Cars in magazines.
From Cars in Books, to cars in magazines. Tabs, house organ of Strand Electric, specialists in theatre and general lighting, has long been in considerable demand amongst theatre managers and actors, and mirrors much theatre news. The Golden Jubilee issue of last March presents a truly fascinating and comprehensive survey of the company’s lighting achievements from 1900 onwards. It was sent to us because it contains reference to and an illustration of the Imperial cyclecar made by a former concern, Imperial Lighting Ltd., which formed the subject of our “Fragments on Forgotten Makes” series last May. It is interesting that the present manager of The Imperial Lighting Co. remembers working on one of these cyclecars at the Blackfriars Road works as late as 1925.
This issue of Tabs contains other motoring items. Strand Electric’s first full-time director, A. T. Earnshaw, earned £312 per annum in 1923 but, with a retainer from C. B. Cochran, was able to buy his first car in 1923. It was a 1921 A.C. H.O. Jordan, before joining a subsidiary concern in 1919, had spent a year at the Peugeot Motor Works; and it is recounted how Strand Electric undertook the lighting for the Morris stand at Olympia in 1924 (illustrated) and the Ford Motor Exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall in 1934, while an interesting detail is that Rolls-Royce petrol gauges were used as indicators for the dimmers of the elaborate lighting control panel installed at Covent Garden in 1934—so if you possess a pre-war car of this make without a petrol gauge this may be where it went!
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Glimpse of a photograph album in the B.B.C.-1 Monitor repeat on July 22nd, featuring the American collector Caresse Crosby in her Italian castle at Roccasinibalda, took in part of what appeared to be an Edwardian racing car, equipped with temporary mudguards, for all the world like Hutton-Stott’s 1908 Hutton when so rigged. It was probably a car known to Caresse Crosby when she was living in Paris—but what is it and why does she keep its photograph ?