V.E.V. Miscellany, September 1968
V.E.V. Miscellany.—A Graham White cyclecar, the post-Buckboard model, has been uneanhed recently, minus engine, and the new owner has even discovered a source of spares. A Suffolk breaker recently sold the radiator and some other parts of a Payze, a make built in Cookham, Berks, in 1920/21. The brass honeycomb radiator is of R.-R. shape and the mascot is a globe on which sits a human figure with legs crossed and arms akimbo. Does anyone have any more information about these cars? A reader in Bristol has found a 1926 r.h.d. Chenard-Walcker tourer in France, and someone else discovered within 15 miles of the centre of London a 1929 Fiat 503 saloon and was able to buy it from the original owner, who laid it up in 1931. Information on these Fiats would be appreciated. The death occurred last June, at the age of 73, of Wing-Comdr. the Marquis de Casa Maury, who was with Bentley Motors Ltd. in their pre-R.-R. days and before that raced Bugattis under the name of Mones Maury. He founded the Curzon Cinema, where motor-racing “Midnight Matinees” have taken place in recent years. Disc wheels and a back mudguard badge are sought for the ex-de Jonge Super Sports A.B.C., which is being rebuilt.
A yard in Staffordshire is reported as accommodating several Rolls-Royces, some of them vintage, an Austin 20 coupé, a 1928 Hillman saloon, Alvis and 3½-litre Bentley saloons, a Rolls-Royce with Packard fixed-head coupé body, a 1936 Brough-Superior saloon and a 30/40s Studebaker saloon, some of them under cover and, apparently, with some vintage spares, for disposal. In Yorkshire we hear of a traction engine, make unknown, which has apparently been sheeted-up and unused for some 15 years. The V.S.C.C. Committee has decreed that in order to prevent restorable vintage cars being converted into “specials”, such vehicles will not in future be accepted by the Club unless proof is presented that they were devised from a car too derelict to restore. This is laudable but we hope it will not induce dull Sotheby fodder at the expense of less-valuable but more exciting open cars. Two 500-c.c. vee-twin racing New Imperial motorcycles, the Ginger Woods’ machines of Brooklands memory, one of them supercharged, exist in Norfolk; photographs of them are requested by the owner. W. J. Oldham has done badly at our hands in respect of errors concerning his Rolls-Royce cars, the latest being a wrong picture last month, purporting to show his beautiful 1935 P II Continental at Blenheim but in fact depicting J. Brooks’ 1926 P I sedanca. To set matters right, we publish below a picture of Mr. Oldham’s car. He has owned this car for 14 years and over 70,000 miles. She cruises at 65-70 m.p.h. on Motorways, giving 11.7 m.p.g. of commercial petrol and using a quart of oil per 700 miles.