OBITUARY
OBITUARY
IT IS with sorrow that we heard of the death last August of that great veteran-car enthusiast, Francois W. Hutton-Stott, following a long illness. Francis discovered the fun of unearthing and using pre-I905 cars when he was living with his parents near the Hog’s Back in Surrey. in 1931. With the aid of the knowledgeable family-chauffeur, George Upton, he set about finding such cars and making them run properly, at a time when they had yet to become valuable Collectors’s Items or social assets. As Upton had worked at the Lanchester Motor Company and knew the intricacies of the early Lanchesters intinuitely, Francis tended to concentrate on this make, although he and his mother drove other early vehicles such as Wolseley in the Veteran Car Club events of the 19396, and he continued to do so regularly until quite recent times. With Upton, Hutton-Stott opened a garage at Camberley, mainly to administer to his and other people’s Lanchesters, although the family-finance came from a well-known shipping-line. Later, at his house at Speen Place, near Newbury, Hutton-Stott filled his coach-houses with Lanchesters of many kinds, from the advanced veteran models, through the vintage repertoire, to the last of this illustrious line, and he and his wife and children continued to be active participants in VCC and other events. His Lanchester Collection included that special-bodied 1920 Lanchester Forty limousine. of which it is said that when it was presented to HM King George V at the Motor Show he remarked to Mr. Lanchester “A car more suited to a prostitute than to a Prince, surely,”
Francis Hutton-Stott, a retiring personality who gave much valuable help and time to the veteran-car movement, was President of the VCC from 1964 to 1966. He had flirtations with faster cars than his Lanchesters, these including an 1899 Canstatt-Daimler, the Hutton racer, and a big de Dietrich. The best tribute to his interest in, and enthusiasm for, the old-car movement lies in the story he wrote for MOTOR SPORT (but, alas, never finished) under the title of “Veteran Specialist”, which commenced in the issue of December, 1944. It is about the very stuff on which the hobby was founded, before commercialism and the Media moved in on it.
W. B.