More V-E-V Miscellany, June 1977, June 1977

It is good to know that cars from the Peter Black Vintage & Veteran Car Collection in Keighley emerge into the open from time to time. On June 19th Mr. Black and some of his friends join with a local car club to run a map-reading contest, using cars from the Collection. Those interested should contact N. Kershaw, 12 Regent Drive, Skipton, N. Yorkshire. Another vintage and veteran happening in the North will be the Leyland Festival at Worden Park, Leyland, Lancs., on June 4th, when the Royal Jubilee and Leyland’s 80th anniversary will be celebrated with an assembly of cars and trucks manufactured by Leyland. The person to contact about this is K. Robinson, Transport Manager, Leyland Truck and Bus Division, Leyland, Preston, PR5 1SN. Northern Alvis Day happens at Doncaster Race Course on June 12th.

The Birmingham Evening Mail has been publishing a series of “Memories” Supplements and a Motor Sport reader, Mr. R. W. Johnson of Hull Green, has kindly sent us that devoted to Transport. Composed of old photographs submitted by readers of the Mail, the supplement covers a fine variety of horse, bicycle, motorcycle, commercial-vehicle and car memories, from various periods. The cover picture is of Moat Lane market in 1936, with Ford platform-trucks mingling with the horse-drawn draws. There is a snap of an open flat-twin Jowett driven by a lady, who has taken her schoolboy son to old Castle Bromwich aerodrome in it in 1930, a 1927 Morris-Cowley (wrongly dated as 1925) saloon that caused a sensation by hauling a caravan up Porlock, a happy Solihull man in his braces, with the 1927 magneto-ignition Austin 7 saloon he bought for £18 secondhand and which is seen on the Weston-Super-Mare-Bristol road on August Bank holiday, 1935, and a lady driving a four-seater Rover 8. Chauffeurs have not been overlooked – one stands proudly by an Ansell’s Brewery early Wolseley-Siddeley tourer and another sits in the tonneau of a 1908 8-h.p. Darracq belonging to F. Ash & Son, the surgical instrument makers. Among many other nostalgic pictures is one of an unidentified car of very sporting pretentions, said to have been used on Brooklands around 1932 – the rear-view mirror seems to be attached to the outside hand-brake. HM the King and Queen of Spain are said to be occupying the front seats of a big open 1908 Daimler, a gentleman who was an “executive of a Birmingham Motorcycle engine manufacturer” is seen in what could be an Arden cyclecar, and two ladies are out in a disc-wheeled Singer Junior or Ten tourer. Albion chain-drive and Tillings-Stevens ‘buses abound, trams are well depicted, as is a 1923 Daimler 23-seater single-decker ‘bus used by the Birmingham Corporation Tramways Dept. A Daimler lorry in , France during the 1914/18 war, a Napier taxi at a war-time wedding, a converted Crossley(?) char-a-banc, and a view of Six Ways, Erdington, with only a tram, a Trojan and a couple of Model-T Ford lorries in sight, but directional arrows at the crossing, are among other interesting photographs. It just shows what there is to be dug out; Motor Sport is always glad to Isee pictures of this kind, of the more exciting cars from the past. – W.B.