Motor cars and me are rather incompatible. I feel little affinity to them and know even less about them. What I do know, and rather begrudge, is that they have morphed into our artificial carapace, which we now find we cannot do without, and invade our spaces.

King George V in Malta in 1908. Car no. 1 was a Renault 8.

A Rover 20HP during the royal visit of King George V in 1912.

Cars in Malta started quite early but very sparsely too. Victorian and Edwardian photos only exceptionally show motors in Maltese streetscapes. 

In their very earliest days, cars in Malta carried no registration number plates, until the police authorities ordered every vehicle to be licensed and display an identifying numeral.

A Humber 1934 model

Family picnic by car in the countryside, 1920s

An Essex 6 model in Malta, 1928

A Morris 8 model seen in 1947

They gave the matter much thought and estimated that the maximum number of cars on the island would never exceed 300. So, the commissioner of police assigned no. 1 to the governor’s car and no. 300 to his own, as the licensing authority. He got it wrong but only by half a million.

"For cars to pass through Strada Reale, in Valletta, they needed three licences – one to drive, another to enter Valletta and a third one to pass through Kingsway!"

When I trained as a lawyer, traffic regulations had not yet been updated – they still mandated tyres of solid rubber around a wooden ring. Drivers would be fined if the rubber rings were not fixed securely to the ring by means of strong nails or if the driver did not toot the car’s horn at every crossroad. 

A Morris 8 model seen in 1947

A post-war Jaguar 1½-litre model, in 1946

A 1935 Jaguar SS1

An elegant limo in Malta in the 1920s

For cars to pass through Strada Reale, in Valletta, they needed three licences – one to drive, another to enter Valletta and a third one to pass through Kingsway!

A collision near Portes des Bombes on January 1, 1925. Both cars were write-offs

Politics did not spare cars. 1920s imperialist authors complained that although British vehicles were at least as good as any others, in a British crown colony, continental cars were invading the market. 

I know next to nothing about cars. I have tentatively tried to identify some models and leave it to experts to point out my howlers.

All images from the author's collections