1 Fiat 500 2ha 4 boys...19000 miles!

When the go-cart that an engineer father had built for his four sons couldn't handle the tufty terrain on their 2-hectare plot in Montana, Pretoria, they hunted down a Fiat 500 in a salvage yard. They only wanted its suspension system, but Mom intervened, the car was saved, and those little daredevils clocked up an impressive 19000 miles - all without leaving the plot.

- PETER VAN NOORD

Elsje Becker is a strong, gutsy woman. How could she be anything else after raising a troop of four lively lads, each one an even bigger (self-confessed) petrolhead than the next? This grandmother of seven and great-grandmother of one is a woman who perserveres, endures, holds her own and, above all, holds everything together (but she rarely holds her tongue...) It's no wonder that today, on the eve of her 90th birthday, she is still capable of doing a hundred squats every day.

Her husband, Joop, also a proud and upright man who spent many years working as an electrical engineer for the former Iscor, today reads aloud his memories of the 1957 Fiat Nuova 500 in their garage in detail and with great gusto. Joop turns 90 in October.

The Beckers are two remarkable, with-it people who celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary on 28 March 2024.

One photo hanging on their living room wall shows Mom and Dad with three boys sporting impish dimples. Today, they are all successful in their own right. Hennie, the eldest, is an electrical engineer who retired to Nuwerus and lends support to his minister wife; Gert, a mechanical engineer, is the founder and CEO of Saspine, a Pretoria-based company that manufactures implants for spinal surgery; and Jopie is an architect who also works in property development. The youngest and a latecomer to the family, Johan, also an architect, hadn't yet been born when the photo was taken.

THE BOYS CERTAINLY WERE a handful. Joop explains: "As a young married couple, we lived at 24 Park Avenue (today Emily Hobhouse Avenue) in Pretoria North, directly opposite Pretoria North High School, from 1964 to 1970. Hennie was six years old in 1967 and Gert was five."