London's Open-Air Exhibition Of Vintage Cars

The Editor has long been aware that London presents a fine, free exhibition of vintage and near-vintage cars. In the wide thoroughfares and select squares of Kensington, the multitudinous side streets of Bayswater and Chelsea, such cars are to be seen, awaiting the happy day when their owners have a spare petrol coupon or can afford another month’s licence and insurance. Recently we persuaded the photographer to seek out some of these cars and commit them to this page. In fact, those illustrated, and several more, were discovered in a one-hour drive and all within a few miles of Piccadilly Circus, hub of the Metropolis. In these days of petrol famine you, too, may care to set forth in the Great City, to see what you can find.

On the extreme left is the back-braked, bulbous-tailed A.C. tourer which was found in Queen’s Gate, facing Hyde Park, sheltered by the statue of Robert Napier — apt, when you recall S. F. Edge’s association with both Napier and A.C. cars. In the centre is a Fiat 501, waiting for its master to emerge from the Royal College of Arts. We feared this one had been abandoned, a victim, perhaps,of the, inflated petrol-tax. But no, between November and December it had turned round. Below, is a Rolls-Royce Twenty— you can’t go far in London without seeing these fine old cars.