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My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

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You're listening to the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service with me Daniel Gordon.

And today I'm taking you back to 1948

when the British government began issuing free vehicles to disabled people.

Good news for the disabled.

On order by the Ministry of Pensions are 2,000 luxury invalid carriages, the last word in comfort and convenience, designed to make shopping and visiting easier. Once full-scale production is reached, the carriages will be issued free.

Launching Britain's invalid vehicle service was a bold progressive move.

It was the world's first state-run scheme to give individual transport to

disabled citizens.

Special mechanical features include all manual controls.

On the road it does 70 miles to the gallon with a top speed of

around 45 miles an hour, something to make the way easier along the hard road

of disablement. Initially known as the invalid carriage, people usually referred to them by the name of the company that had made most of them,

in the car. They had three wheels and were basically the body of a car built on top of a motor bike.

Colin Powell got his first in the car in 1965.

It vibrates, it had fumes coming into the cabin from the exhaust. It was cold, it was lonely, it was

unstable, it was a mess.

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