Vintage Miscellany, September 1963

A 1904 single-cylinder Rover, with a channel-section chassis having very thin dumb-irons, awaits restoration in Wales, where a 1927 Morris-Cowley 2-seater and a 1930/32 Austin 12/4 saloon are derelict. Michael Sedgwick, Curator of the Montagu Motor Museum, has bought a 1934 Tipo 518L Fiat Ardita with a Steyr-Daimler-Puch cabriolet body. He wonders if any other Arditas are around?

The Charles Sykes Exhibition at Beaulieu will remain open throughout September and is well worth a visit. The H.C.V.C. issues a useful News Letter containing data about vintage commercial vehicles it has discovered, etc. Its next fixture is the East Ham Rally on September 14th, but the Paris Rally has been postponed until 1964. The Lea-Francis O.C. issues a very interesting duplicated magazine The LeaFlet. The Editor craves a small and a very large early-vintage chassis for restoration. A 1934 believed-prototype Triumph Gloria is for disposal in Mitcham. When Ford of Dagenham assembled the Press to see their replica 1896 Ford Quadricycle demonstrated at the Crystal Palace it blew its piston out soon after Graham Hill had finished driving it—genuine veterans are rather more durable!

A 1928 Chrysler 2-seater is in fair condition at a Hampshire farm, where it is used as a haysweep and a Belsize and model-T Ford lorry have come to light somewhere in S. Wales, and the remains of a model-W Essex in a Yeovil scrapyard.

Readers report that a Willys Knight saloon has been found in Devon, laid up since 1927, that there was a Maxwell in a scrapyard near A2 and that the remains of a Flint lie in a Suffolk yard.

In the I.o.M. someone saw a circa 1926 Star saloon in a boatyard and an Austin 12/4 van in the back of a garage. At Exeter we hear there are the remains of a I.h.d. model-T Ford truck that was burned out. An Austin 12/4 van in a field near Ilfracombe, a Brough Superior in a yard at Chadleigh, a Lacre water-spreader at Woodbury and a 1912 Singer Ten 2-seater at a Barnstaple garage are reported by a West Country reader. A large 1929 Daimler lies in a S. London yard and that 12/30 Talbot still languishes with the Daimler tourer in Yorkshire. A 1919 Albion truck may soon be scrapped in Newcastle, and another Cluley has been seen, in Yorkshire. Letters can be forwarded. There seems to be a slump in old cars at present so now is the time to get them for low prices.