Not a car story as such but related to the tales related above.
As a teenager in the '80s I was a member of a steam and model railway society. Where's this going you may ask? Well many of my fellow members were English and one in particular was a retired gentleman who'd been involved in the construction and operation of New Zealand's one and only oil refinery. Old Vic had a wealth of stories from his time in the oil industry in various parts of the world and he would often share them with us younger lads. One such story involves driver licencing. It seems young Vic, as he was then, had obtained his learner's licence in England in 1939. Well we all know what else happened in 1939. Shortly afterwards, or so he told us, all the testing officers got called up to become instructors in the military. Come 1945 and the outbreak of peace it was declared that anybody who had got a learner's licence before the war would be automatically granted a full licence. Every time Vic got posted to another country for a new job he would show the appropriate authority in that country his English licence and they would give him one of theirs on the strength of it. Long story short, he drove a vast assortment of motor vehicles quite legally in a multitude of countries and never once had to sit a driving test.
As a teenager in the '80s I was a member of a steam and model railway society. Where's this going you may ask? Well many of my fellow members were English and one in particular was a retired gentleman who'd been involved in the construction and operation of New Zealand's one and only oil refinery. Old Vic had a wealth of stories from his time in the oil industry in various parts of the world and he would often share them with us younger lads. One such story involves driver licencing. It seems young Vic, as he was then, had obtained his learner's licence in England in 1939. Well we all know what else happened in 1939. Shortly afterwards, or so he told us, all the testing officers got called up to become instructors in the military. Come 1945 and the outbreak of peace it was declared that anybody who had got a learner's licence before the war would be automatically granted a full licence. Every time Vic got posted to another country for a new job he would show the appropriate authority in that country his English licence and they would give him one of theirs on the strength of it. Long story short, he drove a vast assortment of motor vehicles quite legally in a multitude of countries and never once had to sit a driving test.