Exciting Discovery

Even now, undiscovered old cars continue to turn up from time to time. For instance, Chris Gordon, who has a 1915 Hudson tourer and enlivens VSCC meetings with his Tamplin cyclecar, not long ago came into possession of a mysterious early vintage light-car, which investigation suggests to be a Silver Hawk with an overhead camshaft Sage engine. The chassis is extensively drilled, even to the levers, pedals, etc, the rake of the steering column suggests that a singleseater or “1 1/2 seater” body was once fitted, and the five-bearing engine has the expected separate cylinders of a Sage power unit and is fed from an unusual Zenith 30DRK0959 carburettor with two angled choke tubes with a single float chamber, each choke tube delivering to its own two-branch inlet manifold on the offside. On the nearside there is an impressive fabricated four branch exhaust manifold.

There is no starter ring on the flywheel and the large separate gearbox has ENV gears. This interesting light-car was found in pieces but is now being assembled. It seems that it is not the Silver Hawk which took records at Brooklands in 1920, driven by Gedge, helped by Miss Violet Cordery, unless the engine has been changed, but it could be one of the team of these cars with which René Thomas and Gedge finished 6th and 7th in the 1920 Coupe des Voiturettes race at Le Mans, although if so the frame must have been drilled afterwards, and we look forward to seeing it in action at a VSCC meeting. WB