V-E-V Odds & Ends, September 1984

A neglected proof-correction made me say last month that at Wolverhampton there was a 1924 Sunbeam Dawn — in fact, there is no such animal; the year should have been 1934. The Rhayader MC ran its 20th successive exhibition of historic cars and motorcycles at the 1984 Royal Welsh Show. The older cars included Carter’s nearly restored 1912 12/16 Sunbeam tourer, unused for some 50 years, the Crouch-Helix, Sir John Venables-Llewellyn’s well-known and immaculate 1925 Type 35B GP Bugatti, a 1925 Morris-Cowley, Thomas’ 1904 Darracq Fifteen with locally remade radiator and bonnet, Reg Worthing with another of his replica Model-T Ford Speedsters, this one with a bull-nose radiator, and the Editorial 1922 8 hp Talbot-Darracq.

Seymour Price had put in his A7 Nippy, said to be good for 75 mph, there was a 1930 unfinished A7 chassis in process of rebuild, with odd boxed floor, a Ford-engined Morgan 3-wheeler, and that quite pristine 1933 Austin 10/4 of Dr. Sayer. Keeping these later cars company was an Austin Cambridge saloon and a Standard 8 tourer. Oldest exhibit was a 1903 Phoenix Forecar with home-made two-speed gearbox to aid the single-cylinder engine, that lost one speed during the Banbury Run.

A reader now in Ontario writes of his father’s motoring, which started with a 1902 Quadrant motorcycle, followed by 2 3/4 hp and 3 1/2 hp Douglasses, to a 1914 Spyker car, kept until 1926. This was replaced with another Spyker, a maroon torpedo four-seater with vee-radiator, about two years later, which possessed an exhaust cut-out and was rumoured to have run at Brooklands. I doubt whether it ever raced there but it may have appeared in other events; does anyone recall? This Spyker was scrapped when its Autovac was needed for a 1914 Rover. Our correspondent, who discovered Motor Sport in 1935 and has subscribed to it since 1957, first rode a 1913 two-stroke, chain-cum-belt-drive Campion, Isis first car being a 1916 Rover-Sunbeam. Later cars included a Riley 9 bought for £1, J2, PA and A-type MG, 1929 4 1/2-litre Invicta, a couple of 10 hp Citroens, a Rochdale Olympic, of which he thinks only two went to Canada. and a 1980 Volvo, interspersed with a 1931 250 cc Rudge Radial, etc.

An American reader seeks information about his 1924 3-litre Bentley which is thought to have a four-seater body made by R. Bamber & Co of Birkdale. Does anyone know if Bamber’s, well-known as Lancashire car-dealers, made such coachwork? A Long Island Museum photograph shows the car, once the property of Henry Austin Clark, Jnr and sold we believe for 564 dollars, to have a neat tumble-home body and cycle-type mudguards. The ERA Club is holding its annual dinner at Bourne on October 27th, when it hopes to have almost every ERA driver past and present there assembled, on this its 50th Anniversary, with the Hon Patrick Lindsay as guest-speaker and just possibly a parade of ERAs through the town. Aston Publications, Bourne End House, Harvest Hill, Bourne End, Bucks, have published a little “British Motor Museums Directory” with lists of exhibits, compiled by Anthony Pritchard and Gordon Riley, priced at £1.50. A vintage straight-eight Sunbeam is being restored in Cambridgeshire. — W.B.