I HAVE NEVER BEEN what you'd call a car person. I can't identify a passing car by the shape of its fenders or the sweep of its lines. I like the convenience cars offer, but I really don't care what kind I have as long as it operates safely and reliably, is big enough to accommodate my family and our dog and has a radio that works. So, I was amused to find myself reflecting with some pleasure on the cars of my life after reading Russell Felton's piece on the internal combustion engine ("Elegantly Simple").

When I was five, six and seven, living in London, England, during the late 1950s and early '60s, my mother had a series of old black Morris cars. Most were made just after the Second World War, and one, my brother, Nick, tells me, dated from 1939. All of them seemed to have brittle, musty-smelling leather upholstery with numerous rips, revealing yellowish stuffing that I was convinced housed vermin. Getting these vehicles to start was always an adventure. Nick, who was only two years my senior, would have to insert a crank into the front of the car and turn it (not an easy task, I might add) while my mother worked the key, clutch and gas pedal, trying to prod the engine into action. When things went well, a few cranks would do the job. But etched in my mind are the not so good days, when no amount of cranking could persuade the car to start, and my mother would declare it "flooded."

On these days, my mother would put the car in neutral, and Nick and I would be required to push it to the end of our quiet block and around the corner onto a road that ran downhill. I would then get in, and my brother would be left to give a final heave to get the car moving down the hill so that my mother could effect a rolling start. Nick would run as fast as he could to the bottom of the hill and jump in before the car had a chance to stop.

It was in one of these conveyances that Nick and I nearly met with disaster. My mother had left us in the car alone while she popped into a house to see an elderly acquaintance. We were bored. Nick moved into the driver's seat and began fiddling with the pedals and levers. The car began to roll down the hill on which we'd parked toward the busy street that intersected it at the bottom. I began screaming; my brother desperately tried to apply the brake. And then a man stepped in front of the car and, through some inexplicable exercise of strength and ingenuity, managed to stop it. It wasn't until years later that I realized the extent of the risk he'd taken on our behalf.

Not long after this incident, my mother arrived to pick my brother and me up from school not in an old black Morris but in a spanking-new, two-toned blue Hillman Minx. It was a present from my mother's parents, who'd decided enough was enough. Nick and I were greatly relieved.

During the early years of my childhood, my father had a dark grey Rover. It was a secondhand car, but nonetheless seemed luxurious to me, with its soft, fabric-covered seats, ability to start without a crank, and pleasant smell. My father was a kind man, and I've no doubt he would have liked to have lent his car to my mother. But he couldn't. He was a family doctor at a time and place when that meant spending part of each day visiting patients in their homes and frequently going out at night to deliver babies or deal with emergencies at people's homes. Consequently, he had to have a reliable car available at all times, save for holidays and the occasional evening or Sunday when he wasn't on call.

I have very fond memories of the Rover. Sometimes, I would go in this car with my father on his Saturday-morning "rounds." It would be just he and I together, and my father would usually buy me some "sweets" and a comic to keep me busy in the car when I couldn't go with him into a patient's home. And it was in this car that we travelled to a small cottage in North Wales for our much loved summer holidays.

The cars of my teenage years, when I was living in Canada, seemed so much more modern than those we'd had in England. My father had a series of huge (by British and today's standards) green Chrysler Newports and my mother a more modest, but rather sporty, gold Dodge Dart. They had seat belts and headrests. It was a whole new world.

My father's cars took us on adventures across Canada, but the Dodge Dart holds place of honour as the seminal car of my youth. It was in the Dodge that I learned to drive, had my first not serious – but humbling – accident, and drove to school dances or the drive-in with my friends on Friday nights. I named the car Guinevere, and she and I were companions for many years.

When I went to university, my mother let me take Guinevere with me. "It would," she said, "make it easy for me to come home to visit." Guinevere saw me through university, but eventually had to be consigned to the scrap yard, the victim of advancing age and an alarming tendency to keep on rolling despite my depressing the brake pedal.

In the years since Guinevere, I've had four cars: a compact hatchback when there was only my husband and I; a mid-size station wagon when we acquired two dogs; a larger one when two growing children and two dogs were too much for the capacity of the mid-size wagon; and now, with two teenagers (and all the associated paraphernalia), a minivan.

Although I look back at the cars of my childhood with a measure of nostalgia, I am grateful that cranking and rolling starts are not part of my life today – and that airbags, headrests and seat belts are. – Sarah Lawley