V-E-V miscellany, December 1971, December 1971

A piece in the Yorkshire Post, by lain Smith, reports on the number of ancient motor vehicles still in regular use in Montevideo, due, apparently, to a tax system which trebles the price of a new car, putting the cost of a new Ford Cortina, according to this article, up to £3,000 before it is even put on the road. Consequently, Smith tells us, Packards, Studebakers, ancient Chryslers, Nashes and Fords roam the Uraguayen roads, where “the MoT test has not been heard of. If it goes—it goes”. Smith makes the sage observation that the local government would do well to reverse their 300% car import-tax system, to prevent outside speculators getting their hands on this treasure-trove.

A 1914 GP Delage, less body, has been for sale in Australia. A 1925 Vulcan lorry, which had been lying derelict for years in a wood near Kingennie House, north of Monifieth in Angus, fitted with a caravan body having a large bow window where the windscreen used to be, has been rescued by a Leven works constructor. It is thought to be a model of which there are only three others in Britain.

On the recent subject of aero-engined road cars of the 1920s, another we might have recalled was a Metallurgique chassis into which the Streatham Engineering Co. installed a 90-h.p. Rolls-Royce Hawk airship engine at the end of 1922. The local firm of J. H. Plater made a two-seater body for it, using a R-R radiator and mascot.