V-E-V- miscellany, August 1971

We heard from George Brooks in Australia the other day. His Staker Squires Six is still running well, and recently completed over 3,000 miles in the round trip when competing in the Sydney-Melbourne Rally. Knowing our interest in vintage oddities Brooks has drawn our attention to the street names in the Croydon Park and Hendon districts of Adelaide—there are streets, avenues and crescents called Durant, Chic, Rugby, Essex, Knight, Packhard (sic), Hudson, Nash, Royce, Austin, Minerva, Hotchkiss, Citroën, Auburn, Overland, Sunbeam, Talbot, Charron, Lancia, Alvis, Chrysler, Reo, Morris, Cowley, Itala, Star, Morris, Vauxhall, Harley, Standard, Crossley, Gray, all in one area, and, in the Hendon area, Sopwith, Vickers, de Haviland (sic), Avro, Farman and Spad.

The Bullnose Morris Club is quietly active, its journal for June containing an account of a long winter adventure trailing the remains of a flatnose Morris from Suffolk to Devon. Multicylinder, journal of the Pre-50 American AC, which incorporates the Ford V8 Register, tells of a 1925 Essex saloon which was laid up in 1929, when its owner bought a new Essex Super Six, after a mileage of 36,000, until it was acquired by a member last year, in excellent order apart from its paintwork, even the silencing system being extremely sound. Sussex Industrial History, journal of the Sussex Industrial Archaeology Study Group, carried, in its Summer issue, a 21-page illustrated article on Dolphin Motors of Shoreham.

A red 1926 Austin 7 Chummy is still used occasionally in Spain by Don Manuel González Gordon Marqués de Bonanza, President of Gonzalez, Byass & Co., Ltd., the sherry people. He says that, like an old Oporto Sherry, it improves with age. Originally purchased by Guy Williams, of Williams & Humbert, this Austin has spent all its life in the sherry world.