A British retiree who drove to his last day on the job Friday in the same '36 Ford he drove on his first day 48 years ago says it was "almost like it was fate."

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Graham Rudd, who turns 65 Monday, retired from the William Clowes Ltd. printing factory in Beccles, Suffolk, where he had worked since 1961, the Daily Mail reported. He bought the 1936 Ford Popular a few months before going to work at Clowes.

Rudd did not own the car continuously through the years. He and his wife sold it when they started a family because it was not big enough to hold a child's stroller.

In the 1990s, Rudd met a man at a vintage car rally who talked about his Ford and its aluminum roof. Rudd realized it was his old car.

"It was almost like it was fate," he said. "It took me about three years of working on the new owner to buy it back. Considering he knew I was desperate to get it, he was very fair."

Rudd used the car on his last day "to give her a run out." The car, nicknamed Henry after Henry Ford, has traveled 149,000 miles, just over 2,000 miles a year.