very different days. “He’d drive to work, park opposite Barkers, didn’t have to pay, probably didn’t lock the car, drive home for lunch and then go back to work and be able to park in the same space because there were so few cars about.”