How many of you had a nodding dog in the rear car window ?
How about a lava lamp ?
How about a 'I’m Backing Britain" sticker ?
I admit to all those plus a tiger tail hanging from the car mirror, platform shoes and flaired trousers oh, Ben Sherman shirts too.
I didn’t however stoop so low to an eight track car stereo.
Wrangler shirt and denim jacket then moved on to loon pants Afghan coat and bandana in my hair, peace and love. Had a smiley badge stitched on to flared Jean’s long before emoji smiley thought of. Enough material in flares to make half a dozen pairs today.
My parents had a nodding dog…why? Was it fashionable at the time, I have no idea 
First car had essential accessories of wheel spacers, racing steering wheel and go faster strips but underneath was still a ford Cortina
Sunday drivers with 2 cushions neatly place on rear window ledge. Driver wore a flat cap and passenger had a blue rinse.
Guilty of the 8 track. 2 would fill the glove box.
Disaster when tape snagged in player, miles of tape everywhere. Player so big leaving little room for front passengers legs.
Fluffy dice hanging on the rearview mirror …
I’ll admit to the flares and Afghan, but nothing else 
I did have to keep spraying the goat skin with patchouli oil to make it smell a bit better
I’ll own up to a perm , pedal pushers and legwarmers. As for the car faux pas, that would be a silver racing spoiler on a Rover.
None of the above were a good look!
No lava lamps anyone ?
I had an Esso Blue key ring for the car keys.
In the 1950s my gear for ‘going up West’ in London consisted of green corduroy trousers with turn-ups; a second hand Gieves striped collarless shirt worn with a starched white collar and collar studs; a Paisley-pattern bow-tie (self-tied not clip-on); and my school pull-over. I wore round NHS spectacles with sprung stainless steel ear-pierces that fitted behind the lug-holes. And a Brylcreemed short-back-and-sides.
"Clothes shop"s (for the young working man or woman) had yet to be invented!
Although my style might seem like something from Monty Python now, it was outrageously head-turning in those days, when the only respectable outfit for a young man to wear “out of the house” when not working was a single-breasted grey suit from Burton’s. Or grey flannels and a Fairisle pullover for informal wear.
Few could afford one. And in the 1950s there was nowhere to go except the flicks or the dance hall, the Palais De Danse.
Next came the Teddy-boy style that was the prelude to today’s modern world of postwar masculine fashion.
I also remember visiting London’s first postwar coffée shop just after it opened. It was on Hammersmith Broadway and was called Heaven and Hell. Heaven was at street level, and Hell was in the basement. It boasted the first American juke-boxes.
I had a perm until Madonna had her hair cut really short for poppa don’t preach…I had my hair cut short and have never done that again nor had a perm…!
I loved leg warmers and me and my mates went for shorts worn over stockings and suspenders with leg warmers and doc martens…! (And depending on where we were going sometimes a parka…)
I still love doc martens…
My first car was a mini and my second car was a hillman imp to which I added red racing stripes…(no nodding dogs though…!)
My parents had one of those 8 track stereo tape players. The Stones, Simon &Garfunkel, Melanie, Leonard Cohen etc were useful for covering the sound of me being sick, happened frequently on the journey from the Côte d’Azur to Scotland.
“My parents had a nodding dog…why? Was it fashionable at the time, I have no idea .” @ChrisK
Not so much fashionable, perhaps, but a very amusing novelty that caught the public imagination.
It had no discernible purpose, except perhaps to indicate that the driver knew that life had a funny side, and wanted to share that with others.
It’s a rather British, or perhaps an English, trait. The Chinese have a similar tendency with their perpetual waving pussycat.
I love them. Hypnotisingly cute.
I managed to avoid a Rubicks Cube, claquers and
a Newton’s Cradle.
I learned to drive on a Hillman Imp.
Blimey, they were funny little cars.
Hi Peter,
You mentioning the clackers bought back some fun memories. I remember them being banned and my brother and I constantly having bruised knuckles but still playing with them all the same. 
They are shown below along with some other banned classics too.
Hi Tracey, yeah certain clackers were highly dangerous with loads of cases of eye damage etc. it beggars belief to imagine them being allowed in the first place.
I didn’t have Newton’s Cradle either, but was the owner of this little chap, one of the numerous perpetual motion desk toys popular at the time.
